Hay Fever (play)
Hay Fever is a comic play written by Noël Coward in 1924. Its first production was in the West End in 1925 with Marie Tempest as Judith Bliss. A cross between high farce and a comedy of manners, the play is set in an English country house in the 1920s, and deals with the four eccentric members of the Bliss family and their outlandish behaviour when they each invite a guest to spend the weekend. The self-centred behaviour of the hosts finally drives their guests to flee while the Blisses are so engaged in a family row that they do not notice their guests' furtive departure.
The play's original production opened in London in 1925 and ran for 337 performances. Coward wrote the piece with Tempest in mind for the central role of Judith. In later productions the part has been played by actresses including Constance Collier, Edith Evans, Constance Cummings, Rosemary Harris, Judi Dench, Geraldine McEwan and Felicity Kendal. Hay Fever has been continually revived in Britain, the US and elsewhere, and has been adapted frequently for radio and television.
Background[edit]
In 1921 Coward first visited New York, hoping to interest American producers in his plays. During that summer he became a friend of the playwright Hartley Manners and his wife, the eccentric actress Laurette Taylor. Coward wrote, "It was inevitable that someone should eventually utilise portions of this eccentricity in a play, and I am only grateful to Fate that no guest of the Hartley Manners thought of writing Hay Fever before I did".[1] Coward's biographer Philip Hoare and others also note elements of Evangeline Astley Cooper – an English eccentric of whom the young Coward was a protégé – in the central character, Judith Bliss.[2][3] [n 1] The two women reacted very differently to Coward's caricature of them. Taylor was offended (either by Coward's Judith or the overplaying of the role in the Broadway production, or both),[9] and Cooper was much amused.[8]
Coward wrote the play in three days in 1924, at first giving it the title Still Life before adopting Hay Fever prior to the first production.[10][n 2] He intended the star role, Judith, for the actress Marie Tempest, "whom I revered and adored".[12] Though she found it amusing, she thought it not substantial enough for a whole evening, but changed her mind after the success of Coward's The Vortex later in 1924.[13]
Coward introduces one of his signature theatrical devices at the end of the play, where the four guests tiptoe out as the curtain falls, leaving disorder behind them – a device that he also used in various forms in Present Laughter, Private Lives and Blithe Spirit.[14]
Revivals[edit]
West End[edit]
The first London revival was in 1933 at the Shaftesbury Theatre with Constance Collier as Judith.[28] In 1941 the piece was revived at the Vaudeville Theatre in a repertory series of English comedies.[29]
A 1964 production at The Old Vic was the National Theatre Company's first production by a living author.[30] It was directed by Coward, and starred Edith Evans as Judith. The rest of the cast comprised Derek Jacobi as Simon, Maggie Smith as Myra, Barbara Hicks as Clara, Anthony Nicholls as David, Robert Stephens as Sandy, Robert Lang as Richard, and Lynn Redgrave as Jackie.[31] After being invited to direct the production, Coward wrote, "I am thrilled and flattered and frankly a little flabbergasted that the National Theatre should have had the curious perceptiveness to choose a very early play of mine and to give it a cast that could play the Albanian telephone directory."[32] The last London revival in Coward's lifetime was at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1968, with Celia Johnson as Judith and a cast including Roland Culver, Simon Williams, Richard Vernon and Prunella Scales.[31]
A revival at the Queen's Theatre in 1983 starred Penelope Keith as Judith, with a cast including Moray Watson, Donald Pickering and Abigail McKern.[33] A 1992 revival at the Albery Theatre starred Maria Aitken as Judith, with a cast including Abigail Cruttenden, Maria Charles, John Standing, Carmen du Sautoy, Christopher Godwin and Sara Crowe.[31] A 1999 Savoy Theatre cast starred Geraldine McEwan as Judith, with Monica Dolan, Stephen Mangan, Peter Blythe, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Malcolm Sinclair, and Cathryn Bradshaw.[34] The 2006 Haymarket Theatre cast included Kim Medcalf as Sorel, Dan Stevens as Simon, Judi Dench as Judith, Peter Bowles as David, Charles Edwards as Sandy, and Belinda Lang as Myra.[35][36] The following UK tour, in 2007, cast Stephanie Beacham as Judith, Christopher Timothy as David, William Ellis as Simon, Christopher Naylor as Sandy, and Andrew Hall as Richard.[37]
