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<b>by Charlotte Jones, directed by Richard Rose
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
January 10-February 12, 2006
</b>
British playwright Charlotte Jones’s <i>Humble Boy</i>, at least in its Toronto premiere at the Tarragon, seems like ersatz Tom Stoppard, borrowing the idea of <i>Hamlet</i>-as-comedy from <i>Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead</i> and gardening and science allusions from <i>Arcadia</i>. It would seem much less contrived if director Richard Rose could make us care about the characters by revealing their complexity. Instead, he presents them as caricatures and the multi-hued play merely as farce.
Paul Gibson as Felix Humble, the play’s overweight Hamlet equivalent, is distressed that his waspish mother Flora (Fiona Reid) plans to marry so soon after his father’s death. Yet he seems such a bumbling nebbish, we can hardly believe he is really a theoretical astrophysicist pursuing superstring theory. Reid is so acidic, we can’t believe she ever cared for Felix or his father thus rendering her behaviour at the end even less likely. Michael Ball makes George Pye, the country Claudius, so boorish we can’t see how the prissy Flora could be attracted to him. Only Nicola Lipman, wonderful as Mercy, a woman who gladly lives in Flora’s shadow, captures the play’s and her character’s odd mixture of folly and sadness. <i>Humble Boy</i> is no masterpiece but with crisper pacing and more insightful direction it could be both funnier and much more moving.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2006-01-19.
Photo: Dean Paul Gibson and Fiona Reid. ©2006 David Cooper.
<b>2006-01-19</b>
<b>Humble Boy</b>