History
In 1921, Coward first visited New York City, hoping that American producers would embrace his plays. During that summer, he befriended the playwright Hartley Manners and his wife, the eccentric actress Laurette Taylor. Their "over-the-top theatrical lifestyle" later inspired him in writing Hay Fever.
Coward wrote the play in three days in 1924, intending the lead role of Judith Bliss for the actress Marie Tempest, "whom I revered and adored". Though she found it amusing, she thought it not substantial enough for a whole evening, but changed her mind after the success of Coward's The Vortex later 1924. Hay Fever opened at the Ambassadors Theatre on 8 June 1925 and transferred to the larger Criterion Theatre on 7 September 1925 and ran for 337 performances. Coward remembered in 1964 that the notices "were amiable and well-disposed although far from effusive. It was noted, as indeed it has been today, that the play had no plot and that there were few if any 'witty' lines."
The original cast was as follows:
- Sorel Bliss – Helen Spencer
- Simon Bliss – Robert Andrews
- Clara – Minnie Rayner
- Judith Bliss – Marie Tempest
- David Bliss – W Graham Browne
- Sandy Tyrell – Patrick Susands
- Myra Arundel – Hilda Moore
- Richard Greatham – Athole Stewart
- Jackie Coryton – Ann Trevor
Read more about this topic: Hay Fever
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)