Hay Fever (play)

Hay Fever
Marie Tempest as Judith with Robert Andrews and Helen Spencer as her children
Written by	Noël Coward
Date premiered	1925
Original language	English
Genre	Drama

Hay Fever is a comic play written by Noël Coward in 1924 and first produced in 1925 with Marie Tempest as the first Judith Bliss. Best described as a cross between high farce and a comedy of manners, the play is set in an English country house in the 1920s, and deals with the four eccentric members of the Bliss family and their outlandish behaviour when they each invite a guest to spend the weekend. The self-centred behaviour of the hosts finally drives their guests to flee while the Blisses are so engaged in a family row that they do not notice their guests' furtive departure.

Some writers have seen elements of Mrs Astley Cooper and her set in the characters of the Bliss family. Coward said that the actress Laurette Taylor was the main model. Coward introduces one of his signature theatrical devices at the end of the play, where the four guests tiptoe out as the curtain falls, leaving disorder behind them – a device that he also used in various forms in Present Laughter, Private Lives and Blithe Spirit.

In 1921, Coward first visited New York City, hoping that American producers would embrace his plays. During that summer, he befriended the playwright Hartley Manners and his wife, the eccentric actress Laurette Taylor. Their "over-the-top theatrical lifestyle" later inspired him in writing Hay Fever.

Coward wrote the play in three days in 1924, intending the lead role of Judith Bliss for the actress Marie Tempest, "whom I revered and adored". Though she found it amusing, she thought it not substantial enough for a whole evening, but changed her mind after the success of Coward's The Vortex later in 1924. Hay Fever opened at the Ambassadors Theatre on 8 June 1925 and transferred to the larger Criterion Theatre on 7 September 1925 and ran for 337 performances. Coward remembered in 1964 that the notices "were amiable and well-disposed although far from effusive. It was noted, as indeed it has been today, that the play had no plot and that there were few if any 'witty' lines." It opened the same year at the Maxine Elliott Theatre in New York, where it ran for 49 performances.