Preview
HUMBLE BOY
Theatre Calgary and the Citadel Theatre
Starring Christopher Hunt, Elizabeth Shepherd and Natascha Girgis
Written by Charlotte Jones
Directed by Ian Prinsloo
Runs until May 1
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Humble Boy, by English playwright Charlotte Jones, is the final play in Theatre Calgary’s current season and the last to be directed by departing artistic director Ian Prinsloo. A play that features quantum physics, family secrets and a healthy dose of Hamlet, Humble Boy is an intelligent and funny script. Set in an English country garden, it also provides another opportunity for Theatre Calgary to create one of its trademark showstopper sets.
The play opens with Felix, a quantum physicist and university professor (portrayed by TC favourite Christopher Hunt), back home after seven years to attend his father’s funeral. He finds that his mother, Flora (Elizabeth Shepherd), is not altogether as upset as he feels she should be. She has got rid of his father’s clothes and beloved bees and, Felix soon discovers, is planning on getting re-married – to the father of his ex-girlfriend.
A smash hit in London’s West End, Humble Boy, which playwright Jones refers to as a tragicomedy, was originally commissioned by Britain’s National Theatre as a modern take on the themes and characters in Hamlet. However, the Shakespeare play is used more as a jumping-off point and audiences shouldn’t expect a rehashing of the classic.
Originally an actor, Jones began writing in the late 1990s because she found there were very few good roles around for her. Because of her experience onstage, she vowed only to write fully realized characters, never walk-ons, and Humble Boy is no exception – as actor Shepherd has found while working on the production at TC.
The play is remarkable, says Shepherd, if only for the fact that there are six characters, each of who is completely different from the others and undergoes a transformation over the course of the play. No one remains unchanged. Shepherd, who was last in Calgary in the early ’90s for TC’s infamous updating of Tartuffe, has found in the character of Flora that incredibly rare beast – an interesting role for an older woman. She knows how lucky she is to be cast in the part.
"It is a great gift to me to have a role and be attractive, sexual, alive in my body," she says, going on to explain that the view taken towards older women in this play is more in tune with European social attitudes. In North America, as women grow older, she explains, "there is a terrible fear of becoming invisible."
Flora, however, still harbours that fear, despite the fact that her fiancé clearly finds her attractive and did throughout their affair while her husband was still alive. A model before she married Felix’s father, she is somewhat out of place in her country milieu.
"Flora is a rather exotic creature in middle England," she says. "Her beauty was her greatest gift. There’s something about feeling you’ve always been valued for the outside that grows thinner and thinner." And it is this sense of dissatisfaction that ultimately drives her transformation.
Like Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, which closed Theatre Calgary’s 2002-03 season, Humble Boy uses the science of quantum physics to parallel the action of the play. But don’t let that scare you. Jones frames it in a way that the average audience can understand.
"To present it in a way that is accessible is a feat," notes Shepherd, surmising that the reason there are so many recent plays that explore the subject is that theoretical physics is a very creative field. "These physicists are using their imagination and intuition like actors," she says. "The ideas are interesting, fascinating."
However, Shepherd stresses, Humble Boy is, at its core, a family drama, and that is what she feels audiences will identify with. "This play will delight people, give them something to laugh about, think about, cry about." |
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