It’s rare for a domestic comedy to be packed with references to astrophysics, horticulture and Hamlet. Yet Charlotte Jones’s 2001 play fuses Alan Ayckbourn’s agonising humour with the artful eloquence of Tom Stoppard, and Paul Miller’s revival — festooned with greenery by designer Simon Daw — cherishes its quirks, deliberately flirting with cartoonish excess but achieving warmth and poignancy.
Brilliant, passionate, stammering Felix Humble (a gloriously shambolic Jonathan Broadbent) has returned to his childhood home from his academic job in Cambridge.
Following the death of his father, a keen beekeeper, he finds himself at odds with his mother Flora (a stylish and acerbic Belinda Lang). It doesn’t help that she’s being wooed by Paul Bradley’s oafish George, whose daughter Rosie has some unexpected history with Felix.
In between visits from a ghostly gardener and the disastrous efforts of Flora’s loyal friend Mercy (Selina Cadell) to spice up some gazpacho, secrets and grievances surface. The play’s scientific riffs are a bit strained, but as a portrait of Englishness at its most stifling it proves satisfyingly intricate and sometimes blissfully funny, and Miller’s well-cast production has a touching generosity.
Latest theatre reviews
Until April 14
