'Humble Boy' has plenty to boast about

When someone we love dies, they leave in their place a gaping chasm larger than the Grand Canyon, an absence that is almost palpable.

COURTESY PHOTO Mercy Lott (Tricia Laycock, center) prays a little as Felix Humble (Matt Flynn) and Rosie Pye (Mary Anne McKerrow) listen skeptically in a moment from "Humble Boy." The Charlotte Jones comedy is presented by The Naples Players' through April 19 at the Sugden Community Theatre in Naples.

The bereaved react in various ways. Some walk up to the edge of the chasm and look into it, some tip-toe around it. Some studiously ignore it, while others want to throw themselves into it. Some try to fill the emptiness with wild sex, as if affirming to themselves that they're still alive.

"Humble Boy" (playing at the Sugden Community Theatre through April 19) looks at how a handful of family and friends react to the recent death of the patriarch of the Humble family, a biologist who raised bees in his backyard.

His son, Felix (Matt Flynn), was supposed to give the eulogy at the church, but ran away. And the widow, Flora (Carole Fenstermacher), has already gotten rid of all her husband's things, including his beloved honeybees in the backyard hive. She's also, as it turns out, finding comfort in the arms of another man, George (Sepp Ronay).

The play gives more than a nod to "Hamlet," especially in terms of family dynamics.

If all this sounds as if "Humble Boy" is a somber, serious night at the theater, you'd be wrong. It's dramatic and moving, to be sure, but it's also clever, witty and very, very funny.

It's no wonder that when originally staged in England it won the London Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play in 2001 and, a year later, the UK People's Choice New Play Award. (Playwright Charlotte Jones had received the Critics' Circle Most Promising New Playwright Award a few years earlier, and with "Humble Boy," she makes good on the promise she'd shown.) After being a big hit on London's West End, "Humble Boy" crossed the Atlantic to play on Broadway. It's easy to see why.

This is a play so rich in language, so nuanced, so layered with multiple meanings, that it's almost impossible to take it all in with just one viewing. Early in the play, when Felix begins describing the quartet of beekeepers who came to remove the bees, he searches for the right collective term. He calls them "an apocalypse of beekeepers" while family friend Mercy Lott (Tricia Laycock) suggests "a heavenly host of beekeepers."

The image he paints of the men in their white suits and veils, looking like astronauts, is nothing short of poetic. And the play is filled with many other exquisite moments like this. While language is important to any playwright, it's obvious Jones has a special affinity and affection for it. She delights in playing with words, and her delight also becomes our joy.

When Felix's mother, played with delicious haughtiness and high self-regard by Fenstermacher, makes her entrance, she declares: "I am not angry. I am incandescent with rage."

And for the entire evening, Fenstermacher herself is luminescent in her role. She's the mother from hell: vain, petulant, cold, ungrateful, and wound much too tightly.

"I'm in a state of terminal disappointment," she announces at one point, and isn't afraid to show it. Her life hasn't turned out as she had hoped.

It's no surprise that she's involved with another man, but her choice is puzzling. Couldn't she do better than this, you wonder. George is crass, obtuse, coarse. He's the guy at the bar or party that you try to avoid - you know, the back-slapping loud one who thinks he's funny and charming when truth is, he's just a jerk. It's the one false note of the evening. Ronay possibly overplays George; I'm not sure if we're meant to dislike his character so immensely. Perhaps he's meant to be the life-affirming opposite of Flora's late husband, but that doesn't come across in Ronay's portrayal.

Flynn, the Naples Players' very talented set designer, makes his acting debut with this role, and does quite well, thank you. His character's a boy in a man's body, scared of adult commitments and responsibility. He lives a little too much in his mind and can be adolescently awkward socially. (His stage make-up looked too heavy opening night, and references to how fat he is were confusing, as he isn't. But some second-act creative costuming certainly helped convey that illusion.)

"I came home and there was just an absence," he says, referring to his the loss of his father and the bees as well. In that one simple line, he conveys that abyss that someone's death creates in our lives, how the very aching absence of someone can be a physical presence.

Felix studies theoretical astrophysics at Cambridge, exploring the possibilities of extra dimensions in space. While scientific, it's also very whimsical and poetic.

"Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there," Felix says.

And this play, in its examination of possibilities, causes us to examine the possibilities in our own lives too, within ourselves and in our relationships.

While exploring the nuts-and-bolts of familial relationships and romantic entanglements, playwright Jones also covers string theory, alternate universes, black holes, and the aerodynamic impossibility of bees, among many other things, all in the most entertaining and lyrical language and dialogue. She has a lot of plates in the air, thematically speaking, and manages to keep them all spinning gracefully.

Laycock is deceptively laid back in her portrayal of the aptly named Mercy, the neighbor who adores Flora. Her character's not the kind to push herself into the foreground, but the more we see of her, the more endearing she becomes. She's so helpful and subservient, in fact, that initially I thought she was the housekeeper or maid. A somewhat ditzy, simple woman, she comes into her comedic own in the second act, garnering well-deserved spontaneous applause for her hysterical saying of grace, which she fills more with asides, commentary and argument than thanks. Laycock is one of those performers who make it look easy.

Kip Jones, as Jim, the gardener, has a small but essential role. And Mary Anne McAvoy McKerrow, as George's daughter, Rosie, doesn't come on the scene until late in the play, but this practical, talkingstraight from-the-hip character adds spark to the play as well as additional plot twists.

Director Paul Graffy should be proud of his cast, though he's a little heavy-handed in a few instances. For example, I could've done without ever hearing "Flight of the Bumblebee" played, which seemed too obvious. Jones's play deserves a light touch, though she herself is not immune to resorting to some bad puns here and there, playing on characters' names. I also hated not being able to see the faces of all the characters during certain dramatic moments, but such is the nature of the black box in its current configuration. At least this way, the action is natural; I would've hated much more if they had all faced forward and spoken their lines to the audience instead of each other.

Flynn's turned the Tobye Studio into an abundantly lush backyard garden complete with overhanging branches of an apple tree. The set threatens to encroach on the audience, and from time to time those in the front row had to pull in their feet in order not to trip the actors.

"Humble Boy" is so creative, so lyrical, so funny and touching that it's the kind of night you dream of experiencing in theater.

At one point, Felix talks about Albert Einstein and eureka moments. "Humble Boy" is one continuous string of such moments. It is British dramatic comedy at its most sparkling.

If you go

>>What: "Humble Boy"

>>When: 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through April 19

>>Where: The Sugden Community Theatre, 701 Fifth Avenue South, Naples

>>Cost: $20

>>Information: Call (239) 263-7990