Hay
Fever
By
Noël Coward
Directed by Gabriel Barre
Critical
Reviews
The
New York Times declares, "The Shakespeare Theatre
of New Jersey
has a winner!"
Variety
calls HAY FEVER "inspired hilarity!"
"How
long has it been since you laughed so hard it hurt the next
day? " asks The Daily Record
"A
Quiet, Restful Weekend in the Country With Noël Coward"
Excerpted from the
review by Naomi Siegel
July 25, 2004
A raging case of style
over substance can actually result in pure theater magic,
given a playwright of infinite skill and a production to match.
With Noël Coward
as the author and "Hay Fever," his wickedly debonair inspiration
from 1924 as the vehicle, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey
has a winner. Visually resplendent, the production features
a stunning English country manse setting by James Wolk, inspired
by William Morris yet framed by panels of flora and fauna
that insidiously hint at 21st-century technology. Karen A.
Ledger's period-perfect costumes are exquisite send-ups of
flapper-era chic and look great on the handsome cast.
Gabriel Barre has directed
this comedy of bad manners with panache, creating stylized
montages that evoke Mark Swain's iconic photograph of the
author....
Judith, the Bliss matriarch,
is...played with witty flamboyance by Jill Gascoine...Katharine
Leonard is delightfully ditsy as the fiercely energetic young
woman [Sorel Bliss].
Michael Kary's Simon
is a study in nascent manhood desperately searching for confirmation.
His invitation to the sophisticated Myra Arundel, described
by Judith as "using sex as a sort of shrimping net," finds
him playing besotted lover to an increasingly exasperated
femme fatale. Cindy Katz gives a wonderfully shaded performance
as Myra.
Edmond Genest is appropriately
blustery as the endlessly irritable David [Bliss].
Excerpted from the
review by Robert L. Daniels
July 21, 2004
Midsummer madness
is the current offering of the Shakespeare Theater of New
Jersey with a peppery production of "Hay Fever,"
a 1925 souffle that Noel Coward cooked up in a mere three
days. The beautifully crafted charade, very nearly plotless,
traces a series of amorous incidents and frivolous conversations
among a retired English actress, her novelist husband, their
madly precocious children and an assemblage of startled houseguests
over a weekend at the thesp's country home.
Although the comedy is frequently performed in Great Britain,
it's rarely seen in the U.S. A 1970 Broadway revival starred
Shirley Booth and John Williams; it came around again 15 years
later with Rosemary Harris and Roy Dotrice. The events in
the play were inspired by Coward's visit to the Manhattan
home of actress Laurette Taylor and her writer-husband, J.
Hartley Manners.
The key to the play's success is the timing and tempo of Coward's
deliciously well-tempered flippancy. Director Gabriel Barre
has accented the rhythm of the dialogue, giving a handsome
cast stylish staging, accented by clever bits of business.
Barre has beautifully filled lengthy silent pauses, which
Harold Pinter would envy, with inspired hilarity.
Jill Gascoine as Judith Bliss beautifully defines the Bohemian
grandeur of the piece. And there's a bonus: She gets to sing
"No, My Heart," a custardy Coward-like tune written
for the 1985 revival by Kander & Ebb.
Edmond Genest lends ideal bluster as Judith's suave and intolerably
bland husband...Katherine Leonard as [the] whining sister
is deliciously insipid. Cindy Katz vamps handsomely as a manipulative
adder.
Caitlin Miller gives a delicious perf as Coward's "abject
fool," a sweet, bewildered flapper trapped in a household
of eccentric hosts. Her hesitant ascension on a staircase
for a dubious rendezvous is both cautiously precious and comically
inspired.
...James Wolk's flowery set design is dominated by tasteful
furnishings and backed by humongous, colorful wall panels
of daisies, butterflies and a leering hummingbird. The elegant
period threads designed by Karen A. Ledger define the '20s
and the fanciful characters who wear them.
