AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

Spring doesn't officially arrive until next weekend, but last night, a blast of warm, comic air – hinted with just a bit of ectoplasm – blew over Broadway with the opening of director Michael Blakemore's delightful revival of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit at the Shubert Theater.

Coward's 1941 play, reportedly written in less than a week just as London was enduring the Blitz, proved to be a great tonic for beleaguered Britons and then, Americans. The frothy story centers on what happens after Madame Arcati (Angela Lansbury), a bumbling psychic, holds a séance in the country home of Charles (Rupert Everett) and Ruth (Jayne Atkinson) Condomine. He's asked Arcati to come because he wants to learn some of her "tricks of the trade" for a mystery novel he's working on. Little does he expect that Arcati will manage to summon the ghost of Elvira (Christine Ebersole), his first wife who's been dead some seven years.

The comic possibilities within Coward's premise are bountiful – particularly given the fact that Charles is the only person who can see Elvira. Early on, heated arguments break out between Charles and Ruth because she thinks his snapping at Elvira is directed at her. Of course, moments when Elvira moves objects around the room – making them seem to float through the air for the other characters – inspire laughs. Alongside the situational amusement, there are, of course, Coward's signature bon mots, cutting barbs, and delicious epigrams.

Blakemore and the cast certainly make the most of all of the comic potential of the script, and discover new ways to heighten it. Lansbury imbues Arcati with dotty athleticism and a host of smile-inducing tics. When Arcati prepares to go into a trance to contact her control on the "other side" – a snotty seven-year-old named Daphne – Lansbury's Martha Graham-like fluttering around the stage to Irving Berlin's "Always" is simply hilarious. Susan Louise O'Connor, playing the Condomines' maid Edith, also proves to be a marvelous physical comedienne, as the mentally slow, but overly eager to please, Edith rushes through her duties around the living room (rendered handsomely, but with curious sparseness, by scenic designer Peter J. Davison).

Beyond the pleasures and welcome distraction that "Spirit" provides, the production also offers some genuinely touching moments. It's not only fascinating, but also quite rewarding, to experience the ways in which Everett, Atkinson, and Ebersole explore the psychological implications of Elvira's return. What starts as a coolly loving marriage turns rancorous once Elvira's appeared. Jealousy – which Atkinson, in a meticulously and gorgeously nuanced performance, never overplays – flares in the truly frustrated and confused Ruth. Charles begins to enjoy the company of the more playful (and Ebersole, gliding around the stage in a diaphanous slinky white-gray gown with enormous billowing sleeves from costume designer Martin Pakledinaz, is certainly this) Elvira. His witticisms, delivered with aplomb by Everett, become increasingly biting, only accelerate the discordant comedy, which, in Blakemore's shrewd staging, is equally about how cracks in a marriage can significantly deepen when put under exceptional strain.

This darker side to the piece never overwhelms the production – which serves up Coward's three acts in two and in which scene changes are underscored by Ebersole's warmly melodious renderings of songs by Coward and the Berlin tune that's key to the action. Simon Jones and Deborah Rush, reliable here as always, are on hand as the local doctor and his wife, friends of the Condomines who are confused onlookers to the strange events that precede and follow Elvira's materialization, a phenomenon which makes for truly satisfying theatergoing this spring. It's just the sort of diversion New Yorkers need right now.

---- Andy Propst

Blithe Spirit plays at The Shubert Theatre (225 West 44th Street). Performances are Tuesday at 7pm; Wednesday at 2 and 8pm; Thursday and Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2 and 8pm; and Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are $31.50 - $116.50 and can be purchased by calling 212-239-6200 or by visiting www.Telecharge.com. Further information is available online at www.BlitheOnBroadway.com