Wyndham’s theatre, London Grant brings shock-haired vigour as a vain novelist forced to welcome his boho children’s surprise guests in comedy of clipped social embarrassment Hay Fever, now one of Noël Coward’s best-known and most-performed works, hasn’t always been a smash hit. British critics who found its West End debut in 1925 amusing enough nevertheless noted its lack of plot, and the first Broadway production was a flop. A critic for Vogue called it “funny in places”, which sounds like the kind of stinging putdown you’d expect from the playwright’s own hand. A century of performances have proved the play’s lasting power, but its comic effect has always lain less in the words as written than their delivery – it is, after all, about a family that is “artificial to the point of lunacy”. At their centre is diva Judith Bliss, who has retired from the stage to take up the role of country hostess. When she, her husband and their self-consciously bohemian childre...
Security council session told that world’s poorest and most vulnerable at risk after Russia blocked exports
• What was the Black Sea grain deal and why did it collapse?
Russia has been accused at the UN security council of stoking famine by blocking grain exports through the Black Sea, with the aim of profiting from higher global food prices.
Russia’s representative said on Friday that Moscow might consider restarting the scheme if it was given better terms for its own food and fertiliser exports, but was accused by western diplomats of holding the world’s poor to ransom.
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