Noel Coward is the enemy of understatement, and Hay Fever is no exception.
The playwright himself describes Hay Fever as “one of the most difficult plays to perform that I have encountered… it has no plot at all, and remarkably little action.” Yet the fun in Hay Fever is found in the biting barbs, hysterical theatrics (a flick of an eyebrow won’t do where the fling of an elbow will), and the satirical depiction of the minutiae of social awkwardness as the Bliss family, each an overly dramatic and self-aggrandising half-wit, separately invite guests down for a damp weekend of doomed-to-fail games, inappropriate romances and lashings of petty bickering.
The play is split into three sections of differing lengths intended to represent three days over the weekend where the Bliss family mortify their guests; there’s chaise lounge, chintz and mahogany, all good honest Coward territory. The play, written in 1924, is packed with the usual archaist adverbs, but there’s nothing terribly, dreadfully, awfully, rottenly tedious about this play. I found it a delight. Whilst it’s not a play to watch if you’ve just given up smoking, and I’d suggest not sitting in the front row if you can as I was nearly suffocated, it’s a roaring piece of good old fashioned British escapism.
Katie Macintyre gives a stand-out portrayal of Judith Bliss, a histrionic matriarch and fading theatre star with a pathology for melodrama and a chip on her shoulder about her age. With excellent timing, she shifts nicely between subtle and frenetic as she displays Judith growing old disgracefully, chasing young men in her house and chastising her bohemian husband. Her dastardly children, Sorrel and Simon (Sophie Mann and Will Descrettes) are wonderfully believable as two spiteful siblings, odious in nature and completely without any social graces to endear them to their guests. Simon is brazen and off-putting, whilst Sorrel has just the right level of shrill to thoroughly irritate while entertaining. Though the other members of his family are chasing after love, David Bliss (Alex Wilson) is trying to finish his magnum opus of a novel and does well as the sleazy, self-proclaimed auteur who retains no shame in chasing the guest of his son, vixen Myra Arundel (Maya Ellis), the representation of whom is good as the bored siren, despairing of Simon’s buffoonish affections as she set her sights on other guests.
Very much, we see the family through the eyes of the discomfited guests as the familial dynamic of this peculiar lot fractures and reforms over the course of the play. All the guests are distinct but likeable; Sandy Tyrell (Joe Mackenzie), the starstruck toyboy of Judith is wonderful as the young and hapless boy who can’t quite believe his luck. Hugo Lau as Richard Greatham, the prim and proper diplomat and guest of Sorrel, intends to emulate his niceness and manners. Rose Basista is cute as the naïve and often foolish Jackie, the guest of Mr Bliss who comes in for some new and potentially unwelcome attentions from others at the house. Clara (Becky Goodwin), theatre-dresser-come-housemaid, is the only possible link to the working class throughout Cowards play and whilst comedic in address, is possibly a little bizarre in gait.
All in all, despite some opening night changes in accent, the entire cast warmed up nicely and by the end of the first act were utterly in their element. I say, a ripping yarn in the ODN, old chap.