Emily Burns’ production of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever proves that the playwright remains an absolute king of farce, decades after his death.
Richard E Grant plays David Bliss, the blinkered, posho patriarch at the centre of this beloved drawing room comedy, and the casting feels both obvious and inspired.
Shockingly, Grant has until now never starred in a Coward play, making this production a long-overdue pairing of actor and playwright.
He is delicious as the delusional novelist, bringing all the bellowing, gesticulating energy that has made him one of Britain’s most compelling screen presences.
The story is set in the Bliss household in the village of Cookham, Berkshire, where chaos reigns from the very first scene with barely a pause.
Retired actress Judith Bliss, played by Christine Baranski, wafts around declaring she is to make a return to the stage, though one suspects she announces this every single day.
Baranski brings both heft and hilarity to the ludicrously delusional matriarch, her barbs dropping heavily while she maintains an extraordinary, dressed-to-the-nines weightlessness throughout.
All four members of the Bliss family have separately invited guests for the weekend, including Nancy Carroll’s London society type Myra and Ash Hunter’s amateur boxer Sandy Tyrell.
The incoming troupe is confronted by the family’s constant squabbling and petulant behaviour until they unite to draw up a drastic escape plan of their own.
Coward’s central depiction of an exasperated couple still stings with contemporaneity, with the best lines emerging from Judith and David’s explosive tiffs throughout the play.
As Myra pointedly states of the couple, “you’re artificial to the point of lunacy,” a line that lands with tremendous comic precision in Burns’ production.
Grant is obviously perfect for the feverishly privileged, short-tempered David, who, like so many poshos, is magnetic to watch self-destruct on stage.
Baranski grips equally, flipping in milliseconds between sensual and ballistic, drawing on her Mamma Mia film performance to produce a convincing English accent throughout.
Maggie Smith originally premiered the part of Judith at the Old Vic in 1964, when the play became the National Theatre’s first production of a work by a living author.
Burns’ conventional but sparkling production earns four stars and runs at the Wyndham’s Theatre until 12 December, a must-see for fans of classic British comedy.