Ten Chimneys Foundation on Facebook

eNews Sign Up

Darling, we’d love to give you the inside scoop on what’s going on at Ten Chimneys. Sign up for our email updates today and receive an e-coupon for $5.00 off Full Estate Tour admission(s).

Ten Chimneys Foundation's email list is strictly permission based - we do not sell or rent your email address.

Mission

Ten Chimneys Foundation’s Mission

  • Preserve and Share the buildings, furnishings, collections, and grounds of a national treasure – Ten Chimneys, the estate created by Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
  • Serve as a continuing resource and powerful inspiration for theatre, the arts, and the art of living.
  • Offer public programs consistent with the Lunts’ varied interests and core values, while maintaining the integrity and intimacy of this extraordinary estate.

Ten Chimneys is a National Historic Landmark, a “Save America’s Treasures” project site, and is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places. Ten Chimneys is owned by the non-profit 501(C)3 organization Ten Chimneys Foundation, Inc.

Noël Coward’s Riotous Masterpiece “Hay Fever” Delights Ten Chimneys

October 06, 2009

On Monday, October 5th, Ten Chimneys Foundation and the Artistic Intern Company of the Milwaukee Rep concluded its 2009 Play Reading Series with Noël Coward’s classic comedy, Hay Fever.

Hay Fever is hailed as one of Noël Coward’s masterpieces, written in just three days after he, and his best pals Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, spent a weekend with the infamous stage legend Laurette Taylor and her husband, the equally infamous playwright J. Hartley Manners. Hay Fever was one of Coward’s first successful plays and is still staged often around the world. Hay Fever is set in the English country house of the eccentric Bliss family: Judith, a retired stage actress, David, an egotistical novelist, and their two unequivocally unique children Simon and Sorel. Each family member, unbeknownst to the others, has invited a guest for the weekend. Chaos ensues as the guests arrive, take in the unconventional ways of their hosts, and plan their escape.

Play Readings at Ten Chimneys take audiences back to the “Golden Age of Radio.” This engaging series, in collaboration with Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Artistic Internship Program, features intern-read performances of outstanding plays from the Lunts’ era (1920s-1950s. Hay Fever was written in 1924.) This collaborative effort mirrors the Lunts’ devotion to mentoring and nurturing young actors.

Play Readings at Ten Chimneys are presented at the Lunt-Fontanne Program Center in Genesee Depot, WI. Admission is $15 in advance, or $20 at the door. For more information, please call (262) 968-4110.

If you missed out on Hay Fever...we welcome you to attend our next Public Program:
Saturday, November 14, 7:00 P.M.
Conversations at Ten Chimneys with Linda Mutschler, Author of “Fast Track To Fine Dining”
Ten Chimneys inspires many to embrace elegant entertaining and create a night when great friends enjoy great food. Linda Mutschler, author of “Fast Track to Fine Dining,” will share tools and strategies to plan, prepare, and enjoy fabulous dinner parties. Admission is $20 in advance/$25 at the door and includes samples of three different appetizers and three different cookies. Call (262) 968-4110 to reserve.

About HayFever
The story goes that before he found widespread success in America, Noël Coward would conveniently find himself on his friends’ doorsteps in the hope that meals could be shared and plays could be pondered. Being people who liked Noël, these friends would of course invite him in. In the case of the Lunts, the trio shared modest meals and made grand plans; in the case of Laurette Taylor, her husband, J. Hartley Manners, and their two children, Noël was treated to evenings that became legendary. As Coward wrote in his autobiography, Present Indicative: “We had a cold Sunday supper and played games, often rather acrimonious games, owing to Laurette’s abrupt disapproval of any guest (whether invited by Hartley, Dwight, Marguerite, or herself) who turned out to be self-conscious, or unable to act an adverb or a historical personage with proper abandon. There were also, very often, shrill arguments concerning rules. These were waged entirely among the family, and frequently ended in all four of them leaving the room and retiring upstairs, where, later on, they might be discovered by any guest bold enough to go in search of them, amicably drinking tea in the kitchen. It was inevitable that someone should eventually utilize portions of this eccentricity in a play, and I am only grateful that no guest of the Manners family thought of writing Hay Fever before I did.” Considered by many to be Sir Noël’s best comedy, Hay Fever opened on June 8th, 1925 at the Ambassadors Theatre with an impressive cast of actors trumped only by the colorful cast of characters Coward had created from the Sunday suppers with the Manners family.

Through the years, Hay Fever has been revived often, notably in 1964 at the National Theatre in London. In his diary entry dated Thursday, June 25, 1964, Coward wrote that “the die has been recast and I am going to direct Hay Fever after all. Larry [Sir Laurence Olivier to the masses] rang me up today in a frizz because he has to take over The Master Builder . . . and therefore can’t direct it himself. He was very dear and persuasive and said how important it would be to the company, and so I said yes.” Saying yes meant that Hay Fever would be the first production of a work by a living playwright at the National Theatre, and it would mean a hand-picked cast Coward himself once said, “could play the Albanian telephone directory.” Included in the cast was legendary actress, Edith Evans as Judith Bliss, and, as Jackie Coryton, a newcomer gaining wide attention, Miss Lynn Redgrave.

Top of Page

Ten Chimneys News