Hay Fever

Hay Fever
Comedy

Director: Ingomar Vihmar
Author: Noël Coward
Translator: Anu Lamp
Set and costume designers: Andrus Jõhvik, Ingomar Vihmar
Musical director: Ingomar Vihmar
Lighting designer: Karmen Tellisaar
Vocal coach: Elo Kesküla
Dance instructor: Ingrid Jasmin

Cast: Kleer Maibaum, Meelis Rämmeld, Fatme Helge Leevald, Karl-Andreas Kalmet, Carita Vaikjärv, Andres Raag (guest), Astra Irene Susi, Ott Raidmets (guest), Kadri Rämmeld

On yet another rainy Midsummer’s Eve during yet another rainy summer, it becomes clear in a beautiful, bohemian country house that all the charmingly eccentric (and probably completely mad) members of the family living there—the mother, a former actress; the father, an almost-successful writer; a son with artistic ambitions; and a daughter inclined towards poetry—have, without warning the others, invited a guest for Midsummer and plan to put them up in their best guest room.

When the well-mannered guests arrive, instead of the anticipated romantic and peaceful weekend, a tangle of relationship and social games begins, full of surprises and highly comic situations. At times, even those caught up in it can hardly tell who is where, with whom, and why.

The English writer, composer, actor and singer Noël Coward (1899–1973) went down in the history of drama for his distinctive style, witty dialogue and the subtle cynicism of his characters—in other words, for everything British audiences want to see in the theatre. At Endla, director Ingomar Vihmar takes one of Coward’s best-loved and most frequently staged comedies and adds a couple of distinctly Estonian twists to its quintessentially English, restrained humour.