Hay Fever

Synopsis

For the first time since its renaming and refurbishment, one of Noel Coward's most well known plays will be performed at the Noel Coward Theatre as Lindsay Duncan plays Judith Bliss a new West End production of Hay Fever directed by Howard Davies.

Lindsay Duncan, who won an Olivier and a Tony Award for Private Lives ten years ago (which was also directed by Howard Davies)stars alongside Jeremy Northam, Kevin McNally and Olivia Colman.

In Hay Fever, bohemian actress Judith Bliss and her writer husband live in a rural haven with their precocious son and daughter. When various guests are invited down for the weekend, they become pawns in the family’s emotional, madcap games.

Lindsay Duncan was last seen in the West End in That Face, which transferred from the Royal Court to the Duke of York’s in 2008. Her other Royal Court credits include Mouth to Mouth, Ashes to Ashes and Top Girls. She won her first Best Actress Olivier for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s original production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which was also directed by Howard Davies.

Most recently on stage at the Donmar in Old Times, Jeremy Northam has previously worked with Howard Davies in The Shaughraun at the National Theatre. His other theatre credits include Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Country Wife for the RSC, Certain Young Men for the Almeida, Hamlet and The Voysey Inheritance at the National Theatre and Three Sisters and Gift of the Gorgan in the Wst End.  He has most recently been seen on television as Thomas More in The Tudors.

Kevin McNally appeared on stage as Claudius in Hamlet (Donmar & Broadway), Ivanov (Donmar West End) for which he was Olivier nominated, World Music (Donmar), Boeing-Boeing, The Lady in the Van, Dead Funny, Glengarry Glen Ross, Plunder (West End), Naked (Almeida and West End), Not Quite Jerusalem and Prayer For My Daughter (Royal Court).

Olivia Colman's theatre includes England People Very Nice (National Theatre), The Threesome (Lyric, Hammersmith) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Lyric). Film includes: Paddy Considine’s award-winning Tyrannosaur (Best Actress at the British Independent Film Awards and Best Actress at the Evening Standard Film Awards) and The Iron Lady (British Actress of the Year at the Critics’ Circle Film Awards).

Howard Davies has been associate director at the National Theatre, Almeida Theatre and the RSC and has won numerous awards including Best Director Oliviers for The White Guard, All My Sons, The Iceman Cometh and Evening Standard Awards for The Cherry Orchard and Flight.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 27 February 2012

For a very slight comedy, Noël Coward’s Hay Fever is notoriously hard to get right. First, the style required is at a premium these days. Second, though hastily written, the script is deceptively skilful and indeed reads (and should play) something like music.

On both counts, Howard Davies’ revival is a sad botched job, no better than the recent revivals by Nikolai Foster and Stephen Unwin at Chichester and the Rose, Kingston, respectively. It’s not very funny and everyone seems to be either the wrong age or the wrong class.

It should be so simple. Each member of the Bliss family has invited a guest for the weekend. The guests are subjected to private rituals, unintended insults, uncomfortable accommodation, party games and misrouted social signals.

As so often in Coward, the inner circle (ie, the Bliss family) humiliates and excludes the moral, the boring and the intrusive. The guests slink away after breakfast on Sunday...

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Latest User Review

Ed Norwood - 30 September 2012:

This was BRILLIANT! Some of the best acting I have seen on stage! I went to see it 5 times and loved each performance....

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