Hay Fever is one of Coward’s most enduring comedies, and follows the self-centred Bliss family – retired actress Judith, her novelist husband David, and their children Sorel and Simon.<\/p>\n
All four separately invite a guest to stay for the weekend without telling the other family members, setting the scene for a weekend of chaos.<\/p>\n
The lead female character has often been played by a British actress – Felicity Kendal took on the role for the show’s last West End incarnation in 2015. <\/p>\n
It’s more unusual for a US actress to play the part, but Coward actually based the character on an American he’d met at a dinner party in 1921.<\/p>\n
The playwright was fascinated by Broadway star Laurette Taylor and her abrupt manner with house guests, and based Hay Fever on her family.<\/p>\n
“It’s the most delightful story,” said Baranski of the Taylor connection. “She had a husband named Hartley Manners, and they were so bohemian and so rude.<\/p>\n
“Laurette Taylor was a famous and brilliant American actress, and Noel Coward renamed them Hardly Manners,” she laughed.<\/p>\n
“He was captivated by their rudeness, and he called this play a comedy of appalling manners.”<\/p>\n
Taylor, who died in 1946, somewhat distanced herself from the portrayal when she saw the show, famously remarking: “None of us is ever unintentionally rude.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hay Fever is one of Coward’s most enduring comedies, and follows the self-centred Bliss family – retired actress…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-535121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}