Hay Fever

Hay Fever (1924) is a farcical stage play written by legendary British playwright Noël Coward. Set in an English country house on the River Thames, it blends over-the-top hijinks, slapstick, satire, and a comedy of manners to present a unique portrait of a wacky and endearing English family in the early 1920s. Each of the four members of the Bliss family has invited a guest to stay at the family estate for the weekend. This sets the stage for a series of raucous misunderstandings that only serve to underscore an unspoken but universal fact: There is no such thing as a normal family.

Act I opens with the curtain rising on the hall of David Bliss's home. While the room is comfortable and well-lived-in, it is very untidy and unorganized. Among the general chaos sits brother and sister, Simon and Sorel Bliss, discussing poetry and art. Their mother, Judith Bliss, enters the room and joins the conversation. She is a retired, once-great actress who lives her life with a natural theatricality, as well as a natural dimwittedness. David Bliss, the family patriarch, eventually enters as well; he is a writer attempting to finish his latest novel.

Judith tells the family that she has decided to come out of retirement and return to the stage in one of her old plays. Judith, Simon, and Sorel are acting out a scene from that play when the doorbell rings. The family's maid, Clara, who used to be Judith's dresser, answers it. It is Sandy Tyrell, a boxer, athlete, and enduring fan of Judith's whom she has invited for the weekend. On the heels of Sandy's arrival comes Simon's guest, Myra Arundel, whom Judith describes as a "self-conscious vampire" who "goes about using sex as a shrimping net." The next two guests, Richard Greatham, a diplomat, and Jackie Coryton, a flighty flapper, arrive at the Bliss home together. Everyone gathers for tea, but the conversation is awkward and inevitably stalls. Act I ends with the characters locked in clumsy silence.



Act II takes place after dinner that same evening. The Blisses try to start a game of charades with their guests, but it quickly dissipates, and everyone splinters off. Simon and Jackie retreat to the garden, David and Myra outside, and Sorel and Sandy to the library. Only Judith and Richard are left in the hall, and she promptly starts flirting with him. Richard innocently kisses her, and she overreacts in grand theatrical style, as if the two were carrying on an illicit affair. In the library, Sorel and Sandy kiss as well. Like her mother, Sorel overreacts, behaving as if the kiss is something more than a harmless flirtation. Both women, it is clear, consider their outsize reactions all part of the fun. Witnessing the kiss between Sorel and Sandy, Judith announces she will give up any feelings she has for him; she dramatically exits. Sorel explains to Sandy that her own melodramatic reaction was just an attempt to one-up her mother, which is "a sort of unwritten law" in the Bliss house.

David and Myra enter the room and begin kissing before Judith reenters. This is all it takes for Judith to launch into another histrionic scene. As she does, Simon enters and informs his parents that he and Jackie are engaged. Sorel and Sandy then enter from the library. Judith drones on, and she, Sorel, and Sandy spring into a scene from the play they had been reciting in Act I. David bursts into laughter, the guests are thoroughly confused about what's going on, and Judith ends Act II by fainting.

In Act III, it is the next morning, and a breakfast table has been set up in the hall. Sandy and Jackie are alone and talk about how awkward things were the previous night, as well as how undeniably crazy the Blisses are. They go into the library at the sound of Mya and Richard approaching. Myra and Richard sit down to breakfast and have a virtually identical conversation to the one Sandy and Jackie just had. Sandy and Jackie enter, and the four of them agree to return to London right away in Sandy's car.



Judith comes down to breakfast and is reading the paper when the rest of the family enters. David asks if they want to hear the last chapter of his novel and reads it to them. A minor plot-point in the novel, concerning Paris geography, instigates a screaming match among the Blisses. As they viciously argue, their four guests sneak out. With the sound of the car door slamming, the family realizes their guests have left. They note the rudeness of the unceremonious departure, and David comments, "People really do behave in the most extraordinary manner these days." With that, the Blisses think about their guests no more, again focusing on the last chapter in David's novel. As the curtain falls, the family has returned to the utter lunacy of what they consider normal.