Bruce Nelson as Felix Humble.

Jewel Robinson and John Dow Flora Humble and George Pye.

Left to Right: Louise Andrews, John Dow, Laura Giannarelli, Bruce R. Nelson, and Jewell Robinson.

John Dow, Bruce R. Nelson & Jewel Robinson.

Lively 'Humble Boy' Is Hardly a Modest Affair

By Tricia Olszewski
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, April 28, 2005; Page C05

By his own mother's account, Felix Humble is "fat and strange." The 35-year-old British scientist at the heart of "Humble Boy" has a brilliant mind but the disposition of a child.

Stuttering and petulant on bad days, the chunky Felix turns visibly smug when the handicap disappears and he can show off his big vocabulary. But this hasn't won him any friends, and even when what he says is pretty, it still seems to come out wrong.

At its most basic, "Humble Boy" is about Felix's return to his childhood home for the funeral of his father, an entomologist and beekeeper. But before the first act is over, the issues in Charlotte Jones's 2001 drama are swarming like the bees that killed Felix's dad.

There's a "Hamlet" undercurrent here, as Felix (Bruce Nelson) struggles to accept the news that his vicious mother, Flora (Jewell Robinson), is already planning to remarry a family friend, George Pye (John Dow), whom Felix hates. Felix also reunites with George's daughter, Rosie (Louise Andrews), an old girlfriend who informs him that her 7-year-old daughter is his.

Felix is angry with his mother for getting rid of his father's bees, and everyone's furious at him for leaving his father's funeral, unable to deliver the eulogy. On top of it all, the depressed theoretical physicist is both consumed with and paralyzed by his research, the point of which, in simple terms, is to discover "the theory of everything."

It's all a lot to digest, but luckily Jones's approach to the perpetual angst is part Shavian, with a healthy dose of Albee thrown in. And the playwright's refined, wordy and often funny script is a perfect match for the Washington Stage Guild, whose casts generally seem to feel most at home when the garden is blooming (Tracie Duncan's colorful backyard set ensures it is) and the kettle is on.

Jones keeps even the gloomiest of "Humble Boy's" developments light, such as Flora's morbid "present" to Felix: "This is my father," Felix says, recoiling. "You just handed me my father in a pot . . . you wrapped him in happy birthday paper!" And though the entire play is tinged with humor, after all the unpleasantness is set up in Act 1, the second half of "Humble Boy" feels like a Three Stooges episode in comparison.

An engagement party for George and Flora is the centerpiece, and the gathering of the soon-to-be Humble-Pyes offers a series of sight gags that the actors pull off beautifully: Felix, wearing his father's too-small suit and perching his large body on a tiny, low stool that was pulled to the table because of a shortage of chairs; Flora's disgusted look as her son and her fiance bicker; the horrified reaction of Mercy (Laura Giannarelli), a family friend, when she realizes that the small decorative pot left on the table wasn't filled with seasoning.

There's a lot to laugh at here, but WSG's production doesn't shy away from what is, beneath the surface, a story about a man "in a state of terminal disappointment."

Whenever Felix gets lost in his own mind, sound designer Clay Teunis supplies a bee's low drone while Marianne Meadows's lights slightly dim.

The effect is lulling and subtle, most powerful when another character disturbs him and Felix must snap back to crisp, bright reality. You soon realize that the tactic is a perfect representation of the tug of war that life's difficulties inflict on everyone, neatly underscoring what Jones's many subplots have been trying to point out all along.

Humble Boy , by Charlotte Jones. Directed by Alan Wade. Costumes, William Pucilowsky; fight choreography, John Gurski. Approximately 2 hours 30 minutes. Through May 22 at Washington Stage Guild at 14th and T, 1901 14th St. NW. Call 240-582-0050 or visit http://www.stageguild.org

1901 14th St. NW.
Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays & Saturdays at 8 p.m.
matinees Saturdays & Sundays at 2:30 p.m.
(240) 582-0050