HAY FEVER. Wyndhams,WC1

MAKING HAY This had to be a short-run red hot sellout, didn’t it? Richard E Grant taking his air of wicked unreliable comedity back after 20 years tothe West End, while actually thrilling couch potatoes in Traitors. And it’s Hay Fever, the comedy of appalling boho-showbiz manners which Noel Coward pretended he wrote im tnree days but actually – as the great Soden biography reveals – was crafted and notebooked like a Swiss watch, every drop dead line and narcissistic fantasy worked with exasperated love.Love not least of theatre : the thing to remember about Coward is that he was a child actor, a hard worker from a precarious background, no spoilt nepo but a longtime watcher and taker of notes about his theatrical confreres’ behaviour and relationships. So Judith Bliss, the diva matriarch, her wearily reclusive husband and their definitely spoilt young-adult kids have a reality beyond sitcom, all the funnier for his dry observation. And we all love watching people who are talented and…