‘A plotless play’ is the perfect description of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever – a comedy written in three days with no revisions back in 1924.

As the curtain began to fall at the end of Act One, to uncertain and confused clapping from the audience, I was beginning to wonder if anything would happen at all.

However, the fact that the play has hardly been off the stage around the world in the past 90 years must be testament to its ability to entertain.

Following the histrionics of the Bliss clan over a day and a half, Hay Fever begins with the two Bohemian siblings Sorel and Simon talking about nothing to no great purpose.

As the ‘action’ progresses their mother, a former grande dame of the theatre appears from the garden, overacts wildly, followed by the author father, who does the same.

It emerges that each member of the family has invited a guest for the weekend without telling each other, sparking a round of tantrums.

By the second act the laughter began to flow more freely as the terrifying reality of spending a weekend with the Bliss’ unfolded.

The guests were bullied into playing parlour games and yelled at if they did not play according to expectations.

A stolen kiss or a snog in the library were exaggerated into reasons to end marriages or initiate betrothals, much to the bemused horror of the visitors.

Judith Bliss is played by Felicity Kendall and she plays the role of faded actress declaiming and overacting to melodramatic perfection.

Some fluffed lines were a sure sign of a production in its early days, but it didn’t seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the audience who laughed and cheered the cast on.

A play where nothing happens is all very well, but I felt the action in the first act was too thin and rather subdued.