Lindsay Duncan and Jeremy Northam Will Headline Hay Fever in London

Olivier winners Lindsay Duncan and Jeremy Northam will lead the cast of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever at the West End’s Noel Coward Theatre. Joining Northam and Duncan on stage will be Kevin McNally and Olivia Colman. Additional casting will be announced shortly. Performances of the play, directed by Howard Davies, will begin on February 10, 2012.

Judith Bliss (Duncan) once glittering star of the London stage, now in early retirement, is still enjoying life with more than a little high drama and the occasional big scene. To spice up her weekend, Judith invites a young suitor to join her in the country. However, her novelist husband, David (McNally), and her two eccentric children, Simon and Sorel, have had the same idea for themselves and any hope for private flirtation disappears as the family’s guests begin to arrive. Misjudged meetings, secret seductions and scandalous revelations all run riot at the most outrageous of all house parties.

Duncan’s many London theater credits include Plenty, The Homecoming, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Cryptogram, That Face and Noel Coward’s Private Lives. Her screen credits include Rupert Goold’s Richard II, White Heat, Dr Who, Lost in Austen, Longford, Rome, Shooting the Past and Perfect Strangers, The Rector’s Wife, A Year in Provence, GBH and Traffik. Her film credits include Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Starter For Ten, Mansfield Park, An Ideal Husband and Prick Up Your Ears.

Northam’s theater credits include Old Times, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Country Wife, Certain Young Men and The Voysey Inheritance. His television credits include The Tudors, White Heat and Journey’s End, and his film credits include Creation, Dean Spanley, A Cock and Bull Story, Gosford Park, The Winslow Boy, An Ideal Husband, Happy Texas, Possession, Emma, The Net and Carrington.

McNally has appeared in Hamlet, Ivanov, Boeing Boeing, The Lady in the Van, Naked, Dead Funny and The Iceman Cometh. His television credits include Downton Abbey, New Tricks, Life On Mars, Margaret, Bloodlines, Dunkirk, Spooks, Shackleton, Rab C Nesbitt, Enigma and Diana, and his films include the The Pirates of the Caribbean films, Valkyrie, De-Lovely, The Phantom of the Opera, Johnny English, Sliding Doors, Irish Jam and Entrapment.

Colman’s stage credits include England People Very Nice, The Three Some and A Long Day’s Journey Into Night Her film credits include the upcoming The Iron Lady and Hyde Park on Hudson, as well as Tyrannosaur, Dog Altogether, Grow Your Own, I Could Never Be Your Woman and Hot Fuzz.

The limited engagement will run through June 2, 2012, and feature set design by Bunny Christie, lighting by Mark Henderson and sound design by Mike Walker.