By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Saturday 24 October (matinee) and running through 12 December 2026 RUNTIME: 120 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

It’s a hoot to see Richard E Grant onstage after his unforgettable turn in TV’s Celebrity Traitors but, make no mistake, Christine Baranski’s (TV’s Big Bang Theory and film Mamma Mia) snark-filled West End debut is the reason to see this Noel Coward comedy classic.

• Read on for reasons including how Baranski’s West End debut is not to be sneezed at and her camp put downs are worth the price of admission alone

Baranski gives a commanding performance dashing off witty one-liners to all and sundry as retired actress Judith Bliss who misses the acclaim of the stage during a weekend at her Berkshire family home peppered with surprise guests.

Grant plays her eccentric husband David and Will Close (Dear England, National Theatre) and Ophelia Lovibond (The Libertine, Theatre Royal Haymarket) are especially good as their children who each invite an unexpected guest to the house over the course of the weekend.

The very funny ensemble includes Nancy Carroll (Marjorie Prime, Menier Chocolate Factory), Lucy Karczewski (Stereophonic, Duke Of York’s Theatre) and Charles Edwards (TV’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power).

Written in 1924, the 1st production was in the West End a year later at the Ambassadors Theatre transferring to the larger Criterion for its hundreds of performances.

A cross between high farce and a comedy of manners, the part of Judith has been played by luminaries including Judi Dench (The Winter’s Tale, Garrick Theatre) and Felicity Kendal (Anything Goes, Barbican).

It’s a little Chekhov’s The Seagull as if written by Oscar Wilde with a fading actress rediscovering her mojo in a 20s country house with a farcical set of pairings.

It wouldn’t be quite so compelling as it is here without the likes of Nancy Carroll and Charles Edwards adding considerable gravitas to minor characters as thinly drawn as written.

Coward was inspired to write this after a 1921 New York visit hoping to interest American producers in his plays. During that summer he became a friend of the playwright Hartley Manners and his wife, the eccentric actress Laurette Taylor. Coward wrote: ‘It was inevitable that someone should eventually utilise portions of this eccentricity in a play, and I am only grateful to fate that no guest of the Hartley Manners thought of writing Hay Fever before I did’.

Hay Fever is as insubstantial as Wilde but also, like him, frequently hilarious.

But it’s Baranski’s West End debut that’s not to be sneezed at and her camp hilarious withering put downs are worth the price of admission alone.

• Main pictures by via Facebook courtesy Delfont Mackintosh Tickets
• Have you seen a Christine Baranski show before and what did you think of it? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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