Hay Fever at a glance

Show
Hay Fever
Venue
Wyndham's Theatre, West End
Address
Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0DA
Nearest station
Leicester Square (2 min walk)
Genre
Comedy
Running time
2 hours 20 minutes, including one interval
Age guidance
12+ (LTH editorial); under-16s must be accompanied, no under-3s
Dates
22 September – 12 December 2026
Press night
1 October 2026
Schedule
Mon–Sat 7:30pm; matinees Wed and Sat 2:30pm
Price range
From £54 (typically £54–£222)
Writer
Noël Coward
Director
Emily Burns

Expert Review: Hay Fever at Wyndham's Theatre

4.6
★★★★★

LTH Editorial Anticipation Rating

Assessed by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Published 25 August 2026. This is an anticipation rating based on the announced production, cast and creative team. Press night is 1 October 2026 — critic reviews are pending, and we will update this page once they are published.

The Verdict

Star casting is the oldest trick in the West End and it usually tells you very little. This is one of the exceptions. Christine Baranski has had a five-decade stage career, two Tony Awards, and — until now — not a single West End credit. Richard E. Grant has not appeared on a London stage in twenty years. Putting them opposite each other as a married couple who have spent decades performing at rather than talking to one another is not a gimmick. It is close to ideal casting for the specific comedy Coward wrote.

What raises expectations further is everything around them. Emily Burns is not a director who treats period comedy as a heritage exercise, and the company assembled behind the two leads is unusually strong for a play often cast as two stars plus support: Olivier Award winner Nancy Carroll, Ophelia Lovibond fresh from The Hills of California on both sides of the Atlantic, Charles Edwards, and Will Close. Wyndham's, at around 750 seats, is small enough that Coward's comedy — which lives entirely in timing, pauses and half-heard asides — can actually land. The one honest caveat: we have not seen it. Press night is 1 October, and the rating above reflects the ingredients rather than the finished dish.

What Makes It Special

  • Christine Baranski's West End debut. An Emmy, two-time Tony, Screen Actors Guild and Drama Desk winner, known to a global audience from The Good Wife, The Good Fight and The Gilded Age, appearing on a London stage for the first time. She has said it fulfils an ambition dating back to seeing her first West End play as a Juilliard student in 1971.
  • Richard E. Grant's return. Twenty years since his last London stage appearance, and a return to Wyndham's specifically. As David Bliss — the novelist who has retreated upstairs from his own family — he gets the driest role in the play.
  • A genuinely deep supporting company. Nancy Carroll won both the Olivier and the Natasha Richardson Award for After the Dance at the National. Ophelia Lovibond played The Hills of California in the West End and on Broadway. Charles Edwards and Will Close bring further classical and National Theatre weight to what are, on paper, supporting parts.
  • The right play in the right room. Wyndham's is a Grade II* listed Edwardian playhouse of around 750 seats, built for spoken drama rather than musicals. The drawing-room scale of Hay Fever suits it exactly — you are close enough to catch the looks that carry half the jokes.
  • Coward at his most purely funny. Hay Fever has no message, no plot to speak of and no politics. Coward wrote it in three days in 1924, and it remains the most efficient comic machine he ever built.

You'll love Hay Fever if you...

  • Want to see two screen icons at close range in a 750-seat theatre
  • Enjoy sharp, verbal comedy where nothing much happens and everything is funny
  • Like classic British comedy played by a company with real classical chops
  • Are looking for a proper West End night out that doesn't require homework
  • Have never seen Coward and want the best possible starting point

It might not be for you if you...

  • Need a strong plot — this play deliberately doesn't have one
  • Prefer contemporary new writing to 1920s revivals
  • Are bringing young children — the comedy is verbal and will go over their heads
  • Want to read reviews before booking; press night isn't until 1 October
  • Are sensitive to flashing lights or the smoking of cigarettes on stage

Best for

  • Comedy lovers
  • Star spotting
  • Classic revivals
  • Date night
  • First-time theatregoers
  • Visitors to London

Not recommended for young children or audiences looking for contemporary new writing.

Critical Reception

No critic reviews have been published yet. Performances begin on 22 September 2026 and press night is Thursday 1 October 2026. UK critics do not review productions during previews, so the first star ratings from publications such as The Guardian, The Times, The Stage, Time Out and WhatsOnStage will appear from 1 October onwards.

We do not publish star ratings we have not verified, and we do not carry critic quotes for shows that have not opened. The 4.6 figure shown on this page is our own editorial anticipation rating, based on the announced cast, creative team, venue and source material — not on a performance anyone has seen. We will replace this section with verified critic ratings once the production has opened.

Status as of 25 August 2026. This page will be updated after press night on 1 October 2026.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in Hay Fever?

The Bliss family live in a country house in Cookham and have no discernible interest in anyone outside it, including each other. Judith retired from the stage a year ago and has discovered that domestic life provides no applause. David is upstairs writing a novel. Sorel and Simon, both adults, are conspicuously failing to launch. It is a household where everyone is the lead in a production nobody else is watching.

Four guests, one weekend

Each of the four Blisses invites someone to stay for the weekend, and none of them mentions it to the others. Judith has asked a young admirer, Sandy Tyrell. Simon has invited the worldly Myra Arundel. Sorel has asked the respectable diplomat Richard Greatham. David has invited the very young, very nervous Jackie Coryton. Four strangers arrive at the same house on the same afternoon expecting a pleasant country weekend.

Hospitality as blood sport

The Blisses are not cruel so much as entirely uninterested in the concept of a guest. Rooms are unallocated, dinner is unplanned, and Clara — the family's former dresser, now their housekeeper — is left to manage a situation nobody has thought about. What the visitors receive instead of hospitality is a running performance: parlour games with rules that seem to be invented on the spot, and a family that treats sincerity as the one unforgivable social error.

The realignment

By the second act, every guest has been paired off with the wrong Bliss, each pairing announced with enormous theatrical conviction and abandoned about ten minutes later. Judith in particular treats every romantic development as a scene from a play she once starred in, delivering renunciations and forgivenesses that no one has asked for and that mean nothing by the following morning.

Escape

The visitors reach the same conclusion at roughly the same time. The final act is one of the great comic exits in English theatre: four people creeping out of a house at breakfast while the family, absorbed in an argument about the geography of a novel, fails to notice them leaving. Nothing has been learned. Nothing has changed. That is precisely the joke.