Hay
Fever
By
Noël Coward
Directed by Gabriel Barre
Director's
Notes
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| Edmond Genest and Cindy Katz. Photo
by Gerry Goodstein. |
A different sky,
New worlds to gaze upon,
The strange excitement of an unfamiliar shore…
—Noël Coward from "Sail Away"
Noël Coward wrote these lyrics about being lost in love,
but they could also describe the new worlds he himself provided
for all of us through his amazingly full life's work. Born
into genteel poverty a few days before Christmas (hence "Noël")
in a London suburb in 1899, Noël Coward would become
one of the first superstars of the twentieth century. He epitomized,
and to some degree defined, what English class and style was
all about. He matched his success as a playwright, composer
(writing more than 60 plays and 400 songs), lyricist, actor,
singer, director, novelist, Vegas performer, producer and
painter, with a social persona of completely original style
and wit that made him a celebrity like none other, before
or since. In the words of Richard Rodgers, "He wrote
with style, sang with style, painted with style and even smoked
a cigarette with a style that belonged exclusively to him."
He was born with a passion for entertaining and began performing
and writing at an early age in 1917. Although he first became
well known from his explosive and serious play THE VORTEX
in 1924, it would be his comedies — HAY FEVER (1925),
PRIVATE LIVES (1930), DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933), TONIGHT AT
EIGHT-THIRTY (1936), PRESENT LAUGHTER (1939) and BLITHE SPIRIT
(1941) that would earn him a lasting place in the hearts and
minds of theatregoers throughout the twentieth century and
beyond.
HAY FEVER was written in just three days, following Coward's
first trip in 1921 to the United States, where he would go
on to become, in the words of Eddie Cantor, "the most
brilliant contribution England ever made to American show
business." On that trip he met and was "adopted"
by the family of the well-known American stage actress Laurette
Taylor. He became a frequent guest at their Upper West Side
apartment and witness to the madcap goings on among the hysterical
and dramatic family. HAY FEVER, loosely based on his experiences
with the Taylors, was written in 1924 (Noël was just
24 years old) and opened in both London and New York in 1925.
Since then it has been revived on Broadway in 1931, 1970 and
most recently in 1984 starring Rosemary Harris. (For that
revival, John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote the song "No,
My Heart," which we are using in this production.) Perhaps
one of the reasons HAY FEVER is still so potent and funny
to an American audience today is because it was inspired by
an American family.
HAY FEVER represented a turning point in Noël Coward's
writing. With it, he updated drawing-room drama by introducing
both a new pace and new people. He wrote in 1937, in his first
(of three) autobiographies, Present Indicative, "My dialogue
was becoming more natural and less elaborate, and I was beginning
to concentrate more on comedy values of the situation rather
than the comedy values of actual lines." In other words,
he drew the audience in with the unspoken, and depended more
on the physical life of the characters on stage. He began
to explore the realm of behavior, context and subtext (the
underlying emotional currents and motivations that are behind
the action and dialogue).
I will accept anything in the theatre… provided
it amuses or moves me. But if it does neither, I want to go
home.
—Noël Coward
In the play, the Bliss family members individually —
and unbeknownst to the others — invite four guests to
spend the weekend with them at their country home outside
of London. We quickly discover the Blisses are a mad and volatile
bunch, headed by a "retired" actress (Judith), who
lives by the code of the new “talentocracy,” as
the biographer John Lahr describes it. The code: to be interesting
at all costs, abhor dullness and disdain normality. Up to
this point, in Coward's plays, the outsiders and outcasts
are trying to infiltrate polite English society, but in HAY
FEVER the outsiders are the ordinary and the Bliss family
is quite self-satisfied and content to be abnormal. The play
becomes a metaphor for the confrontation between order and
chaos, polite society and the artist, civilization and nature.
While Coward certainly exploits the eccentricities of each
character in HAY FEVER and pokes equal fun at them all, the
Blisses share a unique way of viewing life, a mindset that
they are ready to spread, like pollen, wherever and however
they can. They live in the moment and are eager to see their
own footprints in the world around them. They challenge and
force their socially complacent guests to wake up and snap
out of themselves. While they may not be consciously attempting
to change their lives, they certainly seem intent on shaking
them up a bit. I like to think of the Bliss life force as
an infectious one, and that somehow their joy, passion and
vividness will prove not only amusing and entertaining, but
also, I hope, contagious.
— Gabriel Barre
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