Thursday, October 12, 2006

Jan. and April slots at ARt

Michael Weaver reports that the Jan. 12-27 slot in the Actors Rep season is now open, but to be filled by a familiar American play from the last generation or so.
The April 6-21 production will be *Humble Boy* by Charlotte Jones, a six-character play with Patty Duke as Flora.
Jones' play is, get this, a comic retelling of Shakespeare's *Hamlet.*
It starred Diana Rigg as Flora and Simon Russell Beale as her son Felix at London's National Theatre in 2003.
"Themes covered include dysfunctional families, bee keeping, theoretical physics and the gap between reality and our perception of it."
Felix (the Hamlet figure) — in his 30s, unmarried, a Cambridge University lecturer on superstring theory — has returned home for his father's funeral; Dad was a biology teacher and beekeeper. Flora (the Gertrude figure, also a bit of a queen bee) isn't happy with her son and is more fixated on her affair with George, the sleazy owner of a rental car fleet. And there's an Ophelia character, and ... you get the idea.
Apparently Rigg made her first entrance with huge sunglasses on, to drive home the large-eyed insect hint.
(Might overwhelm the diminutive Ms. Duke.)

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