National Theatre Live is to film Hay Fever, starring Christine Baranski and Richard E. Grant, during its West End run at Wyndham’s Theatre, and the recording reaches cinemas from 14 January 2027.
Noël Coward’s comedy is the latest West End production to be booked for the big screen. National Theatre Live will capture Hay Fever in front of an audience at Wyndham’s Theatre, where it is playing now, and release it to cinemas in the UK and worldwide from 14 January 2027.
The announcement arrives a day after Phantom of the Opera was confirmed for a live filming at His Majesty’s Theatre ahead of its own 2027 cinema release, and NT Live has paired Hay Fever with a second title. The Motive and the Cue, the backstage drama by Jack Thorne directed by Sam Mendes, with Mark Gatiss, Johnny Flynn and Tuppence Middleton, goes back into cinemas from 18 February 2027, in the version filmed on the National Theatre’s Lyttelton stage in 2023.
Christine Baranski, a two-time Tony Award winner whose screen work includes The Gilded Age and Mamma Mia, is making her West End debut as Judith Bliss, a retired star of the stage who still craves an audience. Richard E. Grant, an Academy Award nominee whose credits include Celebrity Traitors and The Other Bennet Sister, plays her husband, David Bliss, and is back on a West End stage for the first time in two decades.
The play spends a weekend with the Blisses at their country house, a family too absorbed in themselves to give Judith the attention she misses. She has invited a young admirer to stay, unaware that every other member of the household has asked a guest down for the very same weekend.
Emily Burns, director of Dear Octopus, stages the revival for Wessex Grove and Gavin Kalin Productions. Around the two leads are Nancy Carroll as Myra Arundel, Will Close as Simon Bliss, Charles Edwards as Richard Greatham, Ophelia Lovibond as Sorel Bliss, Ash Hunter as Sandy Tyrell, Lucy Karczewski as Jackie Coryton and Jo McInnes as Clara, with Helena Antoniou, Charlotte Avery, Alan Drake and Shaun Mendum completing the company.
Set and costumes are by Frankie Bradshaw, lighting by Oliver Fenwick and sound by Tingying Dong. Bethan Clark is fight and intimacy director, Danièle Lydon is dialect coach and Blythe Stewart is associate director, with casting by Jim Carnahan CSA and Liz Fraser CSA.
The critics have been kind to the pairing. The Standard called the revival a “winning star vehicle for both Grant and Baranski”, and WhatsOnStage praised Baranski’s “instinctive comic timing”; the wider response is gathered in the full review roundup.
Every NT Live release is filmed with a live audience in the house, a method the company has developed over 16 years, and its screenings play at more than 1,000 venues across the UK as well as many more internationally. Cinema tickets for both titles went on sale at 10am on 8 October 2026, with participating screens listed at NTLive.com.
On stage, Hay Fever is booking at Wyndham’s Theatre until Saturday 12 December 2026, and tickets are on sale now.
