Charles Edwards - Theatre - 2006 - Hay Fever

[updated 18 March 2011]

Reviews

Evening Standard
'What piquant, social embarrassment awaits these stiff, shy house guests. Judith's admirer, Charles Edwards's superannuated public schoolboy turned effete gentlemanboxer Sandy radiates smitten excitement while caught in gauche contortions of unease. "I thought your husband was dead," he confesses, aghast. "No. He's upstairs," Judith replies in nonchalant vagueness.'

Officiallondontheatre.co.uk
'Coward’s script is full of witticisms and biting remarks that the ensemble cast revel in...Charles Edwards’s Tyrell is an over-excited lapdog of a fan.'

Telegraph
'Hall's production, handsomely designed by Simon Higlett, beautifully choreographs all the great comic set pieces (the final breakfast scene is a particular triumph) and adds some new ones of his own, and there is outstanding support throughout the ranks...This is a night of English high comedy at its absolute best - and a smash hit if I ever saw one.'

Independent
'I particularly liked Charles Edwards as Sandy Tyrell, the sporty, chinless chump who here is an amusingly bashful tangle of hero-worship for Judith before becoming a jumpy, nerve-racked desperado for escape.'

British theatre guide
'She [Judith] had invited along a handsome young admirer, played by Charles Edwards....Most of the pleasure in this play lies in Coward's witty repartee rather than his plotting. How can one resist a family that openly admits that "people stare in astonishment when we say perfectly normal things". '

Morning star online
'Charles Edwards is also very amusing as her [Judith's] toy boy'

Theatre guide London
'Belinda Lang, Charles Edwards, William Chubb and Olivia Darnley as their [the Blisses'] victims are all first-rate.'

Time Out
'There are many highly amusing turns, not least Charles Edwards’s Sandy – a twitchy, backbone-free charmer.'

The Times
'Each of the four Blisses has invited a more conventional person for the weekend, giving the play what Coward rightly called its "quite extraordinarily well constructed" plot... Charles Edwards as a starstruck youth...hilarity is everywhere'.

[another review]'This is no star vehicle: Charles Edwards, with the hair of a young Michael Heseltine, Belinda Lang, with the dangerous charm of Mrs Simpson, William Chubb, with the pomposity of John Cleese, and Olivia Darnley, as a rabbit in the headlights of the collective family stare, are equal players.'

Picture

Charles at the press night after party (Getty)