Noel Coward's Hayfever at The Questors
Your hosts are the Bliss family. The venue? Their country home at Cookham, in Berkshire. The time - June 1925.
Hellish? Well, this self-absorbed, arty family is a touch eccentric, to put it mildly. Or as one of the characters in Noel Coward’s Hay Fever says bluntly, they are all mad.
Judith Bliss, a retired stage actress, her novelist husband David, and their two grown-up children, Simon and Sorel, have each invited a guest to stay for the weekend.
Judith has a fan coming to see her. David has arranged for a young flapper to visit him so he can ‘study her in domestic surroundings’ for his next book. Sorel is awaiting the arrival of a diplomat, while Simon has invited a fashionable socialite.
Unfortunately the four members of the family have each neglected to tell anyone else that they have invited a guest for the weekend…and the unsuspecting visitors have no idea of the horrors awaiting them…
The weekend quickly descends into a mass of mishaps and misunderstandings. At one point the Bliss family decide to inflict a parlour game on their hapless guests…a game from which they become desperate to escape.
Hay Fever is one of the theatre’s greatest comic creations, and is regarded as a quintessentially English play. Yet Coward was inspired to write it after enduring some hellish house parties in the United States.
During a visit to New York, he became a regular guest at the home of the actress Laurette Taylor and her husband, Hartley Manners.
Coward recalled his visits: “We had cold supper and played games, often rather acrimonious games owing to Laurette’s abrupt disapproval of any guest who turned out to be self-conscious, nervous or unable to act an adverb or a historical personage with proper abandon.
“There were also, very often, shrill arguments concerning rules. These were waged entirely among the family, and frequently ended in all four of them leaving the room and retiring upstairs.”
Coward, then aged 24, wrote Hay Fever in just three days. But after reading it through, he declared himself unimpressed, describing the play as “a little tedious”. Yet generations of theatre-goers have disagreed, and it remains one of the playwright’s best-loved works.
In 1964, with Coward directing, it became the first work by a living playwright to be produced at the new National Theatre, and the production was regarded as a triumph.
There have been several West End revivals since then, with Celia Johnson starring in 1968, Penelope Keith in 1983, Maria Aitken in 1992, Geraldine McEwan in 1999 and Judi Dench in 2006.
Now it’s our turn to extend the invitation on behalf of the Bliss family. Won’t you join us for an unforgettable weekend?
Directed by Georgina Burns, Principal of Chiswick Theatre Arts www.chiswicktheatrearts.com. Georgina says: "I am delighted to be directing this wonderfully funny play. Being set in June, it is a great antidote to Xmas. When I was working as an actress I appeared in a production of Hay Fever with Nigel Harman and it’s great for me now to have the opportunity to direct one of my favourite comedies."
Hay Fever runs at Questors Theatre in Ealing from Saturday December 27th – Saturday January 10th. Evening performances begin at 7.45pm and Sunday matinees at 2.30pm. Tickets for Hay Fever cost £11.00. Questors Theatre, 12 Mattock Lane, Ealing W5. Box Office 020 8567 5184. 24 hour secure ticket booking at www.questors.org.uk.
January 7, 2009
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