Hay Fever

I was so looking forward to this. I came across this just by chance on Youtube and sat down to watch it. After all, it is by Noel Coward, master of the witty word and capable of both dexterity of language and depth of emotion. This is a TV adaptation of what was one of his early stage plays, a comedy that apparently wasn't as well received when it was first staged. After watching this, I can fully understand why.

The jist of the play is centred around the eccentric (and somewhat ironically named) Bliss family, dominated by the matriarch Judith (Penelope Keith), a former actress who longs to be back on the stage. She is disconcerted to discover that her children Sorel (Phoebe Nicholls) and Simon (Michael Siberry) have invited their prospective lovers down to their country estate for the weekend - not least because she has also done the same and there will be no room for them with only the Japanese bedroom available to fit them all in. Both her children are inviting older lovers, Sorel her diplomat boyfriend Richard (Benjamin Whitrow) and Simon his girlfriend, the predatory and posh Myra Arundel (Patricia Hodge). Judith, by comparison, has a younger lover in Sandy Tyrell (Michael Cochrane), but he is in for a shock when he arrives - he doesn't know that she still has a husband, alive, and living in the house still. Paul Eddington plays her writer husband David, a variation on the characters that made him famous, though a little more absent minded, reuniting him with his Good Life co star Penelope Keith. He has a surprise of his own when he announces that he has invited a woman down to judge her for a job interview to be his secretary, Jackie Coryton (Susan Wooldridge), meaning that there will be four new guests for the weekend. Tailing off the list of characters is their maid Clara (Joan Sims), who is left to sort out the dinner arrangements.

When the guests arrive, little do they know what they are letting themselves in for - and neither did I. At first it starts off as a typical Coward play, all witty words and decent humour. But as the play progresses it becomes more bizarre as it goes on, starting with an excruciating parlour game that the family insist on involving the increasingly reluctant guests in and then a plot twist where Sorel's older boyfriend Richard (who insists he hasn't that inclination towards her) ends up kissing Judith, who immediately declares she must leave her husband to him, but how they must keep their relationship secret from her daughter. The poor chap is startled by her dramatic declarations, but when she does the same sort of theatrics upon discovering her daughter Sorel with Judith's young lover Sandy it becomes increasingly wearisome and strange. When her husband David comes in from the garden with Myra Arundel and declares the same thing, it becomes clear this family is not normal - not least to the guests!

By this point I began to find this comedy tiresome. What had started out witty enough becomes a infuriating self absorbed bore, and feels almost insufferably smug about how clever it thinks it is in regarding the Bliss family as people who should be indulged in their "eccentric ways" just because they are wealthy. They become neither amusing or lovable, but wearisome and irritating. I recall watching the Susan Stephen film "Father's Doing Fine" (1952), which was at times an exhausting film to watch with it's eccentric family. But at least it has a plot and conclusion to it - here there seems to be no rhyme or reason to Hay Fever! What is the actual point to this play? You couldn't help but feel sorry for the guests that find themselves trapped in this self indulgent madhouse, with the family using them to play out their own theatrical fantasies. It's not as if I can fault the performances. Both Phoebe Nicholls and Michael Siberry as the Bliss children hold their own admirably against their more experienced elders, such as Patricia Hodge, Benjamin Whitrow and Penelope Keith, who I felt was rather too theatrical as Judith. Susan Wooldridge was sympathetic as poor, shy Jackie Coryton, who wondered what on earth she had let herself in for, while I lament the fact that the wonderful Joan Sims is so underused in this, as she steals the few scenes she is in.

But in the end what started out as vaguely amusing and witty ended up irritating me, and the whole thing seemed an utterly pointless exercise in self indulgence. It's hard to believe that this play was written by a man who would later go on to write such film classics as Blithe Spirit, Brief Encounter and This Happy Breed. In one of the few scenes where someone actually snaps and rails against the Bliss family, Patricia Hodge's character Myra sums up everything for me when she says to Judith "I'm not going to spare your feelings or anybody else's. You're the most infuriating set of hypocrites I've ever seen. This house is a complete featherbed of false emotions. You're posing self centred egostists and I'm sick to death of you!" I know it's all a matter of opinion in the end, but Myra's sentiments said it all for me. By the end of this I was thoroughly sick of Hay Fever and it's crazy inhabitants.