[title]
★★★
Don’t get me wrong: there’s always room for a bit of Noël Coward. The man knew how to craft a quip, and it can be easy to forget that the dandy playwright’s depictions of infidelity and drug abuse were radical in their day. Private Lives is an all-time banger. You are a bad person if you don’t like Brief Encounter. But this revival of 1924’s Hay Fever feels like almost every detail of it could have been copied from a production a century ago, from Frankie Bradshaw’s drawing room set to the cast’s RP-tastic performances as dysfunctional poshos the Bliss family. Weren’t the Angry Young Men supposed to have put a stop to this sort of thing?
Well, no of course not: people aren’t going to a revival of a classic Coward comedy starring Richard E Grant to see an urgent state-of-the-nation address. It’s glossy comfort theatre.
But this frothy number about the eccentric game-playing of the bonkers Blisses has obviously aged. In 1924 it was an outrageous contemporary satire. In 2026 it’s a nostalgic period piece. And director Emily Burns seems to want to keep it that way.
And you know what: it’s very nearly good enough to style it all out on casting alone. Guesting American Christine Baranski brings a pleasingly doleful turn to reluctantly retired actress matriarch Judith Bliss, who must play hostess (of sorts) when each of the four Bliss family members invites a guest to stay without telling anybody else. Charles Edwards is beautifully hapless and well meaning as Richard, nominally invited as the guest of acidic daughter Sorrel (Ophelia Lovibond), but actually using it as a front for his designs on her mother (who has invited Ash Hunter’s wide-eyed Sandy down as her guest).
Lucy Karczewski is shaping up as a star of the future
In the evening’s best and most original performance, Lucy Karczewski takes overwhelmed flapper Jackie (David’s guest) and puts her somewhere fairly high on the spectrum, the young woman’s natural social awkwardness magnified by the Blisses’ constant performative stropping, scheming and snogging in the library. Excellent in last year’s Stereophonic, Karczewski is shaping up as a star of the future.
But the play – only two hours with an interval – just doesn’t have enough fizz left in it after a century to feel entirely justified without some sort of superstar performance to lead it. And the problem lies with big star Grant. Of course he’s a national treasure. Of course he’s perfectly suited to the role of David Bliss, the self-absorbed novelist who sees everyone around him as grist to his artistic mill. It’s a smaller part than Judith but there’s still the opportunity to upstage everyone when he does descend from his study. But after 20 years away from the London stage Grant’s performance is only okay: he offers workmanlike support but no fireworks.
In 2019 the Old Vic gave us an Andrew Scott-fronted take on Coward’s Present Laughter that was so funny and fresh that the question of the author’s continued relevance seemed absurd. The Angry Young Men would have been rolling in the aisles. But though polished witticisms and a solid cast make for an enjoyable enough night, this Hay Fever mostly feels like it’s on period comedy autopilot.
Wyndham’s Theatre, until Dec 13. Buy tickets here.
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