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:

Michael Coveney - 29 September 2010

Noel Coward’s 1925 weekend party comedy set in the Thames-side, Cookham retreat of the unhappy Bliss family might seem slight and gossamer thin, but it demands acting of innate style, grace and subtlety.

The wide open spaces of the Rose stage don’t help, but Stephen Unwin’s production, while robust and fairly enjoyable, is inappropriately lumpen and totally unglamorous.

Celia Imrie’s Judith Bliss, for instance, the melodramatic middle-aged actress poised between retirement and an unwise come-back, is brusque, stentorian and slightly batty, fully justifying Myra Arundel’s description of the host family as “artificial to the point of lunacy”; but she’s hardly the charming, flirtatious puss of Sandy Tyrell’s boyish, infatuated fancy.

The simple structure never fails to please: four weekend guests, battered and ostracised by the self-obsessed hosts, in three perfectly written acts (two intervals), with romantic...

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Latest User Review

Beatrice - 23 January 2011:

I agree with you on most of those points. I really do believe Adrian Lurkis was good among rather a dull interrpretations of the other characters. I did not enjoy this rendition of Hayfever sadly, and neither did the group of students i was with. I mean there were moments of slight comedy but nothing that would really make me laugh fully....

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