Humble Boy: A Play

By Charlotte Jones

Book Overview

An award-winning new play that has been called "a brilliant latter-day variant on Elsinore in an English country garden blitzed by bees" (Sheridan Morley, The Spectator)

All is not well in the Humble hive. Thirty-five-year-old Felix Humble is a Cambridge astrophysicist in search of a unified field theory, but after the sudden death of his father, James, a teacher and amateur beekeeper, he is forced to return to the family home in the English countryside. Once there he and his demanding mother, Flora, a glamorous former showgirl who resents having spent the last thirty years in suburban exile, attempt to reconcile themselves to James's death and to each other, plumbing the depths of their anger as well as their love. The emotional turmoil increases exponentially with the arrival of George, Flora's longtime lover, and his daughter Rosie, Felix's former girlfriend, as Felix is forced to acknowledge that his search for unity must include his own chaotic home life. A play concerned with beekeeping and astrophysics, imbued with heartbreak and wit, larger questions of the universe and smaller questions of family dynamics, Humble Boy has been called "a feast: a serious, moving, cerebral feast" (The Sunday Times).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571212875
• ISBN13: 9780571212873
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Fresh, clever, gentle and poignant

I just saw this play produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. There are only so many family skeletons you can expose, and "Humble Boy" borrows liberally from that well-stocked closet. But those it drags out are embodied in well-defined characters and presented with fresh wit, excellent pacing, gentleness, and poignancy. Felix's search for the physicist's "theory of everything" is handled lightly, never bogs down in technical jargon, and never overshadows the characters' concerns of the heart. Although I would have preferred a slightly different ending, it worked because the characters were true to themselves. A wonderful play.

Play is good read

I saw this play in NYC with Jared Harris and Blair Brown and really enjoyed it. It was funny and moving and really had heart. When I picked it up to read it, I wondered if it would read as well -- and it did. This is a very smart play -- Charlotte Jones has written a play where the characters are fully realized and funny -- all the while searching for understanding, connection and love.