Dench has had a celebrated career on the big screen, on stage and on television. She made her London stage debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company as Ophelia in Hamlet. In 1981, she starred in the British comedy series A Fine Romance opposite her husband, Michael Williams who died of cancer in January 2001. Dench had her first leading role in a feature film in 1997, when she played Queen Victoria in Her Majesty Mrs. Brown, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She won several awards for her role as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love including an Oscar in 1998. Dench returned to Broadway for the first time in almost 40 years to reprise London's Amy's View in 1999. She won a Tony for her performance. The actress most recently appeared on the London stage last year in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of All's Well That Ends Well.
Hay Fever was last seen in the West End at the Savoy Theatre in 1999 in a short-lived production that starred Geraldine McEwan as Judith Bliss and Peter Blythe as David Bliss.