Thoughtful 'Humble Boy' engages beauty & the bees
Published: 05.15.2008
Thoughtful 'Humble Boy' engages beauty & the bees
CHUCK GRAHAM
Tucson Citizen
It's easy to imagine Tucson is full of people who spend their entire lives wishing they were somewhere else. Not just during summer's searing heat but all the time - living with a different spouse or lover, at a different job in a different house or in a different city.
Inertia holds them prisoner in the Old Pueblo as surely as it held those upscale members of troubled Russian families in Chekhov's plays of life just before the Communist revolution. British playwright Charlotte Jones imagines this cross-pollinated culture plopped down in the muddy middle of England's terminally bland countryside. A place so lacking in imagination it rivals America's own flat-lined suburbs full of houses that look alike, served by chain stores that have all the same stuff.
Jones' play is "Humble Boy," directed by Howard Allen at Beowulf Alley Theatre. Allen has set his production on a stage design that carries reality far beyond any previous Beowulf Alley show. A beautifully painted backdrop of a somewhat hazy sky sets the tone for the contrasts of an immaculate British garden filled with rows of tall and impressively blossoming plants.
A corner wall with a wooden gate frames this garden that covers half the stage. Sections of an impressive two-story country home and its stylish French doors dominate the stage's other half.
Clearly, this is the backyard of a family that takes life seriously. People who believe it is important to keep their manners polished and to know the proper Latin names for all those flowers.
But you can't have flowers without bees to pollinate them. So we notice the bee design on the garden wall, right beside a stack of boxed beehives. Then we learn how the beekeeper discovered he was allergic to stings when a bee stung him and he died on the spot. Right in the middle of that lovely garden. Anaphylactic shock.
The bees giving life to the blossoms and taking life from the beekeeper. Finding all the metaphors are a big part of the pleasure in "Humble Boy," a play that stands in smart contrast to all the silly comedies and smiley-faced musicals that traditionally fill our springtime stages.
This upscale drama is for thoughtful theater-goers. The sort who dedicate a part of every Sunday to the brain-tickling pleasures of that crossword puzzle in The New York Times. A quick check of "Humble Boy" reviews online finds several reviewers who discover parallels to "Hamlet."
Personally, this seems like quite a stretch. It's true there is a waffling young man, Felix (Royce Sparks), who has a conniving mother Flora (Cynthia Jeffery). She is in love with a man other than her husband. It was her husband who died from the bee sting.
But geez. Any Buddhist will tell you everything is a part of everything else, so what's the big deal?
Owen as George is the most engaging character in this family blend of distracting laughter and domestic power plays. We come to appreciate George's patience and the frustration of Felix, a shy intellectual who teaches astrophysics at Cambridge University. His ex-girlfriend Rosie (Elizabeth Leadon) is George's daughter. She also likes to tease Felix.
Adding comedic relief is Roxanne Harley as Mercy Lott, an eccentric family friend. There is a satisfying resolution, though, to all the conflicts covered by years of polite pretending. If only it didn't take so long for all those people to come to their senses. Have killer bees reached England yet?
Published: 05.15.2008
Thoughtful 'Humble Boy' engages beauty & the bees
CHUCK GRAHAM
Tucson Citizen
It's easy to imagine Tucson is full of people who spend their entire lives wishing they were somewhere else. Not just during summer's searing heat but all the time - living with a different spouse or lover, at a different job in a different house or in a different city.
Inertia holds them prisoner in the Old Pueblo as surely as it held those upscale members of troubled Russian families in Chekhov's plays of life just before the Communist revolution. British playwright Charlotte Jones imagines this cross-pollinated culture plopped down in the muddy middle of England's terminally bland countryside. A place so lacking in imagination it rivals America's own flat-lined suburbs full of houses that look alike, served by chain stores that have all the same stuff.
Jones' play is "Humble Boy," directed by Howard Allen at Beowulf Alley Theatre. Allen has set his production on a stage design that carries reality far beyond any previous Beowulf Alley show. A beautifully painted backdrop of a somewhat hazy sky sets the tone for the contrasts of an immaculate British garden filled with rows of tall and impressively blossoming plants.
A corner wall with a wooden gate frames this garden that covers half the stage. Sections of an impressive two-story country home and its stylish French doors dominate the stage's other half.
Clearly, this is the backyard of a family that takes life seriously. People who believe it is important to keep their manners polished and to know the proper Latin names for all those flowers.
But you can't have flowers without bees to pollinate them. So we notice the bee design on the garden wall, right beside a stack of boxed beehives. Then we learn how the beekeeper discovered he was allergic to stings when a bee stung him and he died on the spot. Right in the middle of that lovely garden. Anaphylactic shock.
The bees giving life to the blossoms and taking life from the beekeeper. Finding all the metaphors are a big part of the pleasure in "Humble Boy," a play that stands in smart contrast to all the silly comedies and smiley-faced musicals that traditionally fill our springtime stages.
This upscale drama is for thoughtful theater-goers. The sort who dedicate a part of every Sunday to the brain-tickling pleasures of that crossword puzzle in The New York Times. A quick check of "Humble Boy" reviews online finds several reviewers who discover parallels to "Hamlet."
Personally, this seems like quite a stretch. It's true there is a waffling young man, Felix (Royce Sparks), who has a conniving mother Flora (Cynthia Jeffery). She is in love with a man other than her husband. It was her husband who died from the bee sting.
But geez. Any Buddhist will tell you everything is a part of everything else, so what's the big deal?
Owen as George is the most engaging character in this family blend of distracting laughter and domestic power plays. We come to appreciate George's patience and the frustration of Felix, a shy intellectual who teaches astrophysics at Cambridge University. His ex-girlfriend Rosie (Elizabeth Leadon) is George's daughter. She also likes to tease Felix.
Adding comedic relief is Roxanne Harley as Mercy Lott, an eccentric family friend. There is a satisfying resolution, though, to all the conflicts covered by years of polite pretending. If only it didn't take so long for all those people to come to their senses. Have killer bees reached England yet?
