Humble Boy

Book excerpt: An award-winning new play that has been called "a brilliant latter-day variant on Elsinore in an English country garden blitzed by bees" (Sheridan Morley, The Spectator) All is not well in the Humble hive. Thirty-five-year-old Felix Humble is a Cambridge astrophysicist in search of a unified field theory, but after the sudden death of his father, James, a teacher and amateur beekeeper, he is forced to return to the family home in the English countryside. Once there he and his demanding mother, Flora, a glamorous former showgirl who resents having spent the last thirty years in suburban exile, attempt to reconcile themselves to James's death and to each other, plumbing the depths of their anger as well as their love. The emotional turmoil increases exponentially with the arrival of George, Flora's longtime lover, and his daughter Rosie, Felix's former girlfriend, as Felix is forced to acknowledge that his search for unity must include his own chaotic home life. A play concerned with beekeeping and astrophysics, imbued with heartbreak and wit, larger questions of the universe and smaller questions of family dynamics, Humble Boy has been called "a feast: a serious, moving, cerebral feast" (The Sunday Times).