Susan Granger’s review of “Blithe Spirit” (Shubert Theater: ’08 -’09 season)
Mame Dennis is treading the boards again, this time in the guise of Madame Arcati in the current Broadway revival of Noel Coward’s starched farce “Blithe Spirit.” Of course, it’s really 83 year-old Angela Lansbury but the daffy, mischievous British medium she embodies channels the vibrations of a cousin living on Beekman Place.
It’s 1941 when she gamely pedals her bicycle onto the genteel estate of one of England’s landed gentry. Writer Charles Condomine (the ever-so-suave Rupert Everett) and his staid wife Ruth (Jayne Atkinson) have invited her for dinner, along with a local physician (Simon Jones) and his wife (Deborah Rush). Later in the evening, Mme. Arcati conducts a séance, as promised, and wafting in, seemingly from the garden, Mr. Condomine’s feckless first wife, Elvira (Christine Ebersole) suddenly appears. The thing is, only Charles can see her. Since the ectoplasm of ethereal Elvira is in no hurry to leave, Charles quickly loses his cool, becoming, as Ruth disdainfully puts it, “a sort of astral bigamist,” trying to cope with both wives under the same roof – at least until the mystified conjurer Mme. Arcati can figure out how to send Elvira back to the netherworld. As she says: “Let’s really put our backs into it.”
While director Michael Blakemore (“Copenhagen,” “Noises Off”) relishes Noel Coward’s sophisticated repartee, his primary contribution is the adroit pacing and physical comedy inherent in the ménage a trois. As an ensemble, the actors are superb, particularly the four leads: Lansbury, Everett, Atkinson and Ebersole – and Susan Louise O’Connor as the crucially inept maid Edith. And an appreciative goes to nod to set designer Peter J. Davidson and costumer Martin Pakledinaz.
“Blithe Spirit” soars.