“It's a good old-fashioned family comedy in many respects because of the dysfuncton — in the same way that Ayckbourn is funny when his characters and situations lend themselves to humour but in a dark and real way.”

So says Simon Tavener, who directs the Oxford Theatre Guild production of Humble Boy at the Playhouse next week.

This prize-winning play by Charlotte Jones (first performed at the National Theatre in 2001, it won the two major best new play awards that year) is indeed a classic bitter-sweet affair, as 30-year-old Felix (played by Phillip Cotterill) has to return home from Cambridge academe to deal with the fall-out after the sudden death of his father.

Central to the play is Felix’s relationship with his mother, Flora, who is about to embark on a new relationship with a family friend.

“They have never really communicated,” Tavener told me. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding between them, although they’re very similar people.

“They constantly spark off each other in very catty ways. But by the end of the play, they’ve come to accept each other a lot more and who they really are.”

There is an overriding influence on the plot of the play: Hamlet, with the tortured academic son grieving over the death of his father as his mother starts looking elsewhere for new love.

“Yes, it’s there as a strong underlying theme, but it’s not overt. The first time you saw Humble Boy, you might not immediately pick it up.

“But it is undeniably there, and I’m trying to bring out some of the links.

“But the strength of the play is in the writing; I think Charlotte Jones is incredibly accomplished and stacks up well in terms of the English play-writing tradition.”

Tavener reckons her as a little deeper than modern Ayckbourn and more accessible than Stoppard — “she weaves the themes of the play terribly well without it ever appearing to be too erudite; you know what she’s saying without it being hammered home too hard.”

This will be Tavener’s second directorial outing for the Oxford Theatre Guild — he presented The Merry Wives of Windsor in 2005 —and his third time at the Playhouse.

His lead actor Phillip Cotterill has previously performed for the guild in The Dresser, Henry V and View From The Bridge, but this will be his debut on the Playhouse stage. He picked up immediately on the Hamlet theme.

“He’s a troubled soul, with some issues about grief and loss; a studious and clever man and, like Hamlet I guess, rather analytical.

“When he sees what is going on after his father’s death, he doesn’t necessarily have the emotional currency to deal with things. He’s also very selfish, as is Hamlet.”

I wondered how Cotterill balances the pathos and the humour of his character and the play.

“Yes, there’s death, grief, sorrow and pain — and then the play can flip on its head and suddenly become very farcical and ridiculous.

“Felix’s pomposity, for example, is pricked nicely by his old flame turning up.

“There are nice juxtapositions of style in the play that seem to work and the humour takes the sting out of some of the seriousness.”

There is also much talk of honey, beehives, black holes and cosmology in general in Humble Boy — presumably that’s where the shades of Stoppard encroach.

Incidentally, the amateur nature of the Oxford Theatre Guild is neatly exemplified by the day jobs of both director and lead actor.

Simon Tavener is regional editor for the UK’s largest theatrical reviewing website, whatsonstage.com, sending reviewers to productions from Leicester to Stratford, from Milton Keynes to Derby.

Cotterill works for a software company based in Long Hanborough, but likes to concentrate on improvised comedy, directing a group which calls itself Oxford Comedy Deathmatch and takes its cue from television’s Whose Line Is It Anyway?.

Humble Boy is at the Oxford Playhouse from April 5 to 9