Written in just under one week back in 1941, Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” is a comedy about death. It became an instant popular success even though England’s war with Germany was at full-tilt and aerial bombardments were a constant threat. Well, even in darker times we need lighter diversions, don’t we?
The current Ahmanson production, through January 18, stars the iconic Angela Lansbury (“Murder, She Wrote”) as the inept and somewhat dotty psychic medium Madame Arcati, decked out in gypsy-like garb. While not exactly a fraud or charatan, she is unable to restrain what she conjures forth, in the way that Mickey Mouse was an incompetent sorcerer’s apprentice.
Madame Arcati has been invited into the home of well-to-do novelist Charles Condomine (Charles Edwards) and his pretty but dry second wife, Ruth (Charlotte Parry). In what is planned as an amusing evening, the Condomines have invited over their friends, Dr. Bradman (Simon Jones) and his wife (Sandra Shipley), to participate in a seance – the kind with table taps, one for yes, two for no – which Charles is interested in solely for any ideas it may give him for a novel he plans to write.
Charles is urbane, suave, debonair, and the central peg of Coward’s play (actually a kind of muted farce), whose outright dismissal of Madame Arcati’s abilities comes back to haunt him, literally. The old lady conjures up the first Mrs. Condomine – a sassy and saucy Elvira (Jemima Rooper), to whom Charles was married for five years, before her death seven years earlier. She seems to have been quite sensual in life since she is still sensual in death. But perhaps the very names – Elvira and Ruth – are clear indications of their character (you find lots of accountants named Pat, Marge, Sue or Ruth, but when it comes to unbridled fun it’s always Scarletina, Oohlaan, or Serliana – I’m right, aren’t I?).
“Blithe Spirit” is amusing throughout, even if one can’t catch all of the witticisms, spoken briskly and with pronounced British accents, but it bumps up a notch to hilarious as soon as Elvira is present to do her mischief. That’s because Charles is the only one who can see her or hear her, and Ruth often thinks that Charles is talking to her when her husband is actually talking to – or more often talking back to – Elvira. The latter is spitefully impish (she wants Charles all for herself, at any cost), and it’s probably these scenes that have bolstered the play’s popular reputation. In another sense, “Blithe Spirit” is sort of the upper crust version of “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands,” Jorge Amado’s amorous romp of a novel in which the rakish, ne’er do well first husband comes back from the dead after Flor has married a stable but colorless doctor.
The doctor in this play, however, gives some ballast to the work, while Mrs. Bradman with her verbal blundering is a bit of a foil for Madame Arcati who throws her dubious glances that invariably elicit a chuckle from the audience. And then when the medium is about to go knocking at the portals of the spiritual world she performs a little hocus-pocus dance that’s fairly quirky by any standard: Imagine your great-grandmother trying to “walk like an Egyptian.”
One shouldn’t give Angela Lansbury a free pass simply because she’s a living legend. She earns her accolades here. “Blithe Spirit” is an ensemble piece with a terrific cast – Parry and Rooper are fun to watch – and director Michael Blakemore has every facet of the stage action nailed down and firmly in place.
It’s hard to imagine anybody writing a less than favorable review of this work, although in “Changing Stages,” an overview of 20th century British and American theater, Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright dismissively characterize “Blithe Spirit” as a “clinking one-joke farce about the afterlife.” I can only assume they witnessed an inferior performance. The only character – or maybe it’s the characterization – that I found baffling was that of the maid, Edith (Susan Louise O’Connor), who stumbles and drops things and seems perpetually hyper-nervous – to the point where she belongs in an over-the-top farce by Ray Cooney, where bumbling physical humor is the order of the day (and which the British, God knows why, lap up like honey). Although Edith is eventually a surprise linchpin, her character jars too heavily with the others – unless we’re supposed to be reminded that Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw” is wrapping up its run across the courtyard at the Mark Taper Forum. What the maid saw, what the butler saw; make of it what you will.
After a number of unexpected twists Coward’s play has a somewhat seismic ending that might conceal the fact that it’s a finale at once definite and inconclusive. It’s certainly not a one-joke farce but calls over something else from “the other side,” this being notions of love temporary and eternal, compatibility and memory, and how they can be managed or mismanaged or merely coped with. But whatever one’s thoughts are regarding the story and its implications, the show is driven by superb acting, direction, and first-class production values.
“Blithe Spirit” is onstage through January 18 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles in the Music Center. Performances, Tuesday through Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Added shows on Monday, Dec. 22 and 29 at 8 p.m., and Tuesday, Dec. 23 at 2 p.m. No performances on Wednesday, Dec. 24, Thursday, Dec. 25, and Thursday, Jan. 1. Tickets, $25 to $140. The excerpts from Noël Coward’s original songs heard between scenes are sung by Christine Ebersole, an Elvira herself once, full versions of which appear on CD. (213) 628-2772 or go to CenterTheatreGroup.org.