A 2012 revival at the Noël Coward Theatre included in the cast Lindsay Duncan as Judith, Jeremy Northam as Richard, Kevin McNally as David, Olivia Colman as Myra, Sam Callis as Sandy, Freddie Fox as Simon, Amy Morgan as Jackie, Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Sorrel, and Jenny Galloway as Clara.[38][39] The 2014 touring production transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre in 2015.[40]
Other UK productions[edit]
While the play continued its first West End run, Eva Moore headed the cast in a touring production, which played to what The Stage called "phenomenal business" around Britain.[41] Phyllis Calvert headed the cast in a UK tour of Hay Fever in 1975.[31] A production directed by Michael Blakemore opened at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in 1980 starring Constance Cummings as Judith.[31] In 1988 Googie Withers starred in a revival at the Chichester Festival Theatre.[31] Dora Bryan played Judith in a UK tour in 1992.[31] A production by Alan Strachan opened at the Theatr Clwyd in October 1992 and transferred to the West End the following month (see above).[31] In 2010, Celia Imrie played Judith at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, succeeded later in the run by Nichola McAuliffe.[42] In 2014 Felicity Kendal starred as Judith in a UK tour with Simon Shepherd as David, Sara Stewart as Myra, Celeste Dodwell as Jackie, and Alice Orr-Ewing as Sorrel.[43]
US[edit]
Collier played Judith in a 1931 revival at Avon Theatre in New York.[44] In 1937 John Craven starred in the play at Harold Lloyd's Beverly Hills Little Theatre for Professionals.[45] In a 1970 revival at the Helen Hayes Theatre, New York, the cast included Roberta Maxwell as Sorel, Sam Waterston as Simon, Sudie Bond as Clara, Shirley Booth as Judith, John Williams as David, John Tillinger as Sandy, Marian Mercer as Myra, and Carole Shelley as Jackie.[46]
Adaptations[edit]
The play was broadcast on radio in 1937 in both the US (CBS Radio) and Britain (BBC radio, with Marie Tempest in her original stage role.)[31] In later BBC radio adaptations, Judith has been played by Athene Seyler (1952), Peggy Ashcroft (1971), and Judi Dench (1993).[68]
Hay Fever was the first of Coward's plays to be televised: an NBC production in 1939 starred Isobel Elsom as Judith.[31] A UK television production in 1960 in ITV's Play of the Week series featured Edith Evans as Judith Bliss and Maggie Smith as Jackie Coryton. This version is not known to have survived.[69] The Times reviewed this broadcast, calling Hay Fever "Mr Noel Coward's best play ... one of the most perfectly engineered comedies of the century."[70] Other members of the television cast were Pamela Brown, George Devine, Paul Eddington and Richard Wattis. Evans and Smith later played in the stage production of Hay Fever under the author's direction in the National Theatre Company's revival in 1964 with Smith switching from the ingénue role of Jackie to that of the vampish Myra.[71] Another lost production of the play in the BBC's Play of the Month series was transmitted in 1968.[72] This featured Lucy Fleming as Sorel, Ian McKellen as Simon, Celia Johnson as Judith, Dennis Price as David, Richard Briers as Sandy, Anna Massey as Myra, Charles Gray as Richard, and Vickery Turner as Jackie.[73]
The BBC recorded another television production, which was first shown in the UK during Christmas 1984. This version stars Penelope Keith as Judith, Eddington as David, Patricia Hodge as Myra, Michael Siberry as Simon, Phoebe Nicholls as Sorel and Benjamin Whitrow as Richard.[74]
Publication[edit]
Hay Fever was first published in 1925 in the "Contemporary British Dramatists" series issued by the publisher Ernest Benn. Unlike some of Coward's other plays it had no dedicatee,[57] but in 1964, when Heinemann published a new edition with an introduction by the author, marking the National Theatre revival, Coward dedicated it to his long-time secretary, Lorn Lorraine.[75]
