Four people arrive at an English country house expecting a pleasant weekend. Each has been invited by a different member of the Bliss family, and none of the hosts has thought to mention it to the others. By the time everyone sits down for an after-dinner word game, finding enough bedrooms is the least of their problems.
That’s the premise of Noël Coward’s “Hay Fever,” a three-act stage comedy presented by Pearson Productions at Olathe’s Downtown Library. The play runs Friday through Sunday, Nov. 13–15, in the library’s Flex Box Theater.
At the center of the household is Judith Bliss, a retired actress who still knows how to command a room. Her husband, David, is a novelist trying to finish a book. Their son, Simon, is an artist, and their daughter, Sorel, would like everyone to behave a little more normally. She might have picked the wrong weekend to try.
The guests include a diplomat and a young athlete, neither of whom is prepared for the company he’s about to keep. The job of figuring out where everybody will sleep falls to Clara, the housekeeper and Judith’s former theatrical dresser. Upstairs arrangements are only the beginning. After dinner, a parlor game goes awry, flirtations cross wires and the Blisses start paying more attention to one another’s guests than to the people they invited.
Coward lets the evening unravel in one room, the hall of the Bliss family’s home in Cookham, England. The story begins on a Saturday afternoon and ends the next morning. The play opened in London in 1925 and reached Broadway that fall, with Coward co-directing the New York production. A century later, there’s still something familiar about being a guest in someone else’s home and realizing you’ve walked into the middle of a family drama.
WHEN AND WHERE TO SEE ‘HAY FEVER’
- Friday, Nov. 13, at 7:30 p.m.
- Saturday, Nov. 14, at 7:30 p.m.
- Sunday, Nov. 15, at 7:30 p.m.
All three performances are in the Flex Box Theater at Olathe’s Downtown Library, 260 E. Santa Fe St. Tickets are listed at $20. Check availability and buy tickets through TicketLeap.
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