It’s astonishing to think that it has taken so long for To Sir, With Love to make it onto the stage. The original, seminal book, by E.R. Braithwaite, was published in 1959 and the story was filmed in 1967 starring Sydney Poitier – a film I remember very well as I used to go out with an actress who played one of the schoolgirls. But that’s another, though no less interesting, story.

When it was first published, To Sir, With Love fitted in very well with the grim-up-north, kitchen-sink type novels and plays that were all the rage at the time. Although set in London’s Stepney it captured the prevailing Zeitgeist and Braithwaite’s name was mentioned alongside John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow and all the other angry young novelists of the time.

The story concerns Ricky (Edward Ricardo Braithwaite, a black ex-Spitfire pilot and highly qualified academic) confronting the blatant racialism of post-war Britain and being forced to take a lowly teaching job in a run down, though progressive, East End school.

So, how did this new adaptation of an old story fare? Does it have any relevance to the current educational system or the present attitudes to racism in England? Or is it just a feel-good story?

Firstly, I have to say that this production of To Sir, With Love was nicely done. The set was looming and evocative, not only of a war-ravaged London but also of an inner-city secondary school with its tiled walls, swinging doors, brown paint and constant clatter. The first act dragged a bit in places, especially the class-room scenes but the second half was brilliant – very satisfying and often moving. Ansu Kabia was excellent and just right as the young teacher and Matthew Kelly was endearing as the avuncular, liberal head-master. The kids, many of whom were local amateurs, were suitably rowdy. Mykola Allen shone as Denham, transformed before our very eyes from lout to loveable by a kind word and gesture from Sir.

But things have changed since the late 40s when this story takes place. It was PE, a clip-around-the-ear and the three Rs that dominated education, although many of the pupils in the play had difficulty reading. In spite of the progressive and pioneering theories of the play’s headmaster (Alex Bloom in real life) and the upheaval that has been British education in the past decades it recently emerged that school-children in the UK are near the bottom of an international league of literacy and numeracy – plus ça change. Also, if the East End school in question still exists it will probably be white kids who are in the minority so a lone black guy struggling against the system would not have the same resonance.

To Sir, With Love is an enjoyable play and is as relevant as, say, Room at the Top, A Kind of Loving or Look Back in Anger. It is an engaging and enlightening social document, it shows us how we used to be. But then so does Charles Dickens. – Michael Hasted