"hay fever"

Rosemary Harris and Roy Dotrice

In 1924, Noël visited Laurette Taylor and Hartley Manners at their home on Riverside Drive. He found Hartley to be “a charming man, but his spirit seemed to be shut up permanently in a sort of ‘iron virgin’ of moral principles. Laurette, on the other hand, was frequently blunt to the point of embarrassment. She was naïve, intolerant, loveable, and entirely devoid of tact. It was inevitable that someone should eventually use portions of this eccentricity in a play, and I am only grateful to Fate that no guest of the Hartley Manners thought of writing Hay Fever before I did.” According to Noël Coward’s first biographer, Sheridan Morley, “Hay Fever is the only one of Coward’s major comedies to stem from direct and personal experience.”

The premiere London production met with some success, but it was the 1964 National Theatre revival that represented a watershed in Coward’s career. Laurence Olivier invited Noël to direct a production of Hay Fever with an all-star cast, including Edith Evans, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Robert Stephens, and Lynn Redgrave. The play opened to stunning reviews and re-established Coward’s preeminence in the theater.

Until the 1985 production of Hay Fever opened on Broadway directed by Brian Murray, the play had not been successful New York. In the four Broadway productions of the play, Judith Bliss was played by Laura Hope Crews, Constance Collier, Shirley Booth, and Rosemary Harris. John Tillinger, who played Sandy in the 1970 production, said that it was disastrous, mainly because Shirley Booth, although a great actress, was totally wrong for the part. A critic wrote “Shirley Booth is still the Hazel of television instead of the over-romantic Judith Bliss.”

When the 1985 production opened, Clive Barnes wrote: “Rosemary Harris is a joy forever. Her joyfulness is being spread like some heady scent at the Music Box, where last night Hay Fever, Noël Coward’s lightly mordant comedy about that ‘beastly family’ the Blisses, returned to New York in an always inventive and often stylish staging by Brian Murray.”

Years earlier, Coward wrote: “Hay Fever is far and away one of the most difficult plays to perform that I ever encountered.” But with the 1985 production, Broadway finally got it right.