Review: John Godber's enduring comedy Teechers at Theatre Royal Windsor

A play – and a playground – within a play hurls us back to the turbulence of secondary school in John Godber’s enduring comedy.

An electronic bell launches the clatter of classrooms and a flurry of sharp impressions that draw knowing laughs.

The audience clearly recognises the indignities: “running the 1,500 metres with athlete’s foot” or receiving a pointless report – “they said I was below average, they said I opened my books well and I liked a warm room.” Then comes the existential PE question: “Climbing up a rope in the gym – what are we, pirates?”

Enter Gail (Jo Patmore), Hobby (Sophie Suddaby) and Salty (Levi Payne), who explain that this is Whitehall Academy, an ageing comprehensive of 900 kids in the north of England – ‘actually Hull’.

The school ‘requires improvement’ and, although the names and faces have supposedly been changed to protect the innocent, the students soon expose the fiction: Miss Nixon (Suddaby again, superb) is really Miss Harrison, while Hobby represents her wearing the teacher’s borrowed jacket.

The trio take on every role themselves – staff, pupils and narrators alike – switching characters with dazzling speed, wit and, in the case of the school bully, a well-mimed gob of spit.

New teacher Nixon is sent to cut her teeth on the fifth formers of 91B. It’s safely tucked away in the sprawling school so, apparently, no great loss if the pupils “eat her alive or burn her”.

We meet the fruity-voiced headteacher Mrs Parry who, scarf-tossing theatrics aside (deftly handled by Payne), genuinely cares about her charges. Perhaps less so Oggy Moxon, who terrifies staff and students alike. He fancies Gail – and fancies himself even more.

There’s tennis-mad PE teacher Jackie Prime, always keen on one-upmanship; the dour caretaker Doug, unwilling to cut Nixon any slack; and deputy head Dr Basford, who timetables the newcomer into endless cover lessons. Basford, we learn, sends his own children to the nearby private school, St George’s – all gleaming facilities and polite pupils.

For all the humour, there is a strong theme of social justice in the script and a reminder of the power of imagination. First performed by the seminal Hull Truck Theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1987, the play has endured thanks to its vivid characters, sharp humour and adaptability. It can be staged with more than 20 actors, though most professional productions – including this one – showcase the performers’ versatility (and keep costs down) by relying on just three.

Godber has recently refreshed the script, adding digital references, TikTok dances and nods to how Covid lockdowns left many young people feeling disconnected from education.

By the end of the second act, the future of Whitehall Academy hangs in the balance: can it preserve its arts provision, retain its teachers and offer hope to pupils trying to complete homework on their phones? Or will it go the way of so many struggling institutions and be reborn as an Amazon warehouse?

Teechers still rings true – and even at the final bell, it pulls no punches.

Teechers was staged at Theatre Royal Windsor.