Clurman is a highly respected literary critic and theatrical director. In this review, he offers the opinion that Coward's play is a distinctly British work that holds little appeal for American audiences.

It was Shaw, I believe, who said that America and England were two countries separated by the same language. I thought of the remark at the performance of Noel Coward's 1925 play Hay Fever at the Helen Hayes Theatre. I am not a theatrical chauvinist, but it has struck me on several occasions that certain English plays had best be left to the English. Coward's plays are among them.

The trouble with the present revival of Hay Fever is not confined to its lack of English actors, but that is part of it. The proper way to speak Coward's lines is to appear unaware of and superior to them, to pretend that they have not been...