Hay Fever

“My sense of my importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my sense of my own importance to myself is tremendous.”
Noel Coward

At a talent competition on July 23, 1907, a seven-year-old boy took to the stage of the Public Hall, Sutton, Surrey and sang the song “Coo” from James Tanner's wildly popular musical A Country Girl. He followed that number with the tune “Time to Rise” and received an encore. But for all his efforts, the boy did not win first prize and was given a large box of chocolates as consolation. The enraged lad threw a fit, believing in his heart that it was his destiny to come out on top. This was the theatrical debut of Noel Coward.

In the early 1920s, Coward was making his living as an actor and starring in sketches and reviews he also penned, but was not yet known as a playwright of significance. But London theater producer Norman Macdermott had read several of Coward's early scripts and in 1924 decided to produce one. Unsure of which title to select, he met with the ever persuasive playwright. “Mcdermott,” Coward said, “had a slight bias towards Hay Fever, but as there was no good part for me in that, I managed to sheer him over to The Vortex …It was an immediate success and established me both as a playwright and actor, which was very fortunate, because until then I had not proved myself to be very hot in either capacity.”

Upon the heels of that critically acclaimed production, West End theater managers quickly dusted off two previously written but never produced Coward plays, Fallen Angels and Hay Fever , both of which received productions in a matter of months. Hay Fever opened at London's Ambassador's Theatre on June 8, 1925 and played for a full year. In his introduction to Play Parade, a Coward anthology, the author wrote, “Hay Fever is considered by many to be my best comedy. Whether or not this assertion is true, posterity, if it gives it a glance, will be able to judge with more detachment than I…I am very much attached to Hay Fever. I enjoyed writing it and producing it, and I have frequently enjoyed watching it.”

One such enjoyable experience involved Marie Tempest, the actress portraying Judith Bliss in the original production of Hay Fever. At one rehearsal, she took Coward by the hand and insisted he show her how to play a particularly tricky scene: “You wrote it and you know – I didn't write it and don't!” Coward obliged, showing the star performer his interpretation of the character in full flourish. The two got on wonderfully from that moment on, as Tempest later noted in her diary: “He is the most stimulating and exciting personality that has come into my life in the last ten years.” Quite a turn of events for the actress, who, a year before had turned down the same role even after Coward himself read the entire play aloud to her in her dressing room while her husband dozed quietly in the corner.

Hay Fever has certainly stood the test of time, and it received the theatrical triumph of being awarded a revival with London's new National Theatre Company in 1964 in a production featuring Maggie Smith, Lynn Redgrave and Derek Jacobi. The play was selected by Lawrence Olivier, who in 1926 had himself auditioned for Hay Fever's first national tour but was turned down. Olivier asked Coward to direct, to which the author replied, “I am thrilled and flattered and frankly a little flabbergasted that the National Theatre should have had the curious perceptiveness to choose a very early play of mine and to give it a cast that could play the Albanian telephone directory.”

In his biography of Noel Coward, A Talent to Amuse, Sheridan Morley explains why he believes Olivier, given the canon of world literature at his fingertips, selected to produce Hay Fever: “Of all Coward's work, Hay Fever is the best suited to a talented company playing together and off each other in perfect harmony; it offers one tremendous star lead, but unlike many of the other comedies, it also offers five other parts that are very nearly as good.”

Olivier grasped this theatrical truth, even if some reporters at the time did not. When Coward flew to London to begin rehearsals, he was met at the airport by one such reporter who suggested that in an era as progressive as the 1960s it was rather old hat for the National to be reviving the 1920s play. According to Morley, “Noel remarked acidly that if a comedy was intrinsically very good it would live over the centuries without becoming dated, like for instance The School for Scandal or The Importance of Being Earnest . ‘Oh,' said the reporter, ‘and are they yours too?'”

Daniel Hahn is Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Director of Education and has been with the Festival since 1995 when he served as an actor-teacher. Mr. Hahn holds an M.A. in theater from The University of Akron.