Worcestershire | Archive | 2003 | November | 07
From the archive, first published Friday 7th Nov 2003.
THE spirit of summer returns to Malvern this week in Humble Boy, a play set in a lovely Cotswold garden, with a flawless cast and a script that crackles with wit and originality.
Against a backdrop of roses and an empty beehive, Flora (Hayley Mills) and her son, Felix (Hugh Sachs), come to terms in their own way with the sudden death of James, her beekeeper husband and his father.
Their relationship is complicated by their entanglements with the hearty and frequently tipsy George (Paul Hecht) and his feisty daughter, Rosie (Carla Lang).
There is also Flora's faithful friend, Mercy, played by Brigit Forsyth, better known as the bossy Thelma in The Likely Lads, here demonstrating another aspect of her skill as a comedy actress.
To add some honest-to-goodness sanity, there is Jim (John Burgess), trimming the grass and tending the roses.
It would be unfair to give away too much of the plot, because Worcester playwright Charlotte Jones has woven an intricate pattern of wounded emotions, aspirations, dreams and regret, handling the threads with a light touch and glossing them with humour.
While laughing with shocked disbelief at George's antics and with sheer hilarity at Mercy, we are still gripped by an unfolding story with echoes of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Humble Boy is at the Festival Theatre until tomorrow (Saturday).
KATHY DON
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