STAGE REVIEWS : ‘HAY FEVER’

“Hay Fever” at Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse suffers from a transplant that never takes. Director PatiTambellini has pulled Noel Coward’s drawing room comedy from the 1925 English countryside to the contemporary New England countryside, diluting its arch charm in the process.

What remains is still amusing but disappointingly bland. Plot was never the strong suit of this romantic farce, which depends instead on the fey characters, dry wit and throwaway sophistication that Coward all but patented. In “Hay Fever,” he pokes fun at celebrity, starting with the eccentric, egocentric Bliss family: Judith, a middle-aged actress who yearns for just one more comeback, especially since her fan mail has fallen off sharply; David, her arrogant novelist husband, and Simon and Sorel, their two grown children who take a life of high dramatics for granted. And the high dramatics run amok when the Blisses discover each of them has invited a house guest for the weekend.

But the transatlantic move has not been kind to Coward’s characters; stripped of accents and period charm, they are fish out of water. They sound American, look American, but talk like, well, characters from a Noel Coward play, dropping bon mots with every breath. Of course, no one ever really talked like this, which is part of what makes Coward’s plays so much fun. But without the buffer of nostalgia, delivery becomes treacherously artificial.

A strong British undertow remains in the script, despite some attempts at Americanization. The characters expect afternoon tea (on silver service, yet); a diplomat pops in from the embassy for the weekend; dress for dinner is formal (tuxes and all), and there is a pointed reference to the London press.

The cast gamely takes all the silliness in earnest. Helene Briggs captures the appealing conceit of free-spirited Judith Bliss, playing her unself-consciously larger than life. She gets solid support from Robert Halverson as her accommodating son, Simon, and Dean Thomas as her would-be swain, Sandy Tyrell. Renee Surratt and Julie Larsen make convincingly perplexed house guests caught in the Sturm und Drang of what we quickly come to suspect is an average country weekend at the battling Blisses.

“Hay Fever” will play through Oct. 11 at Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, 661 Hamilton St., Costa Mesa. For information, call (714) 650-5269.