Hay Fever

Fitzpatrick Hall, Queens'
Wednesday 12 - Saturday 15 November
Dir. Marieke Audsley; BATS

Five Stars

Rather! Having always wanted to live in an era of weekend house parties, wooden tennis rackets and real marmalade, I had dangerously high expectations for Hay Fever. Luckily, these were met and far surpassed. Snappy and with lashings of energy, the production managed to encapsulate a surprisingly difficult but traditionally British sense of humour.

Judith Bliss has officially retired from a life on the stage in an ill-fated bid to age gracefully. Apparently concerned by her husband’s inattentions, she invites Sandy Tyrell, a strikingly young and dim-witted boxer, to be a guest for the weekend. Sorel Bliss, in an equally ill-fated attempt to distance herself from her family’s eccentricity has also enticed the suitably inoffensibly named Richard to the family home. Both guests are booked in for the Japanese room. The sometimes-farcical drama that ensues as the various houseguests are indiscriminately taken in to the garden, caught off guard on the sofa and swept up in by Judith’s melodramas is painfully funny.

Tasked with playing not only Mrs Bliss, but also Judith Bliss, the wonderfully over-theatrical heroine of plays such as ‘Love’s Whirlwind’ and ‘The Bold Deceiver’, Elizabeth Donnelly brought a dizzying energy to the stage. Her character was at times side-wrenchingly funny and always brilliantly animated. Lucy Evans and Freddie Hutchins, as the Bliss’ precocious children showcased some outstanding comic timing and a convincing sibling dynamic. The Bliss family collectively created an aura of exclusive British Bohemianism that left the other characters nervously trying at once to fit in and escape. George Greenbury as Richard, Sorel’s serious diplomatist, highlighted this exclusionism well, portraying a man tragically lifeless against the crazed backdrop of the Bliss family home but equally hoping perhaps to become a part of it. As a whole, the cast was one of the strongest I have seen in Cambridge.

It is unusual to see a production that so willingly agrees to the traditions of this genre without a good deal of tongue and cheek. But the confidence of Marieke Audsley’s direction and cast pulled this off with remarkable gusto. The elements of farce that an audience expects and relishes in Noel Coward were not over-cooked but were acted with perfect timing, just missing the self-consciously twee.  This was the perfect antidote to a cold, winter work crisis. My cheeks hurt from laughing so much. Please go and see Hay Fever; laughing is good for you.

Alice Newell-Hanson

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