Publick Theatre Presents
New England Premiere Of
Charlotte Jones' "Humble Boy"

Boston's Publick Theatre welcomes spring with the New England premiere of Charlotte Jones’s award-winning comedy "Humble Boy."  Performance dates are April 9 - May 2 at the Plaza Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts.

The play's setting combines the eclectic worlds of English gardens, strained family relations and quantum physics. Felix Humble, theoretical physicist, has left Cambridge and his search for a unified “Theory of Everything” to attend his beekeeper father’s funeral.

However, he soon finds himself in the middle of a hornet’s nest as his overbearing mother has exiled the bees and taken the boorish next-door neighbor as her lover.  Add a mousy family friend, a dutiful gardener, and a visitor from his own romantic past, and Felix buzzes about to find order amid the chaos.

Directed by Diego Arciniegas, the cast features Stephanie Clayman, Nigel Gore, Nancy Carroll, Dafydd Rees, Tom O’Keefe and Claire Warden.

Charlotte Jones' first play "Airswimming" debuted in 1997 at the Battersea Arts Centre in London.  She burst onto the international theatre scene with "Humble Boy," which debuted in 2001 at the Royal National Theatre in London. After along runs at the Royal National and Gielgud Theatres, it toured Britain in 2003 and received the Smith Blackburn Award as well as the Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play and the People’s Choice New Play Award. "Humble Boy" made its North American premiere in 2003 at New York’s Manhattan Theatre Club, where it earned a Drama Desk nomination for Best New Play. Jones' other plays include "In Flame," "Martha," "Josie and the Chinese Elvis," "The Dark," and "The Lightning Play." Jones also wrote the book to the musical "The Woman In White" in collaboration with the David Zippel and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The Publick Theatre continues to focus on staging language-driven works - encouraging its audiences to "experience the power of the spoken word." Under the leadership of Producing Director Susanne Nitter and Artistic Director Diego Arciniegas, The Publick has garnered acclaim and honors for many of its productions, including the prestigious Eliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production for "Arcadia" in 2005.

After venturing indoors for the first time in more than three decades with Noel Coward's "Design for Living" at the Boston Center for the Arts in 2007, 2008 marked its first-ever four-show season (Tom Stoppard’s "Travesties," Anton Chekov’s "The Seagull," Noel Coward’s "Hay Fever," and Brian Friel’s "Faith Healer") inaugurating The Publick’s new Main Stage at the Boston Center for the Arts and opening a new chapter as one of its Resident Theatre Companies.

For tickets, call 617-933-8600 or visit www.bostontheatrescene.com.

-- OnStage Boston