by Charlotte Jones. Directed by Lynn Lee
Director’s Notes
Humble Boy is a modern play but one destined to become a classic with its equal measures of both comedy and tragedy. First performed in 2001 at the Royal National Theatre with a stellar cast including Simon Russell Beale and Dame Diana Rigg, Humble Boy went on to a successful run at the West End and has been been performed regularly both here and abroad in the years since. In its first year it won the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play and two Olivier awards and has gathered much critical praise.
Felix Humble, a thirty-five year old Cambridge astro-physicist, returns home following the untimely death of his bee-keeping father to his self-centred mother and a whirling morass of familial discord. With a head full of superstrings, black holes and Einstein’s unfinished unified field theory, Felix cannot even begin to understand his loss, let alone grieve for the father he never knew. Can he reconcile his love of physics with his own personal circumstances?
A wonderful contemporary play set in a summer garden with entwined themes of loss, love, failed hopes, bee-keeping and theoretical physics. By turns engaging, funny, witty, clever and passionate with no need for a PhD to enjoy it!
