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Performance times are: Mon-Sat 19:30. Wed,Sat Mats 14:30
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.
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.
Noel Coward’s ever-popular 1924 play Hay Fever is back in the West End and is the first production to be performed at the theatre now named in the playwright’s honour.
The outrageous Bliss family consists of retired actress Judith, her novelist husband David and their two children Simon and Sorel. Each family member has invited a guest for a rainy weekend at their bohemian home for a party that goes awry. Instead of lovely chats and flirtations, the guests fall victim to the family’s bickering and dramatic chaos.
“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 … An audience has to be in love with Judith Bliss, but that’s not the sort of contract Lindsay Duncan deals in, nor does she mess with the idea of glamour or star status. Her Judith is nicely indifferent to everyone else, but otherwise comes across as just plain rude … Olivia Colman looks fine as the vamp Myra Arundel, but she does nothing ‘with’ the role, and it just falls flat. On the other hand, Freddie Fox and Phoebe Waller-Bridge try a bit too hard to be intensely bohemian as the Bliss siblings, Simon and Sorel, and end up being tiresome and grotesque. Only Jeremy Northam passes true muster as the slow-witted diplomat Richard Greatham, who can’t get the hang of charades and trades idle chatter with Amy Morgan’s cute but too common flapper as if confronted by top brass in the Foreign Office.”
“The playwright described Hay Fever (1925) as ‘one of the most difficult plays to perform that I have encountered... it has no plot at all, and remarkably little action.’ Yet in Howard Davies’ superbly funny, sharply observant staging, with Lindsay Duncan leading a cast that brings every role to detailed life, the piece proves irresistible. This is a play that transforms triviality into comic perfection … Second-rate revivals of Coward often prove fusty and laborious. But … Howard Davies blows the dust off the piece and makes the play seem fresh and startling as well as amusing. Though firmly set in period, it never feels dated … Duncan combines predatory glamour with brilliant comedy as Judith Bliss … and never stops performing even when she half convinces herself that she is being sincere. The flirty breathiness with which she lures Jeremy Northam’s stiff and stuffy diplomat into her coils is genuinely sexy as well as funny, while Northam’s panicky anxiety is comic acting of a very high order indeed. Freddie Fox offers a tremendous turn as the spoilt brat of an artist, often cackling with insolent delight at the misfortunes of others, while Phoebe Waller-Bridge proves unexpectedly touching as his gauche and hearty sister. Look out too for a deeply poignant performance from Amy Morgan as a cruelly humiliated cockney flapper who brings a sudden glimpse of real hurt into this irresistibly heartless comedy.”
“Howard Davies has a gift for revitalising Coward's comedies … he now visually redefines Hay Fever and pulls off the daring feat of suggesting that beneath the play's mockery of florid theatricality lies a vein of genuine emotion … The first shock is Bunny Christie's set: in place of the usual rural Berkshire paradise, we are confronted by a converted barn stuffed with paintings and books testifying to the Bliss family's bohemian pretensions. But Davies' approach to the text is even more radical … You see this most clearly in Lindsay Duncan's sublime Judith Bliss. Duncan plays her not just as a rusticating West End star, but as a woman who sports with her visitors both to annoy her husband and confirm that age has not diminished her sexual allure … Kevin R McNally plays Judith's other half as a testy figure who at one point looks as if he might stab his spouse with a butter-knife … there is a peach of a performance from Jeremy Northam as the buttoned-up diplomat quivering with shy lust: his initial, embarrassed encounter with Amy Morgan's taciturn flapper also proves that Coward, like Pinter, knew the comic value of extended pauses.”
“Behold Lindsay Duncan in full sail as Noel Coward’s nightmarish Judith Bliss: Her hair is corkscrewed, her feet are pointed as she crosses the stage, each step sinking with tragedy, hand to brow, a silk over-garment trailing … Hay Fever is given a masterly revival by director Howard Davies and his cast … Bunny Christie’s set creates a grand, untidy, high-ceilinged Twenties house. Part-completed sketches hang from the walls. The furniture owes little to comfort … Coward, a butterfly who had to restrain himself, understood the two frontiers of conformity. He enjoys the unease of the squares but also shows the cruelty of the Blisses. Hay Fever is a caution against bohemians and bourgeoisie becoming overly familiar with one another. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Sorel is a real honker: Sex-mad, intellectual. Freddie Fox, as Simon, is so camp that it is a wonder he would ever try to kiss a girl – oh Noel! Kevin McNally’s David could do with more of a period haircut. Jeremy Northam does a super turn as the maddeningly noncommittal diplomat, Richard. Sam Callis is well cast as the hunk Sandy. The ticket prices are not to be sneezed at, but this is one Fever worth catching.”
