Starring: Dame Judi Dench, Peter Bowles, Belinda Lang, Kim Medcalf, Dan Stevens, Charles Edwards, William Chubb, Olivia Darnley, Lin Blakley
Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London

It's 1920s rural England and the Blisses are looking forward to a relaxing quiet weekend.

Sorel (Medcalf) and Simon (Stevens) are your average siblings from a privileged background. They chat between them about not-very-much, they teasingly jibe each other but are generally lost in their own musings. Then Sorel says she has invited a gentleman friend Richard (Chubb) down for the weekend.

In swans matriarch Judith (Dench) whose successful lifetime on the stage has left her slightly detached from reality in a world where everything can be a drama and an over-exaggerated gesture.

She announces that she has invited a young adoring fan, Sandy (Edwards) for the weekend.

Then Simon announces he has invited his current infatuation Myra (Lang) for the weekend.

Patriarch, David, is an incredibly successful novelist who is trying to complete his latest masterpiece and wants no distractions or interruptions.

Oh, and he's invited a flapper, Jackie (Darnley) down for the weekend.

Everyone is terribly put out.

As each of their guests arrive the hosts try their hardest to individually alienate their respective competition, immediately putting everyone on the defensive.

Then, as an after dinner game goes terribly wrong, each Bliss seeks comfort in the attentions of the others' guest.

As each dalliance is uncovered more fuel is given to Judith's over-dramatic reactions which are, in turn, mirrored with each family member which, in turn, freaks the hell out of each guest.

To think of Noel Coward would be to imagine over privileged gentry swanning around their expansive drawing rooms, talking loudly and confidently with perfect enunciation big smiles on their faces and being 'utterly beastly' to each other.

And Hay Fever's no different.

But Coward has had the affectation turned up to eleven as we're given a farcical look into the reality - and emotionally - detached lives of the Blisses.

They are so wrapped up in their cotton wool worlds that they do not give a second thought to the emotions that they might stir up in the 'normal' people around them.

Simon is a carefree artist with his head in the clouds and his heart on his sleeve whilst his father, David, is brash, gruff and focussed on his work.

Sorel is, perhaps, the only Bliss who's slightly aware of their dysfunction and would try desperately to start fitting in. But she plays the reformist with the same excited vigour as she would taking up the oboe; it's just another hobby which the concept of is more appealing than the actual practice.

The play's centrepiece is, in no doubt, Judith who uses life as a means to project herself against. Dench sashays around with such aplomb and gusto that she invokes raucous laughter with even the most simple of gestures. She is abound by an ego that refuses to believe that she is anything but young, virile and the centre of attention. And with that comes a self-obsessed tragedy that allows her the delusion that life is tough on her. But her family does everything in their power to encourage the melodrama.

Of course the real comedy kicks in as the 'normal' people enter for these social outcasts to better play against and, for all intents and purposes, play with.

Coward has written an incredibly hilarious farce that is still as funny now nearly a century after its origins. To be able to watch Judi Dench in such a role (which is reflective of her performance in Mrs Henderson Presents) is an unbridled joy and an opportunity that should not be missed.