Hay Fever

Synopsis

Classic comedy of bad manners about a flamboyant family. The characters of Judith and David Bliss were based on real life friends of the playwright, American actress Laurette Taylor and her husband Hartley Manners. The eccentric couple were renowned for their table manners, surprised guests would often endure shrill arguments - waged entirely among the family - which often ended with them storming out of the room, leaving their bewildered guests to make what they could of the rest of the evening.

Our Review:

14 June 2011

Hay Fever opens as a comedy of romantic intrigue. The perpetually bickering Bliss family – husband, wife, son and daughter – have each, unknown to each other, invited an admiring guest of the opposite sex for the weekend with the intention of a little light amour.

This seemingly Shakespearean set up – with the Bliss house in Cookham standing in for the forest of Arden or Prospero’s island – is soon subverted. None one of the four guests end up with their inviters; on the contrary, pair up with another family member. Or rather, they end up with someone else as part of a Blissful game, for romance is simply a parlour amusement for the bad-mannered hosts. But this family that plays together stays together, and we end on a note of domestic more-or-less harmony as, the appalled guests having made a mass escape, paterfamilias David reads out his newly-finished book to his wife, son and daughter.

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