There is something immensely pleasurable about watching actors who know exactly how to make the most of every line. In Noël Coward’s Hay Fever, Christine Baranski and Richard E Grant relish every syllable, finding fresh life in a play whose inimitable wit is as funny and piercing today as it was a century ago.
This production, directed with assurance by Emily Burns, wisely resists the temptation to update the script to make it more relevant or contemporary. Instead, she trusts the text, the actors and the audience to appreciate its timeless wit and enduring social commentary. The result is a polished, warm, and affectionate revival.
Hay Fever review – quick links
A blissful family
Welcome to the Bliss family, four totally spoiled and self-absorbed people, at home in their large country house, attended by their put-upon housekeeper Clara. Each member of the family has invited a guest for the weekend, each to stay in the Japanese Room, and each destined to be largely ignored by their hosts.
Coward’s great joke is that the Bliss family are always acting, behaving in a larger-than-life manner purely for their own amusement. They flirt, sulk, wail and take offence like tiresome toddlers but with a flair and heightened self-awareness that comes from years of practice.
This may have seemed like an extravagant comedy of class in the 1920s but now has an intriguing contemporary edge. Celebrity culture, artistic ego, emotional over-sharing and the conviction that one’s own experience is inherently more fascinating than anything else are very much of the moment.
Masterful turns by Baranski and Grant
Christine Baranski is superb as Judith Bliss, the aging matriarch and actress whose best work is behind her. This is Baranski’s West End debut and she does it with style, bringing both authority and vulnerability to the role. Judith is a ridiculous character, a pastiche of a star, but Baranski gives her an underlying intelligence and empathy that makes her extravagances seem endearing.
Baranksi’s timing is perfect, particularly when Judith moves from insouciance to indignation and a full theatrical meltdown. The fun begins before the show with Baranski’s winged, angelic portrait, designed by Frankie Bradshaw, painted on the safety curtain in a hint, no doubt, to Judith’s ego and self-perception.
And then there is Richard E Grant, playing Judith’s novelist husband David. This is a role just made for him with his stage presence and incomparable delivery. Grant is a joy from beginning to end. There is a wonderful physical looseness to his performance, his tall, angular form marking every gesture. He delivers every line at his own pace, letting the words breathe and savouring the rhythms and pauses before delivering the punchline with effortless precision.
David may be vain, pompous and exasperating, but Grant makes him irresistible. This is a performance of enormous charm, and really feels like Richard E Grant playing a divinely heightened version of Richard E Grant. Even the pre-show ‘turn off your phones’ announcement is voiced by Grant (amusingly asking us to turn off our ‘crystal radios’ too). (The show is well-timed with Grant making headlines this week by confessing he was a Traitor in episode one of the new Celebrity Traitors series on the BBC.)
The weekend’s descent into chaos
Hay Fever‘s supporting cast is equally important to its success. Ophelia Lovibond and Will Close are wonderful as the Bliss offspring, Sorel and Simon. Lovibond is perfect as the indulged daughter of a monied family and Close uses his physicality to great effect.
Nancy Carroll is wonderful to watch and brings her innate sophistication to Myra Arundel, ‘a self-conscious vampire’, along with a sharp streak of impatience. Charles Edwards is very engaging as the increasingly bewildered Richard Greatham, maintaining an exquisite veneer of civility as the weekend spirals into chaos around him. Lucy Karczewski’s Jackie Coryton is a good portrayal of someone adrift in a sea of chaos. And Jo McInnes almost steals the show as Clara, the housekeeper who has clearly seen it all before.
The set is a considerable pleasure in itself. Designed by Frankie Bradshaw, the Bliss country house is handsome, luxurious, and unmistakably theatrical, its height adding to the sense of space and grandeur. This is precisely the home in which this family could spend their days creating elaborate versions of themselves. There is also a satisfying resonance in seeing it in the glorious Wyndham’s Theatre with its ornate historic auditorium.
It is to the team’s credit that the pace is sometimes allowed to settle, rather than constantly chasing laughter, because Hay Fever is all about the words. Burns gives the actors room to listen, react and play to the silences as well as the punchlines. That pays dividends, particularly in the second half, when the accumulating absurdity begins to feel almost deliciously claustrophobic. These are quintessential posh people behaving badly and we love them for it!
This really is a theatrical treat with great actors, timeless writing and an audience loving every moment of it. There’s a line where Sorel says, ‘We, none of us, ever really mean anything’, and that’s the delightful conceit in the script. A century after Coward wrote it, Hay Fever remains deliciously, wickedly alive. Don’t miss it!
