Saturday, April 07, 2007

opening-night review of *Humble Boy*

at Actors Rep (in residence at SFCC) through April 22

Concluding its third season with Charlotte Jones' *Humble Boy* (through April 22), Actors Repertory Theatre is presenting its best production yet — and it's not because of Patty Duke.

It's not in spite of her, either: Duke is effective in the emotionally remote, queen-bee role of Flora Humble, but it's the strength of Jones' script and of the cast surrounding Duke that makes *Humble Boy* a show not to be missed.

Mortality is a heavyweight presence in Jones' play — in the discussions of bees and flowers dying, in the ruminations about the swallowing-up of matter in black holes, even in the black drapes that form an off-putting background to John Hofland's country-garden set. We're all going to die, so at least we ought to live well. But of course we're pretty miserable at doing even that much. Even so, despite all that, we all retain a spark of something worth salvaging — a marker of salvation that comes to us unexpectedly, undeservedly, deliciously. Jones' characters are full of contradictions: You find yourself pulling for the guy who has allowed himself to become such a bundle of ineffectual neuroses that you'd just like to punch him, and when it comes to the play's unfeeling villains, there are entire episodes in which you realize with a start that even people with toxic personalities can appreciate good music, fine wine, and the fragrance of a bouquet. Our lives are of a mingled yarn, both good and ill together, and Jones has taken a tragedy and turned it into a (provisional) comedy.

That's because, to fully appreciate *Humble Boy* — right up to the play's final punning/serious line — it helps to know your *Hamlet.* But even a sketch of the premise will do: Brilliant young scholar, a misfit in any circumstances, feels especially alienated after his father's death and mother's too-sudden attraction to a grasping vulgarian. And yes, there's an Ophelia figure (much updated in the feminist way) provided as a kind of love interest for our central character — the ironically named Felix, who's anything but happy.

Felix is the Hamlet figure, and this is centrally his story — one of self-disappointment and lurching toward redemption. Carter J. Davis plays Felix as awkward and inept, forgetful, emotionally stunted. He may have the mind of a theoretical astrophysicist, but he's also a sad sack whose shoulders slump even when snapping to attention, as if he half-expects to cringe and fawn whenever his mother or her despicable boyfriend berate him. He's Eeyore, with the rain clouds perpetually following along from above. But the real strength of Davis' fine performance — with its stuttering and sudden outbursts of righteous anger, its self-mockery delivered in surprising combination with other-directed mockery — lies in how it borrows, loosely, from Shakespeare's hero. Like Hamlet, Felix Humble is a good man trying to do the right thing in a world gone wrong — and he's doing it badly, and he keeps trying anyway, and we forgive him his neuroses even as we would like to wring his neck for clinging to them, and (in the end) we applaud him for doing the best that he could in the circumstances. (A pretty fair summary of the best any of us can hope for.) Davis's performance has that kind of universality: He's awkward and unsure and self-critical, and it chimes with the way many of us talk to ourselves inside our own heads. Events conspire against Felix, but Davis also shows us how the man conspires against himself, just like the rest of us. Davis makes Felix hint at the universal.
There's one sequence — with Felix referring to himself in the aftermath of his father's death and mother's imminent re-marriage as "half an orphan," followed by an electric jolt to Duke's shoulder when he reaches out to touch her even while disgustedly characterizing her as "used goods" — that sears with its truth because Davis builds it so plausibly out of the comedy-born-of-anger that precedes it.

Jane May plays the Ophelia figure, Felix's ex-girlfriend, with masculine swagger. She throws her man to the ground and straddles him, literally slapping him around and generally calling the shots whenever the theoretical physicist is around. (He may be a theoretical physicist and brillliant and all, but he's still a lummox.) Leaning on tables in an accusatory way and firing off insults from behind a sweet smile, May presents Rosie Pye's protectiveness of the ones she loves as a nice counterpoint to the other characters' maternal (and paternal) deficiencies.

Therese Diekhans plays Mercy, a kind of enabler and lackey who showers little favors and unasked-for mercies on others, mostly as a cover-up for being the negligible cipher that she is. Fawning and flouncy, more than slightly daft, Diekhans brought down the house with the unexpected torrent of resentments she unleashes during second-act speeches about anti-depressants and taking "a sabbatical from God" (while saying grace before a meal, no less). Mercy's self-effacements form a remarkable contrast to the braying, drunken wife that Diekhans last created for ARt in Ayckbourn's *Absurd Person Singular.*

On the technical side, Justin Schmidt's lighting ranges nicely from nightmarish to bucolic. Hofland's set provides the requisite gravel pathways and bloomin' flowers — along with one characteristic surprise that links the show's motifs of flowers and stars.

Jones takes her time in mingling her comic and tragic effects, stretching Weaver's production to two and three-quarters hours (including intermission). As for the glimmers of potential happiness in the final scenes of reconciliation — they're well worth waiting for. But as good as Patty Duke often is in this show, don't come to a performance of *Humble Boy* just to see the star. Come to see the theatrical stars all around her, and to ponder our place in the night sky, out there among the real, unreachable stars.

