The Stage

Hay Fever

Published Friday 21 April 2006 at 13:50 by Mark Shenton

Noel Coward’s 1925 comedy of theatrical folk behaving badly at home often promises more than it delivers. But in what is actually the funniest production of this play I have yet seen, director Peter Hall simultaneously reveals both its heart and the heartlessness that drives its ridiculously self-centred and self-dramatising characters.

The triumph is, of course, in the casting and no performance has been more anticipated this year than that of one Judi as another Judith - Dench is Bliss, as both proper noun and improper behaviourist. Dench has long earned both theatrical and the nation’s affection and her comic stripes with her immaculate timing and ability to be both mischievous and serious all at the same time.

No one deadpans quite like her. She’s born to play an actress, and while she’s previously played offstage, ‘at home’ actresses in plays as diverse as David Hare’s Amy’s View, Madame Arkadina in The Seagull and Desiree Armfeldt in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music (all at the National), she’s once again in her element.

But Hall and his producers Bill Kenwright and Thelma Holt have also surrounded her with stellar support, with another highly theatrical actor Peter Bowles in total command as novelist husband David, with EastEnders’ actress Kim Medcalf making a welcome return to the stage as their daughter and a superb Dan Stevens as son Simon.

There are more comic treats in the finely etched portraits of bafflement and bewilderment of the guests who stumble into this dysfunctional family’s life from Belinda Lang, Olivia Darnley, William Chubb and especially Charles Edwards.