'Hay Fever' review — Christine Baranski and Richard E. Grant lead a fun and frothy revival

Read our review of Hay Fever, starring Christine Baranski and Richard E. Grant, now in performances at Wyndham's Theatre through 12 December.

Summary

• Hay Fever returns to the West End in a production by Emily Burns
• Christine Baranski and Richard E. Grant lead the cast as Judith and David Bliss
• The cast also includes Ophelia Lovibond and Will Close

Opening just one night after another play about hosts with incredibly poor manners, Noël Coward’s regularly revived Hay Fever returns to the West End — and it is just as frothy and fun as ever.

Unlike the rather more intense Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, down the road at @sohoplace, Emily Burns’s production clips along at a gentle pace in Frankie Bradshaw’s sumptuous set, which — with its gold-fringed drapes and crystal chandelier — seems to make the Bliss family’s country estate an extension of Wyndham’s Theatre itself.

Adorning the walls are stage posters of the matriarch at the centre of the weekend’s unfolding chaos: former actress Judith Bliss (played by The Good Wife and Mamma Mia! star Christine Baranski in her West End debut), who has retired from her London life, but still craving the limelight has invited fan Sandy (Ash Hunter) to stay. The problem is that Sandy isn’t the bohemian family’s only weekend guest.

Judith’s novelist husband David (played bombastically by Richard E. Grant) has invited young flapper Jackie Coryton (Lucy Karczewski), daughter Sorel (Ophelia Lovibond) has summoned the dapper diplomat Richard Greatham (Charles Edwards), and son Simon (Will Close) has requested a visit from the striking Myra Arundel (Nancy Carroll). The deliciously self-absorbed, snobbish family then proceed to abandon, ignore, and make grand proclamations of love to their increasingly unsettled guests.

Burns’s production is the definition of escapist fare. She has assembled a crack cast of starry personalities — indeed, Baranski’s metatheatrical touches, such as fixing the audience with a beady eye while reminiscing about the critics’ response to Judith’s plays, are brilliantly executed on press night. We are in the palm of her hand.

Baranski certainly has stage presence, as she wafts about in a gold caftan, with billowing sleeves, gently gesticulating while her mellifluous voice floats out to the auditorium. She captures Judith’s dismissive superficiality and delivers wonderfully deadpan lines such as “Perfect agony, I wish I were dead”, emitting a small sigh or staring off into the distance as though waiting for her close-up (appropriate enough, given Baranski has spent much of her life working on screen). Her performance feels slightly underpowered for the role, though she picks up the pace in Act II after being startled by a kiss from Richard, and catching not only her daughter tucked away in the library with Sandy, but her husband in a romantic entanglement with Myra.

There aren’t many moments to witness her enjoyable chemistry with husband David, as Grant’s stage time is limited, but it is great fun to see them go head to head over the breakfast table, squabbling about whether the Rue Saint-Honoré does or does not connect with the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Grant brings his usual distinctive charm to the role of the reclusive writer, exuding jolliness and flamboyance in his seduction of Myra.

Will Close and Ophelia Lovibond (with an enviable cut-glass accent) are extremely good as their brattish children, with Close in particular dialling up the ridiculousness in a melodramatic scene with Myra in which he languishes on the sofa before declaring his love. There is strong supporting work, too, from Charles Edwards as the plummy voiced Richard and Lucy Karczewski’s strange and painfully timid Jackie. Their awkward exchange as they wait to be greeted, with Karczewski dressed in a pink frock that makes her resemble a flamingo, is perfectly timed to draw out the horrors of crippling British politeness.

Burns’s production may not be groundbreaking theatre, but it’s certainly entertaining. Sometimes it’s nice to sit back and have a good, old-fashioned laugh.

Book Hay Fever tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Hay Fever. (Photos by Marc Brenner)