**

For a revised version of this review, including comments on the acting of Patty Duke as Flora Humble, J.P. O"Shaughnessy as George Pye and Patrick Treadway as Jim the gardener, please pick up a copy of *The Pacific Northwest Inlander* on Thursday, April 12 .

9 Comments:

At April 08, 2007 1:35 AM , Blogger Bobo the Theater Ho said...

Actually posted at 1:30 am.
I am the ghoul of theater critics, lurking in the darkness of the witching hour, slavering over my keyboard as I sharpen my fangs and prepare to strike.

 
At April 08, 2007 11:51 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I likewise enjoyed the production and the performances very much. As you say, one fo the best ARt has done. The cast was solid and wonderful. I am however surprised at your praise for the writing. You mentioned the symbolism was too obvius in your review of ALL MY SONS, but those presented here are so much more so. Character names like "Felicity" "Flora" and "Humble." Please. And all that business with the father's ashes getting into people's food, and ew, how gross! How many sitcoms have we seen that business in? - Hell, maybe I'm missing the big picture or something, but I'd say this was a fairly stellar production of a play that needs a lot of work.

 
At April 08, 2007 5:07 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Carter Davis is the next big thing! Can't wait to see what he does next!!

 
At April 09, 2007 6:57 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

posted by Anonymous on Saturday:
I likewise enjoyed the production and the performances very much. As you say, one fo the best ARt has done. The cast was solid and wonderful. I am however surprised at your praise for the writing. You mentioned the symbolism was too obvius in your review of ALL MY SONS, but those presented here are so much more so. Character names like "Felicity" "Flora" and "Humble." Please. And all that business with the father's ashes getting into people's food, and ew, how gross! How many sitcoms have we seen that business in? - Hell, maybe I'm missing the big picture or something, but I'd say this was a fairly stellar production of a play that needs a lot of work.

 
At April 09, 2007 7:00 AM , Blogger Bobo the Theater Ho said...

posted by Anonymous:
I likewise enjoyed the production and the performances very much. As you say, one fo the best ARt has done. The cast was solid and wonderful. I am however surprised at your praise for the writing. You mentioned the symbolism was too obvius in your review of ALL MY SONS, but those presented here are so much more so. Character names like "Felicity" "Flora" and "Humble." Please. And all that business with the father's ashes getting into people's food, and ew, how gross! How many sitcoms have we seen that business in? - Hell, maybe I'm missing the big picture or something, but I'd say this was a fairly stellar production of a play that needs a lot of work.

 
At April 09, 2007 7:03 AM , Blogger Bobo the Theater Ho said...

posted by Anonymous;
Carter Davis is the next big thing! Can't wait to see what he does next!!

 
At April 09, 2007 9:36 AM , Blogger Bobo the Theater Ho said...

posted by Anonymous:
I likewise enjoyed the production and the performances very much. As you say, one fo the best ARt has done. The cast was solid and wonderful. I am however surprised at your praise for the writing. You mentioned the symbolism was too obvius in your review of ALL MY SONS, but those presented here are so much more so. Character names like "Felicity" "Flora" and "Humble." Please. And all that business with the father's ashes getting into people's food, and ew, how gross! How many sitcoms have we seen that business in? - Hell, maybe I'm missing the big picture or something, but I'd say this was a fairly stellar production of a play that needs a lot of work.

 
At April 13, 2007 11:07 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

all I can rmember from Hamlet is everybody was dead by the end and that wasn't what happened in ths play. i liked the gardener guy to allot but I know why you didn't say anything about him. The boyfriend was good to but kind of out of place. I've never seen a show with someone as famos as Patty Duke but she didnt over-pwoer it like I figured someone like that could. She was good and really nice to meet her.

 
At April 13, 2007 1:44 PM , Blogger Bobo the Theater Ho said...

If anyone cares, here are a couple hundred words cut from the Inlander review of Apirl 12, 2007 -- deleted so we could run the Patty Duke-glaring photo bigger:

There's one sequence — with Felix referring to himself in the aftermath of his father's death and mother's imminent re-marriage as "half an orphan," followed by an electric jolt to Duke's shoulder when he reaches out to touch her even while disgustedly characterizing her as "used goods" — that sears with its truth because Davis builds it so plausibly out of the comedy-born-of-anger that precedes it.

At one point, she laments no longer being the heroine of her own life: Duke marks the fall of narcissism with rueful self-pity that contrasts nicely with the mischievous butt-sashaying and snippy remarks she displays earlier.


Flora’s boyfriend is the owner of a rental car fleet named George Pye. J.P. O’Shaughnessy catches Pye’s joie de vivre and sentimentality but misses the grasping vulgarity, the working-class snobbery that dismisses the high-falutin’ ways of the upper-class while desperately seeking to join in them. And in a small role, Patrick Treadway provides a calming influence as a gentle gardener.
On the technical side, Justin Schmidt's lighting ranges nicely from nightmarish to bucolic. Hofland's set provides the requisite gravel pathways and bloomin' flowers — along with one characteristic surprise that links the show's motifs of flowers and stars.

 

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