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journalism → support → readers
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we → purchase → commission
Noel Coward’s weightless 1925 comedy of bad manners here makes a handsome, old-fashioned star vehicle for two great character actors and scene-stealers, Christine Baranski and Richard E. Grant.
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comedy → make → actors
They’re retired stage icon Judith Bliss and her novelist husband David, egomaniacs blind to social convention, who with their two similarly-wired adult children confuse and confound four enamoured guests at their Cookham country house.
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who → ’re → house
That, this Hay Fever surely delivers, and it will doubtless tune up once it’s run in for a bit.
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it → deliver → bit
We’re primed for Judith Bliss’s first appearance by her bantering son Simon (Will Close) and daughter Sorel (Ophelia Lovibond).
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We → prim → son
Since withdrawing from the stage she has channelled her theatrical urges into cultivating a bucolic pose, and toying with a string of young admirers.
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she → withdraw → admirers
Baranski duly makes her grand entrance through the French doors, dripping in silk and jewellery, in a straw hat the size of a wagon wheel, removing galoshes to reveal sparkly heels.
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Baranski → make → heels
She’s been memorising plants to impress a new conquest: “The red ones are somebody’s name.
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ones → memorise → conquest
Asters, that’s it!”
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that → ’ → ?
The lines are brittly witty, but the oomph comes from the fact it’s *Christine Baranski* saying them in her West End debut.
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it → come → debut
Those knowing eyes, that tip-tilted nose, that amused rosebud mouth, and the accumulated clout of five award-winning decades on stage and screen, embracing Cybill, The Good Wife and Mamma Mia.
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eyes → tilt → Cybill
Back when Twitter wasn’t a sewer the account “Christine Baranski Doing Things” celebrated her ability to be effortlessly fabulous while doing skincare or appearing at a SAG strike.
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account → do → strike
Which begs the question why director Emily Burns didn’t encourage her to use her natural accent.
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Burns → beg → accent
Judith could easily have been a transported American thesp, the bohemian equivalent of the title-hunting US heiresses of the early 20th-century.
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Judith → transport → century
But – like Kim Cattrall in Coward’s Private Lives in 2010 – she’s stuck in a sort of strangulated, transatlantic Received Pronunciation.
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she → stick → Pronunciation
It adds another layer of artifice to this already-mannered milieu, and it doesn’t hurt Baranski’s comic timing: particularly her descent into dark-brown tones on lines like: “I was married veeeery young.”
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I → add → lines
But it’s veeeery odd.
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it → ’ → ?
Grant meanwhile, back on the London stage for the first time in 20 years, hams it up no end.
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Grant → ham → it
Which, again, sort of works.
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Which → work → ?
David blows into scenes like the storms that suddenly burst outside.
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that → blow → storms
He’s all raffish hair, vulpine grin and shiny eyes that only look inward, dashing in military white tie or elegantly crumpled linen.
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that → ’ → tie
David has lured a dazzled young flapper to Cookham to “study”, analogous to the strapping Sandy whom Judith suffers to adore her.
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Judith → lure → her
The one-liners pile up.
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liners → pile → ?
Judith accuses Myra of using “sex as a sort of shrimping net”.
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Judith → accuse → net
Myra, in turn, talks of being “mowed down by theatrical effects” in the Bliss household.
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Myra → talk → household
The family toy with and re-order affections on a more or less age-appropriate level before disregarding their playthings to return to their internal squabbling fondness.
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family → toy → fondness
There are echoes of Midsummer Night’s dream here, but it’s also fascinating that this Hay Fever opened in the West End the night after the similarly star-led Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, where guest-baiting take on a crueller edge.
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baiting → be → edge
In Burns’s production, the grandstanding of the central duo is built on a layer of dependable support.
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grandstanding → build → support
Nancy Carroll and Charles Edwards are faultless as the baffled and buffeted Myra and Richard, right down to their body language.
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Carroll → baffle → language
As the ingenue Jackie she’s drippy, muted, awkward – and absolutely hilarious.
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she → ’ → ingenue
The set and costumes, by Frankie Bradshaw, are as good-looking as the cast and could, like the production, date from any decade between the 1920s and now.
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set → look → 1920s
The standout USP of this show is that you get to see Grant and Baranski strike sparks off each other and see Baranski demonstrate how one lights a cigarette “winsomely”.
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one → get → cigarette
Sometimes, that’s all you need.
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you → ’ → ?
The Aporia
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