Scene changes are delightfully accented by the recordings
of Great Britain's grand comic doyenne Beatrice Lillie, who
sums up the evening perfectly with "I Went to a Marvelous
Party."
"Noel Coward's
Rapier Wit Hasn't Lost Its Edge"
By William Westhoven
July 23, 2004
The Addams, Munsters and Bundys have nothing on the Bliss
family.
The occupants of Noel Coward's outrageously funny "Hay
Fever," which opened last weekend at the Shakespeare
Theatre of New Jersey, are as delightfully dysfunctional as
any family, fictional or otherwise, who ever took up residence
on stage or screen. And just as the assortment of oddballs
in Ozzy's mansion live a fishbowl existence on MTV, director
Gabriel Barre's bright and colorful production pushes the
characters to the edge of the stage, just to make sure the
audience doesn't miss a single moment.
How long has it been since you laughed so hard it hurt the
next day? Right now, it even hurts to type. That's what can
happen when you match the rapier wit of Coward, the quintessential
Englishman of the prewar 20th century, with a cast that fearlessly
lets it all hang out and has the talent to pull it off without
going over the edge.
The characters are painted as broadly as the huge posters
that hang behind the Bliss' elegant country home. The posters
show National Geographic-quality images of the flora and fauna
presumably inhabiting the surrounding gardens.
The birds and the bees also pollinate the plot. Outwardly,
the Blisses seem like a typically privileged and mannered
English family, but the façade is tissue thin. Grande
dame Judith (Jill Gascoine, wife of Alfred Molina, star of
Broadway's "Fiddler on the Roof" and supervillain
Doc Ock in "Spider-Man 2") is a retired star of
the stage with designs on a comeback. Her husband, David (Edmond
Genest), is a famous novelist.
Written in 1925, when manners were more crucial than honesty
to English society, Coward wrote Judith to embrace "talentocracy,"
a philosophy that requires one to be "interesting at
all coasts, abhor dullness and disdain normality." Since
she had no use for manners, she never taught them to their
grown son and daughter, Simon and Sorel, who quarrel, preen
each other and abuse the furniture.
As we join them, forces are in motion for a memorable weekend.
Each member of the family, unbeknownst to the others, has
invited a guest (and potential suitor) to the home. Sorel
(Katherine Leonard, who may remind you of a more-animated
Nicole Kidman), has invited Richard (Randall Newsome), a relatively
staid diplomat who fits into her designs on a more proper
and normal existence. Simon (limber Michael Kary) is looking
forward to the attentions of Myra, an older socialite whom
Judith accuses of "using sex as a shrimp net."
As it turns out, Myra is hoping to reel in David, but he has
his own guest, Jackie (Caitlin Miller), a painfully shy and
awkward young woman, who seems to have no clear idea what
she's doing there. Judith doesn't seem to mind since she's
brought in brawny Sandy Tyrell (Sean Dougherty), who lacks
the wits to keep up with crosswinds that mix these ill-matched
couples up like a blender.
To a degree, the guests represent the normal society Coward
loved to lampoon, but they reveal their own idiosyncrasies.
And like the buttoned-down visitors who crossed paths with
the Addams family week after week, they flee at their first
opportunity, driven to near madness by their combustible hosts.
Gascoine sets the tone, first basking in the amorous attentions
of Sandy before seducing Richard, all with the kind of broad
gestures her audiences could see from the back row. Genest
plays David as a man who loves his family, but is too wrapped
up in himself and his work to waste time figuring them out.
Kary and Leonard are convincing as siblings who wear their
eccentric upbringing on their sleeves, while Allison Weller
gets her share of laughs as the family's poorly trained domestic.
The guests match the hosts laugh for laugh, even when the
dialogue comes to a rare dead end. A silent scene during which
Richard and Jackie are stranded alone in the living room is
one of the play's best, and funniest, quite an achievement
in a play with dialogue that had the audience howling from
curtain to curtain call.
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