BLITHE SPIRIT.

London

BLITHE SPIRIT
by Noel Coward

Theatre Royal Bath Productions Tour to 13 November then Savoy Theatre from 16 November 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
Runs: 2hr 40min Two intervals

TICKETS: 0870 164 8787 (Savoy)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 September at Milton Keynes Theatre

Fine revival making plain that Coward's high comedy is also a well-constructed story.Thea Sharrock gives Coward's light comedy, moving wild laughter in the teeth of death (it's a 1941 tale of death and demolition, premiered in the wake of the Blitz), a resplendent production.

All is light, bright and right; stylish, but never self-consciously putting on the Ritz. Sharrock respects the story, creating atmospheric moments. Flickering firelight casts huge shadows during the séance that brings the spirit of writer Charles Condomine's first wife Elvira back to ruin life with Ruth, his second.

Yet, once used to her presence, Charles talks to Elvira with an easy manner he never achieves with Ruth. Again, the Bradmans (the local doctor and his wife), called in to make up numbers when Charles invites a local medium in to research his new novel, have a small-town, down-to-earth manner contrasting their hosts. Barbara Kirby mounts the few steps in the Condomine living-room awkwardly, while her nervous expression and flat-voiced eagerness to please have an unvarnished hausfrau simplicity.

And the play's showpiece role? Penelope Keith takes her approach to the seance-tific spiritualist from a description of Madame Arcati as a schoolgirl. She combines enthusiastic teacher with impressionable pupil when at long last in her life she realises she's actually summoned up an emanation. In turban and trousers, sitting cross-legged on the sofa or wafting round the room, she sees herself as a practical professional. When she learns the initial séance was merely literary research her hurt professional pride is intensified by this previous whole-hearted enthusiasm. Lost in her work, she coos lovingly at Elvira's feet on the sofa, believing it's her head. Ironically, the expert is the only person who cannot see the blithe spirit.

Her eagerness can become comic turn rather than comic characterisation, just as the cast's rapid delivery, without 1940s cut-glass precise diction, causes the loss of some unaccented words from Aden Gillett's generally sparkling Charles and even Joanna Riding. Yet Riding, shocked at her husband's inexplicable behaviour, or patronising him in her efficient, buttoned-up day-wear finely contrasts Amanda Drew's feline, sinuous Elvira, smiling, conceding minor points with a superior sense of being in control.

Edith: Michelle Terry
Ruth Condomine: Joanna Riding
Chrles Condomine: Aden Gillett
Dr Bradman: Derek Hutchinson
Mrs Bradman: Barbra Kirby
Madame Arcati: Penelope Keith
Elvira: Amanda Drew

Director: Thea Sharrock
Designer: Simon Higlett
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Sound: Gareth Fry

2004-09-22 09:37:52