When the lights come up tonight at the Balch Arena Theater, the audience will be greeted by strains of cheerful music and warmly elegant art deco set pieces. A Cockney maid and a cat named Zoe will then welcome everyone to their "House of Bliss" and the world of "Hay Fever."
Although author Noel Coward, who wrote the play in three days in 1922, is renowned for his fast-paced comedies featuring simple jokes within intricate situational contexts, this production questions this light-hearted convention, simultaneously challenging the role of the artist in society.
Director Sheriden Thomas and her actors delve into greater emotional depths than those usually found in Coward's plays, while staying true to the comic heart of the piece.
Taking place over the span of a weekend, the play centers around the artists of the Bliss family, their two maids and the four civilians they invite to stay in their luxuriously appointed country home. The artists, an author, an actress, a painter and a dancer, each creatively frustrated, decide that they must welcome the society that scorns them into their home in order to break through their artistic malaise. Civilians and artists collide in a highly stylized dance that echoes the conflict between any creative person and the society that their art must inevitably serve.
"The creative process is a solitary and often lonely one, even though all art eventually requires an audience. Creativity has a raucous, chaotic, dangerous feel to it, and it's feared, and not socially acceptable," Thomas said.
Senior Stefanie Schussel learned about her own creative process as she explored the role of houseguest Myra Arundel, a society siren. Schussel enjoyed discovering "how to mix a vibrant, three-dimensional character with a specificity of physical movement, and then to maintain that precision while making artistic explorations."
Freshman Madeline Schussel was challenged by the role of Sorel Bliss, a dancer. "I was stretched both physically and creatively, and found out that I'm less flexible than I thought," she said.
This production will challenge the audience's own ideas about art and relationships, and about its creative self. Assistant director, senior Laura Janowitch, feels that "creativity is an innate quality in all of us, put aside in deference to civilized society. The two oppose each other, but life is about the compromise."
Lauren Murphy, who plays retired actress Judith Bliss, said "Comedy is pain. Interpersonal relationships are sometimes too strong, and in this show the pain is in how they stretch and snap back together."
Murphy and her fellow actors examine familial relationships that are turbulent yet full of love. The discords between family members are at first comical as we watch adolescents squabble and adults posture. Later, however, they are given greater weight as we compare them to the more superficial conflicts played out by the civilians, consisting of games of status and intrigue.
In some ways, the whole play is a game, one that must be played to the finish, whether the characters are playing parlor games or those of courtship. Each character joins in, but we soon find that the Bliss family is at an advantage as they systematically strip each guest of their pretension, a process that is an art form in itself. Their manipulations often take place in the form of seductions. As Thomas said, "art is very seductive."
Through its captivating exploration of the creative process, "Hay Fever" seeks to seduce the audience into discovering that force within themselves.
Performances of "Hay Fever" commence tonight and run through April 23. Tickets can be purchased at the Balch Arena Box Office in the Aidekman Arts Center.
