Publick Theater Presents HUMBLE BOY 4/9-5/2 At The Plaza

Publick Theatre Boston returns to the familiar, eclectic worlds of English gardens, strained family relations, and quantum physics with the New England premiere of Charlotte Jones's award-winning comedy Humble Boy. Performances are April 9 through May 2, 2009 at the Plaza Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in Boston's South End. Performances are Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays at 3:00 pm and 8:00 pm and Sundays at 3:00pm. Press Performance is Sunday April 12 at 3pm. Tickets: $35-$32 (Preview Performances April 9-12 All Tickets $20). For tickets contact the BostonTheatreScene.com box office at 617.933.8600 or order online at www.bostontheatrescene.com.

Felix Humble, theoretical physicist, has left Cambridge and his search for a unified "Theory of Everything" to attend his beekeeper father's funeral- but finds himself in the middle of a hornet's nest instead. His overbearing mother Flora has exiled the bees, and taken the boorish next-door neighbor as her lover. Add a mousey family friend, a dutiful gardener, and a visitor from his own romantic past, and like the bees, Felix bumbles to find order amid the chaos.

Allusions to Shakespeare's Hamlet anchor this comedy, as it takes the lid off the gardens of British suburbia to explore the physics of attraction and family, and the complex struggle to be (but not to bee) in a constantly shifting universe.

Directed by Diego Arciniegas, the cast features Stephanie Clayman as Flora Humble, Nigel Gore as George Pye, Nancy Carroll as Mercy Lott, Dafydd Rees as Jim, Tom O'Keefe as Felix Humble and Claire Warden as Rosie Pye. Designers include Dahlia Al-Habieli (Sets), Jeff Adelberg (Lights), and John Doerschuk (Sound).

Charlotte Jones is a British actress and playwright. Her first play Airswimming debuted in 1997 at the Battersea Arts Centre in London but burst onto the interNational Theatre scene with her fourth play Humble Boy, which debuted in 2001 at the Royal National Theatre, London. After along run at the Royal National and Gielgud
Theatres, it toured Britain in 2003. It received the Smith Blackburn Award, 2001, as well as the Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play and the People's Choice New Play Award in 2002. Humble Boy made its North American premiere in 2003 at New York's Manhattan Theatre Club, where it earned a Drama Desk nomination for Best New Play 2003-2004. Her other plays include In Flame, Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis, The Dark, and The Lightning Play. Jones wrote the book to the musical The Woman In White in collaboration with the David Zippel and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Publick Theatre Boston continues to focus on staging language-driven works - encouraging its audiences to "experience the power of the spoken word." Under the leadership of Producing Director Susanne Nitter and Artistic Director Diego Arciniegas, The Publick has experienced a renaissance, garnering critical acclaim for many of its productions, including the prestigious Eliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production for Arcadia by Tom Stoppard in 2005. More recently, the theatre has expanded its repertory, including more contemporary works, as well as original translations. The theatre has performed Michael Frayn's Tony Award winning, Copenhagen, Amy Freed's The Beard of Avon and George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance.

After venturing indoors for the first time in more than three decades with Noel Coward's Design for Living at the Boston Center for the Arts in 2007, 2008 marked a first-ever four-show season (Tom Stoppard's Travesties, Anton Chekov's The Seagull, Noel Coward's Hay Fever, and Brian Friel's Faith Healer) inaugurating The Publick's new Main Stage at the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) and opening a new chapter as one of its newest Resident Theatre Companies.

 

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