Superficially attractive they may be, but the bohemian Bliss family make terrible hosts in Noel Coward’s slight comedy of manners which premiered in 1925. Howard Davies’ enjoyable production turns their Berkshire home – to which, without informing the others, all four have simultaneously invited a different weekend guest – into a kind of converted barn-cum- artists’ studio.
Here Jeremy Northam’s progressively discomfited diplomat, a young flapper completely out of her depth, an eager hunk, and even a sophisticated vamp (miscast Olivia Colman) are just entertainment fodder for the melodramatic Bliss’s.
Lindsay Duncan plays the theatricality of retired actress Judith Bliss to the hilt, and her peevish, precocious offspring (Freddie Fox’s Simon and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Sorel - who has inherited her mother’s love of histrionics but not her calculated allure) know exactly the self-dramatising games she and their novelist father David are up to.
All sympathy, then, to Jenny Galloway’s door-slamming Clara (Judith’s former dresser turned housekeeper) faced not only with her employers’ eccentricities but also the prospect of having to accommodate double the usual number without prior warning.
Noel Coward, St. Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4AU Tube: Leicester Square (£16 - £53.50) Until 2nd June HayFeverLondon.com
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