Libby Purves The Times ★★★★
“Howard Davies’ direction is tight, hilarious and rich in laughs, including physical comedy (magnificent door- slamming work from Jenny Galloway’s surly maid). Freddie Fox, floppy-blond, romps around with insouciant grace, Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Sorel gawks and flounces. Bunny Christie’s set is not the usual country-house bohemian chic, but downright disorderly: behind a dust-sheet curtain the furniture is conventional enough but the house is a sort of barn-conversion set on girders, with blank picture-frames, an open staircase and crooked antlers signifying joke-baronial … At the apex of the play is Lindsay Duncan as the dramaholic mother, alternating between Judith’s natural bored self and a series of tremulously overacted heroines … Waller-Bridge gives Sorel a St Trinian’s quality … Other seductions, notably Kevin McNally’s David with Olivia Colman’s self- contained Myra, feel intriguingly like advance parodies of Coward’s later, more sincere love scenes … The charade scene caused the most prolonged, helpless gurgling, but almost best is the breakfast coda: as the guests tiptoe out into the rain, the family bickering is so comfortably accustomed that it’s almost cosy. There’s truth in that.”
“Howard Davies … serves up a production of this 1925 comedy of manners that's funny yet also unorthodox and unsettling … Lindsay Duncan is elegant and incisive as Judith. Phoebe Waller-Bridge brings more than a touch of Miranda Hart to Sorel, a character who strives for sophistication yet repeatedly stumbles into gawky mistakes. Freddie Fox is suitably pettish as the artistic Simon, and the relationship between the competitive siblings feels smartly observed … Jeremy Northam does a nice job of playing against type as a dry diplomat who finds himself completely under Judith's spell … Less successful is the choice of Olivia Colman as fading seductress Myra; her abundant skills are underused. Kevin McNally's David is also curious: it's an assured turn, but one that appears as if it belongs in a different play. Hay Fever is usually treated as a plotless mix of sophisticated small talk and cleverly embroidered cliché. Here it seems a celebration of abnormality and at the same time a disquieting study of both the pleasures and the pains of not being able to restrain oneself … The production is poised rather than anarchic. Even if the chemistry isn't yet fizzing, this should develop. And amid the many moments when this interpretation is winsomely amusing, it also proves oddly affecting.”
“Lindsay Duncan normally has poise and mystique in abundance, and so takes equal delight in both grossly parodying them in a husky Dietrich baritone and throwing them to the four winds in the vigorous family exchanges of the first act … Judith’s novelist husband is a rumbling Kevin McNally; her precocious teenage offspring are Freddie (son of Edward) Fox and the ever-wonderful Phoebe Waller-Bridge … Jeremy Northam is cast against type as a sober diplomat – greying, slicked-back hair, heavy round spectacles – bedazzled by Judith. Olivia Colman at first also seems in unfamiliar territory as a metropolitan vamp, until we see her dissolve in bewilderment at the family’s acting-up. Elsewhere, Davies’ directorial touch is less sure. The Blisses live in the prosperous Berkshire village of Cookham; Bunny Christie’s set may be intended to be a semi-converted boathouse but looks more like a former workshop in one of the less swish parts of Covent Garden. Not even a family as unconventional as the Blisses would live in this place in the 1920s. And giving the ingénue character of Jackie Coryton a more common accent may explain her social insecurity, but it cuts dead against her actual lines. Matters can also grow a little shouty even for Judith Bliss & Co, revealing that Coward’s fun is at root just as artificial as that of his characters.”
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 with the Blisses still arguing with each other, now totally oblivious to their hosting responsibilities.
Davies and designer Bunny Christie make their first mistake in turning the hallway of a country cottage on the Thames into a large garage, or possibly a boat-house, with no French windows and a barn door which is unceremoniously slammed in the guests’ faces by the sullen, blockish maid of Jenny Galloway.
An audience has to be in love with Judith Bliss, but that’s not the sort of contract Lindsay Duncan deals in, nor does she mess with the idea of glamour or star status. Her Judith is nicely indifferent to everyone else, but otherwise comes across as just plain rude. And there’s nothing monstrous, or remarkable, about the character.
It’s as though they’ve all decided to play Noël Coward “straight” or at least in exactly the same way as you’d play Pinter, or even Chekhov, and it just doesn’t work like that. Olivia Colman, last seen on a stage (by me) as the maid in the Charles Dance/Jessica Lange Long Day’s Journey Into Night, looks fine as the vamp Myra Arundel, but she does nothing “with” the role, and it just falls flat.
On the other hand, Freddie Fox and Phoebe Waller-Bridge try a bit too hard to be intensely bohemian as the Bliss siblings, Simon and Sorel, and end up being tiresome and grotesque.
Only Jeremy Northam passes true muster as the slow-witted diplomat Richard Greatham, who can’t get the hang of charades and trades idle chatter with Amy Morgan’s cute but too common flapper as if confronted by top brass in the Foreign Office.
Maybe we just don’t know how to play this kind of old-fashioned froth any more. Coward, even in this 1925 early play, still seems terribly modern, and he writes so beautifully and economically. And he really is funny, bright and cruel; it all seems so leaden in the Noël Coward.
