Review: Humble Boy

And so, in a middle England garden filled with birdsong, the Humble family and its satellites, mourning a quietly-spoken patriarch, wrestle with their very personal brand of chaos theory.

Charlotte Jones’s Humble Boy at Greenwich Theatre touches on super-string theory, bee propagation and anosmia but these are just window dressing for the essential drama – which is love, and death, and the unanswered resentments of family life.

Lives are changed here and nerves are exposed, twanged like banjo strings, and muted. Difficult truths are told in the heat of battle and accommodations are reached in the calm of a Cotswold’s idyll.

This production is a delight. Always something to see, always something to enjoy. The populist touches – capers with dad’s ashes, for example – never seem too contrived and the conflict is never overstated.

Laughs are rich and deeply rooted and drama is everywhere. In stifled Felix Humble’s anguish over his distant mum and his unprompted reunion with a former love. In Flora Humble’s self-centred attempts to justify her infidelities and wrangle her disappointments. In the rough and tumble of crossed paths, misunderstandings and frequent revelations.

The cast from the Classic London Theatre company is superlative throughout. John Dorney is compelling as the tic and stutter-fuelled scientist wrestling with the savage gore of biology. Pauline Whitaker as mum Flora crumbled with mathematical precision from ice queen to the lost widow with a stately grace.

Comedy comes from Peter Cadden as brash suitor George Pye and Carole Dance as meek Mercy Lott while Catherine Harvey as Felix’s former lover Rosie Pye and Martin Wimbush as Jim the gardener deliver wisdom in earthy chunks.

Occasionally, the strands of symbolism and metaphor knot up till we don't know our Icharus from our bumble bees – and the final act is a tad overlong – but the rewards of this symmetrical and beautifully written piece keep on coming.