Hay Fever demands an approach that is larger than life. This revival at the Yvonne Arnaud seems slightly underplayed, not uninhibited enough. As the programme note reminds us, Noël Coward based his clever comedy on an actual American couple who treated their guests to outbursts of hysteria and false emotion. Of course you cannot really spoil this perennial favourite, but Glynis Johns is perhaps miscast as the actress mother of the family. Perhaps she is too good an actress to be able to ham it up fully, or perhaps her personality is not melodramatically blatant enough for the vision we have of this role. Similarly, John Le Mesurier is even more restrained as her novelist husband.

The children fare best in the family quartet. Briony McRoberts hits off the clearest Coward tone, while Michael Troughton manages her brother well. Isla Blair enjoys her sexy part as the “self-conscious vampire” while Yvonne Antrobus makes the mousy guest amusing and appealing. The male guests are diplomat Donald Pickering and young admirer of the actress, Tony Matthews. Mary Griffiths does her cigarette-in-the-mouth, dresser-cum-cook act as Clara.

All the ingredients seem to be here and the Coward plot does engage interest but the direction seems on the slow side (over two and a half hours on a hot summer night) which is surprising since I have admired Michael Blakemore’s handling of such plays as those by Michael Frayn. What could be better here? Well, there’s rather too much restraint and only a half-hearted commitment to madness by the family. In short, a drawing-room comedy instead of a feverish, outrageous extravaganza. Julia Trevelyan Oman designed the sturdy set.