Noel Coward at the Noel Coward - how delightful. Except that it's Hay Fever, the play without a plot which must have been an influence for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Howard Davies directs as if it's one of his infinitely more successful Russian dramas and Bunny Christie's set is also oddly inappropriate - the riverside home looks like a converted garage. The performances are mostly excellent and Lindsay Duncan is much closer to the right age for Judith Bliss than was Judi Dench in the last London production but, unlike the incomparable Dame Judi, she totally fails to amke Judith sympathetic or vaguely likeable. Ultimately the problem with Hay Fever is that it can be a tiresome play about an insufferably smug family unless the director successfully exploits to the full the humour which should exist. - David Baxter
17 May 12
Coward filtered through Pinter, with plenty of pregnant pauses that work well - and as for this dysfunctional family they are more Albee than Ayckbourne and the better for it.
A highly enjoyable piece that allows us to anti-empathise and see modern counterparts, rather than view it as a historical piece - Dave J
20 Mar 12
Poor, over acted. Left after first half. Also sound really poor. - Z Sheerin
11 Mar 12
Darling, this production is positively delightful, you must have had ever such a bad day if you didn't like this absolutely frivolous confection, darling! Ok, so this play won't solve the world's economic problems. Indeed, noone in it has any economic problems because they are all incredibly rich and looking for vain trifles to amuse the days away, but what a funny play, and what a hilarious production of that play. Lindsay Duncan is super duper as Judith Bliss, an actress who loves acting so much, that her whole life is one act after another in a search for endless applause. This could be the stuff of tragedy, but here it's wonderfully funny, and Duncan is so assured and light and commanding in the role. I agree with Michael that Duncan's Judith Bliss is not very loveable, but that's not important at all. I utterly disagree with Michael that you have to love this character. I think it's funnier that you maintain some distance and see her all the more clearly. By contrast, Phoebe Waller-Bridge IS loveable in her role as Judith's cantankerous-horse-in-a-china-shop daughter, Sorel, all shaggy mane and horsey open-mouthed abandon, brash and crashing through every scene with open-eyed honesty about the appalling selfishness of herself and her family. She alone of the characters wants to change, and that's the root of her likeability, and Waller-Bridge is pitch perfect in the role. The last performance of major note is that of Jeremy Northam, a heretofore dashing hero of an actor in my eyes, who transforms himself here into a Steve Martin-esque comic fool of restraint and awkwardness and bumbling about. Northam could have been, and could still be, a great comic actor! In slightly more supporting roles, Freddie Fox and Amy Morgan make a strong impression. This production does Noel Coward complete justice in his newly named namesake theatre. So darling, don't be a spoilsport, just go and see this one, it's simply maaarvelllooouuss! - steveatplays
07 Mar 12
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Shut up Coveney! No one cares what you think! - John
01 Mar 12
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In this mis-judged production only Jeremy Northam shines - Lindsay Duncan certainly looks the part but her Judith seems completely lacking in the charm or dazzling star quality that would make people flock to her on stage or off...and last night she was often inaudible. Olivia Coleman and Kevin R McNally woefully mis-cast...and why was Amy Morgan told to play Jackie as a chirpy cockney - there is no way anyone in the Bliss family would have invited her for the weekend. This can be a sharp, economical and timeless comedy -don't expect that for your £55 this time....but it's Hayfever so there will be another production along in 18 months. - Jonathan
29 Feb 12
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I thought this was a fresh and clever production, quite masterful, and don't agree with your rather catty review at all. As for the price of seats, I got my tickets from lastminute.com and they were much cheaper. - Viv
28 Feb 12
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This production of Hay Fever works exceeding well with a superb cast and excellent timing - it compares well, if not better, with the last one seen in which Penelope Keith played Judith Bliss. The major disappointment was finding it staged in a garage. Why oh why - it didn't work and detracted from an otherwise splendid performance. Does anyone know why this set was used? - Nick
27 Feb 12
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Couldn't disagree more - on the whole a brilliant cast, particularly Phoebe Waller-Bridge who's 'Sorel' is incredible. Lovely play that does feel fresh, aided by a brilliant cast. Well deserving the 4 and 5 star reviews it's been getting! Terry - Terry Lomas
27 Feb 12
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Entirely agree: the 88-year-old script comes up fresh as a daisy, but the direction and a lot of the casting has the whiff of old toejam.
Duncan tries hard but it's evident SHE has never seen the play either and she's neither the breath control for the long and complex lines nor the 'actressy' characterisation that makes Judith both a monster, and adorable: Maria Aitken, Judi Dench, Stephanie Beacham all did it ten times better.
Olivia Colman should be phoning her agent to see if there's an escape clause in the contract because she's woefully miscast and not remotely exotic, vampish or dangerous as Myra.
In terms of whether it's worth the ticket price - the £53.50 price band goes all the way back to Row R of the Stalls which is dreadful given that the circle overhangs from Row G after which you get an increasingly cut-off view of the stage until it's effectively a cinemascope slit which cuts off the stairs and landing on which quite a lot happens. The back two rows are £43.50 (plus fees) which for 'restricted view' is criminal. - JohnnyFox
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