August is rapidly becoming the West End's unlucky month.
Never a good time for box-office business, it will now see the early demise of Kiss Me, Kate at the Victoria Palace, Betty at the Vaudeville, My One and Only at the Picadilly and, latest in a sad line-up, Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy at the Gielgud. The exact date of the closure, believed to be Aug. 24, has not yet been confirmed by the show's producers, but it is understood that it will be towards the end of August.
Despite the stellar presence of Maria Aitken as Flora Humble, and a well received performance by Adrian Scarborough as her astrophysicist son, the "boy" of the title, the play lost momentum when Simon Russell Beale, for whom the part was written, and who played it at the National and then the Gielgud, left the cast.
—By Paul Webb Theatrenow
