Spending a weekend with the eccentric Bliss family is enough to drive anyone mad - and the discomfort suffered by their guests is so painfully amusing that audiences can still enjoy Noel Coward's Hay Fever, now showing at the Richmond Theatre more than 80 years after it was first seen in the West End.

But the laughs were some time in coming because there was a very slow build up of tension despite Peter Hall being behind this revival.

Hay Fever was one of the earlier works of the legendry playwright who was born in Teddington in 1899 and we don't quite see the full range of his famous wit.

The play centres on the theatrical Bliss family inviting guest to their country home and then displaying such dreadful manners that their visitors all feel insulted. But the rudeness in the first act is simply through ignoring the new arrivals - we have to wait until the second act for the bitchy put downs we expect from Coward.

Stephanie Beacham couldn't quite match the comic timing and commanding performance of previous lead Judi Dench as family matriarch Judith Bliss, though she did show an amusing mixture of vulnerability and arrogance in capturing the many flaws of a retired actress. And Christopher Timothy was superb as her self-obsessed, fussy novelist husband David.

I also enjoyed Sarah Berger's portrayal of Judith's outspoken, man-eating friend Myra. She finally gains the full the attention of the insufferable family by calling them hypocrits with false, over-theatrical reactions to almost every situation.

William Ellis and Madeleine Hutchins, as the maddeningly bohemian Bliss children, hamed it up wonderfully well to play a full part in the disfunctional family's dreadful melodramas.

Andrew Hall, as the stuffy diplomat Richard Greatham, Emily Pollet, a suitably clueless Jackie Coryton, Christopher Naylor, as the hero-worshiping Sandy Tyrell, and Pamela Buchner gave good support in trying to cope with some preposterous behaviour by the Blisses.

The irony is captured perfectly by the last line of the play. As the guests flee, slamming the door behind them, the quite impossible Judith Bliss remarks "How very rude!". In this case Bliss is ignorance!