'Felicity is warm, sexy and has a bite as bad as her bark' TONY PURNELL AT THE THEATRE: Humble Boy at the Gielgud Theatre, London.

Byline: TONY PURNELL

IT'S no joke stepping into the shoes of Dame Diana Rigg.

But Felicity Kendal carries it off in fine style in Charlotte Jones's comedy Humble Boy, which gets a deserved transfer from the National Theatre to the West End.

She takes the part of heroine Flora Humble who is a grieving widow, a domineering mum and a disenchanted mistress.

The pint-sized actress may not be as elegant or as deliciously caustic as Dame Diana but she is a lot warmer and a lot sexier.

The girl from TV's The Good Life has no trouble playing a bit of a baddie whose bite is just as bad as her bark.

She wears dark glasses and designer outfits and looks down her cosmetically enhanced nose to great effect.

The only problem is she looks far too young to have a 35-year-old son.

At one stage former Bunny Girl Flora who is desperate to cling on to her looks screams: "I'm so old not even the Royal Jelly will save me." There can't have been a man in the theatre who would have agreed with her.

The play involves beekeeping and astro physics - but don't let that put you off. There is a lot more besides and it is absolutely hilarious.

Simon Russell Beale is at his bumbling best as stammering scientist son Felix who returns to the Cotswolds for the funeral of his dad, a beekeeper who died from a sting. Beale looks every inch the absent-minded professor squeezed into ill-fitting cricket flannels and a multi-coloured pullover.

He wanders around the garden in a daze trying to come to terms with the news that his mother has been having an affair for years and the girlfriend he abandoned seven years ago has a young daughter.

Denis Quilley oozes oily charm as Flora's foul-mouthed lover George Pye.

One of the biggest laughs of the evening is when he talks of his plan to marry Flora and Felix pounces on the fact that they would be known as The Humble Pyes!

The overgrown English country garden set is so real hay fever sufferers would be advised to give the first few rows in the stalls a miss.

And the play is full of laugh-out-loud moments. Like Felix being dragged into the bushes with his trousers around his ankles by old flame Rosie - played by impish Cathryn Bradshaw.

And a drunken George unzipping his fly and irrigating the garden the natural way after a boozy night out.

But Marcia Warren steals the show as dotty spinster Mercy Lott when she unwittingly spices up the summer soup with the ashes of the deceased.

Give the box office a buzz as soon as possible. It's the bees knees.

CAPTION(S):

LOVERS: Felicity Kendal and Denis Quilley