It has been an absolute humdinger of a week for Richard E Grant. Last Thursday, as the country well knows, he headed to Claudia’s castle in the Scottish Highlands as part of the star-studded line-up for the second series of . On the same evening that the much-anticipated first episode was being broadcast on BBC One, Grant opened in the West End in a glorious revival of , Noel Coward’s deliciously frothy 1924 comedy of very bad manners. Oh yes and yesterday evening, Grant was voted out of . “I have managed to check-mate myself”, was his witty summary, after being selected as a Traitor in episode one and promptly announcing this fact to his fellow competitors.
I for one hope that this flurry of attention and publicity will mean a continued raised profile for this intriguing actor who, let us not forget, garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 2018 for his unreliable friend to Melissa McCarthy’s professional forger in Can You Ever Forgive Me? It has been a tough few years for 69-year-old Grant, whose wife, the acclaimed voice coach Joan Washington, died of lung cancer in 2021. No wonder he wanted to play up the camp fun factor of , swishing elegantly about with an insouciant scarf around his neck.
Talking of swishing elegantly, this is precisely what his character David Bliss does in , except this time in a stripy satin dressing gown. The paterfamilias of a self-consciously bohemian/artistic family, David is a novelist who demands rapt attention from his clan when he is reading them his latest chapters. The trouble is that his wife Judith (’s Christine Baranski) is a retired actress who has imported all her previous theatrical posturing into the elegant country house where she and David live with their lovably affected grown-up children Simon and Sorrel (a winning performance from Ophelia Lovibond).
Domestic calm is decidedly not increased by the fact that each member of the Bliss family has invited a guest down to spend the weekend – without informing anyone else. Cue all manner of misunderstandings and romantic shenanigans.
Grant burst into public attention with his film debut in Withnail and I (1987), in which he played the eponymous acerbically witty unemployed actor and fully employed alcoholic. A tall and lean figure with that instantly recognisable high, domed forehead, he was – and remains – physically striking, a trait that he employs to great effect in whatever part he assumes.
His otherworldly gaze and mad-professor-ish hair are certainly putting in the effort in , as David gets momentarily and ill-advisedly entangled with socialite Myra Arundel (Nancy Carroll, splendid), a woman who “goes about using sex as a shrimping net”. No wonder the frustrated Myra is driven to scream at the entire Bliss family, “You’re artificial to the point of lunacy!”
As for , memorable remarks about Grant abounded from the start. Maya Jama, his fellow conspirator who eventually voted for his banishment, called him “an unhinged uncle running wild in the castle”. Amol Rajan dubbed him the “lord of chaos”. It’s a great shame that Grant’s stint on the show proved so short, even though his self-reveal gave the series its major talking point so far. One can only imagine what further mischief he might have whipped up in the Highlands. Still, if it’s mischief you are after, the Bliss family can supply it in humorous abundance.
‘Hay Fever’ is at Wyndham’s Theatre, London, to December 12 (hayfeverplay.com)