The Globe and Mail - July 6, 2001

"A Hay Fever worth catching"
Ray Conlogue

Canada doesn't have many theatrical dynasties, but the Follows family is certainly to Canadian theatre what the Redgraves are to the British stage. And the Follows production of Hay Fever at the Gravenhurst Opera House, in Muskoka cottage country, celebrates the days when theatrical dynasties put themselves, and their family battles, proudly on-stage.

Every Follows is present and accounted for: Megan ( Anne of Green Gables ), the most celebrated; parents Ted Follows and Dawn Greenhalgh, major stage actors for a half-century; Samantha, a stage actor and one of the highlights of this production; Edwina, a television screenwriter; and Laurence, an actor and director.

That's not quite enough to make up a cast, so Megan's partner, Stuart Hughes, and Samantha's husband, Sean O'Bryan, are also on-stage. Fortunately, both women hooked up with serious actors.

The result is a polished production that a theatre critic from Mars would approve on its own merits. But, in reality, half the pleasure of the production is based on the sub rosa similarity between the Follows family and the extravagant theatre family that is the subject of Noel Coward's play.

Hay Fever takes place at the country estate of David and Judith Bliss, he a self-centred novelist and she a flamingly self-absorbed stage actress. Their adult children, Simon and Sorel, purport to rebel against these emotionally neglectful parents, but, in fact, are willing participants in a family melodrama where outsiders -- such as the four friends invited down for the weekend -- are mere extras. Judith, for example, temporarily misplaces the identity of a handsome young man she has invited down for a fling: "I seem to know that fellow's face."

Each Bliss has invited a friend, intending a quiet, amorous weekend, of course neglecting to mention the fact to the rest of the family. This leads to mutual recriminations of selfishness and thoughtlessness, followed almost immediately by a wild and amoral poaching on the others' love interests.

The plum role is Judith, and Greenhalgh turns in a superbly modulated impression of this diva. In one scene, she catches her young man, Sandy Tyrell (O'Bryan), in the arms of her daughter, Sorel (Samantha Follows), and profits by the occasion to create a sobbing melodrama in which she hands over her lover to her daughter ("youth must be served") -- followed immediately by a scene in which she catches her husband making an awkward pass at her son's guest, Myra (Megan Follows), and sobbingly agrees to abandon the home so that Myra can take her place.

Sandy and Myra, guilty at most of casual flirting, are horrified to find that Judith has suddenly annexed them into her family and baffled, minutes later, to see that she has forgotten the whole business.

The Follows family are known within the theatre community as The Fighting Follows, a reputation founded in the explosive temperament and divorce years ago of Ted Follows and Dawn Greenhalgh. So there is a knowing element of self-satire in the scenes where Judith and David Bliss attack each other through their creative profession: he mocking her attempt to revive her stage reputation through a creaking melodrama, she mordantly suggesting that his literary reputation is overblown.

Samantha and Laurence Follows are clearly enjoying themselves in the roles of the Bliss offspring, who meditate on the craziness of their parents and gradually come to realize that they are just as crazy themselves. As actors, both of them are masters of the sudden pirouette and out-thrust accusing finger that are essential to the playing of Coward's style of physical comedy. They are still playing it, rather than incarnating it as their parents do, but they play it well.

Megan Follows plays Myra, the calculating visitor invited by Simon, but with a lightly suggested lesbian interest in Sorel and a mercenary interest in the wealthy father. Of the four siblings, she is clearly the one with stellar presence and authority in this kind of drawing-room setting. She hits every drawling syllable at exactly the right moment and displays herself to advantage in doorways and on staircase landings.

Hughes is also outstanding as the stiff diplomat, Greatham, who is baffled by the bohemian manoeuvrings of the Blisses: He twists and turns in mounting paroxysms of anxiety and social incompetence. Los Angeles-based O'Bryan is the amiable American visitor Sandy, whose comic value resides in the fact that, not being British, he observes the Blisses' machinations with the curious, distanced regard of an anthropologist. Edwina Follows plays Jackie Coryton, a naive visitor whose task is to be perpetually embarrassed.

The one error in the production is having Ted Follows himself direct it: It is almost impossible for an actor to both direct and star in a show. The result is that this Hay Fever is largely a series of star turns, each entertaining in itself. But an outside director would have given a sharper shape and trajectory to the whole production.

Source: The Globe and Mail