"Humble Boy" has everything an amusing play should have - a plot comparable to William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," humor and a message that fills your mind with warmth.
Throughout the two-and-a-half hour show at the BoarsHead Theatre 425 S. Grand Ave. in Lansing, on Thursday night, the audience shared laughs and tears with the performers who did a superb job on the stage.
The story unfolds as Felix Humble comes back home to attend his father's funeral to find his mother, Flora Humble, is in a relationship with another man. Still grieving and obsessed with his father's death, Felix gets upset with his superficial and materialistic mother.
Of course, Felix hates his mother's new man, George Pye, and the tension escalates. The climax of the play comes when the Humbles, George and his daughter, Rosie, who once dated Felix and claims to have his baby, all get together to have dinner.
The dinner turns into a total disaster - Flora's maid, Mercy Lott, mistakenly puts Felix's father's ashes in the food for seasoning, everyone begins picking fights and the dinner can't continue.
The play has a happy ending when the Humbles realize how much they mean to each other.
Even though the story was predictable and didn't have any big twists, the play is more than enjoyable thanks to the actors' outstanding performances.
Neil Necastro, who plays the stuttering Felix, had a powerful and absorbing performance with a resonating voice.
Much credit should be given to Barbara Broughton, who plays Mercy. Her acting is adorable. Within her supporting role, she provides a variety of fun elements to the play with rich and profound, yet not exaggerated, facial expressions.
The play delivers a message that family values precede all other values. Flora, who gets over her husband's death way too fast and doesn't care about her son's life, is moved to appreciate her family.
Felix, on the other hand, is a scientist who is supposed to believe in rational thoughts, but he engages in totally irrational actions when it comes to his father's memory. He treasures his father's ashes and won't allow anyone to touch them. His actions are rather superstitious, if not religious. Through the apparent paradoxes, the play shows the audience that family values are so powerful that they make all the other values, materialism and science in this case, moot.
The ending is a little weak, however. Of the two and a half hours, it takes only about 10 minutes for all of the conflicts to be resolved while some relatively irrelevant scenes, such as a love scene of Felix and Rosie, are given an obnoxious amount of time.
Some questions are left unanswered. What will happen to Felix, Rosie and their child? Is it the best possible solution for the Humbles to resist all outsiders and keep living by themselves forever? A hurried ending and open ends leave the play feeling incomplete.
