Hay Fever Analysis

Hay Fever was a comical play with a strong message. The actors throughout this play steadily used others to gain their own attention. The message this play left behind after many laughs was do not use others, plain and simple.

The space was a well-constructed thrust stage however, the stage was not raised off the ground and the seats appeared to be mobile which lead to the belief that this is an Environmental Theater. As for the layout of the stage, there was a couch and a table in center stage for the first two acts, a door to the unseen outside front of the house upstage right, there were two large double doors upstage center leading to the backyard garden, and a raised floor upstage left containing a piano, a bookcase and a door leading

Steven Wrentmore, the Director, kept the 1920’s feel by dressing in all 1920’s costumes and everyone spoke as if they were living at the time. Michelle Bisbee, the scene designer, made the inside of the home appear 1920’s because everything was grand. The Bliss’ home was grand with the spiral staircase, the very large backdoors, and the eloquent piano. The actors’ mannerisms seemed like they were portraying a silent film. In older movies, actors seemed very dramatic and had flamboyant actions to prove so; the actors in Hay Fever shared the same feel for the dramatics. As far as Stephen Wrentmore’s directing goes, he did an excellent job. The scene when Chris Karl (Richard) and Caitlin Stegemoller (Jackie) enter and are left alone to make small talk with each other is the best pertaining to directing. The two actors used the entire stage in this scene and were very awkward with one another. This was Wrentmore’s doing because you could tell he had a vision for this scene in particular because it seemed very crisp and well rehearsed. The actors played it perfect with the excessively long pauses in their awkward small talk that the crowd was laughing through the entire scene. It appeared that Wrentmore instructed the actors, to keep their pauses longer than natural to heighten the awkward tension in the scene, which made it

The entire audience was laughing during most of the production, I was even laughing out loud, which doesn’t happen very often. Every interaction between the characters was comical at one point during the production. An example of this playing out would be in the second act when Rascher busts through the door and proclaims his engagement. The only purpose of this is to entertain and entertain it did. The actors seemed natural moving along with their blocking and engaging with each other on stage. There was no point at which it was confusing why someone moved here or there, every movement made