What a pleasure to find this cracking production of Coward’s great comedy at the theatre named after him. The playwright described Hay Fever (1925) as “one of the most difficult plays to perform that I have encountered... it has no plot at all, and remarkably little action.”

Yet in Howard Davies’s superbly funny, sharply observant staging, with Lindsay Duncan leading a cast that brings every role to detailed life, the piece proves irresistible. This is a play, like Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, that transforms triviality into comic perfection. And if Coward lacks Wilde’s high epigrammatic style, his clipped, clenched language has proved more influential.

Verdict: *****
Click here to see the full review

Howard Davies has a gift for revitalising Coward's comedies. Having put the sexuality back into Private Lives, he now visually redefines Hay Fever and pulls off the daring feat of suggesting that beneath the play's mockery of florid theatricality lies a vein of genuine emotion. It helps that he has a cast that could, as Coward said of his own 1964 revival, play the Albanian telephone directory.

Verdict: ****
Click here to see the full review

Hay Fever is a caution against bohemians and bourgeoisie becoming overly familiar with one another. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Sorel is a real honker: Sex-mad, intellectual. Freddie Fox, as Simon, is so camp that it is a wonder he would ever try to kiss a girl – oh Noel! Kevin McNally’s David could do with more of a period haircut. Jeremy Northam does a super turn as the maddeningly noncommittal diplomat, Richard. Sam Callis is well cast as the hunk Sandy. The ticket prices are not to be sneezed at, but this is one Fever worth catching.

Verdict: *****
Click here to see the full review

Hay Fever is usually treated as a plotless mix of sophisticated small talk and cleverly embroidered cliché. Here it seems a celebration of abnormality and at the same time a disquieting study of both the pleasures and the pains of not being able to restrain oneself. The result is not so much a picture of narcissism gone wild as a slick and sometimes queasy look at a family that can only survive if it preys upon the vulnerability of outsiders.

The production is poised rather than anarchic. Even if the chemistry isn't yet fizzing, this should develop. And amid the many moments when this interpretation is winsomely amusing, it also proves oddly affecting.

Verdict: ****
Click here to see the full review