Blithe Spirit (play)
Blithe Spirit is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts".[1] The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost.
The play was first seen in the West End in 1941 and ran for 1,997 performances, a new record for a non-musical play in London. It also did well on Broadway later that year, running for 657 performances. The play was adapted for the cinema in 1945; a second film version followed in 2020. Coward directed a musical adaptation, High Spirits, seen on Broadway and in the West End in 1964. Radio and television presentations of the play have been broadcast in Britain and the US from 1944 onwards. It continues to be revived in the West End, on Broadway and elsewhere.
Synopsis[edit]
Charles Condomine is a successful novelist. At the start of the play, while dressing for dinner, he and his second wife, Ruth, discuss his first wife, Elvira, who died young, seven years earlier. He comments, "I remember her physical attractiveness, which was tremendous, and her spiritual integrity, which was nil".[6] Among the Condomines' dinner guests is an eccentric medium, Madame Arcati, whom Charles has invited in the hope of learning about the occult for a story he is writing. He has arranged for her to conduct a séance after dinner. During the séance she plays a recording of Irving Berlin's song "Always" on the gramophone, inadvertently attracting the ghost of Elvira.[7]
The medium leaves, unaware of what she has done. Only Charles can see or hear Elvira, and Ruth does not believe that Elvira exists, until a floating vase is handed to her out of thin air. The ghostly Elvira makes continued, and increasingly desperate, efforts to disrupt Charles's current marriage. Charles accuses her of being "feckless and irresponsible and morally unstable".[8] She finally sabotages his car in the hope of killing him so that he will join her in the spirit world, but it is Ruth rather than Charles who drives off and is killed.[9]
Ruth's ghost immediately comes back for revenge on Elvira, and though Charles cannot at first see Ruth, he can see that Elvira is being chased and tormented, and his house is in uproar. He calls Madame Arcati back to exorcise both the spirits, but instead of banishing them she unintentionally materialises Ruth. With both his dead wives now fully visible, and neither of them in the best of tempers, Charles, together with Madame Arcati, goes through séance after séance and spell after spell to try to exorcise them. It is not until Madame Arcati works out that the housemaid, Edith, is psychic and had unwittingly been the conduit through which Elvira was summoned that she succeeds in dematerialising both ghosts.[10] Charles is left seemingly in peace, but Madame Arcati, hinting that the ghosts may still be around unseen, warns him that he should go far away as soon as possible. Coward repeats one of his signature theatrical devices at the end of the play, where the central character tiptoes out as the curtain falls – a device that he also used in Present Laughter, Private Lives and Hay Fever.[11] Charles bids his vanished wives farewell and leaves at once; the unseen ghosts throw things and wreck the room as soon as he has gone.[12]
Later productions[edit]
Britain[edit]
In July 1970 the play was revived in the West End at the Globe Theatre, starring Patrick Cargill as Charles, Phyllis Calvert as Ruth, Amanda Reiss as Elvira and Beryl Reid as Madame Arcati; it ran until January 1971.[17] It was revived by the National Theatre in 1976 in a production directed by Harold Pinter, starring Richard Johnson as Charles, Rowena Cooper as Ruth, Maria Aitken as Elvira and Elizabeth Spriggs as Madame Arcati.[18] Another London revival played in 1986 at the Vaudeville Theatre, starring Simon Cadell as Charles, Jane Asher as Ruth, Joanna Lumley as Elvira and Marcia Warren as Madame Arcati.[19]
Critical reception[edit]
After the first performance in Manchester the reviewer in The Manchester Guardian thought the mixture of farce and impending tragedy "An odd mixture and not untouched by genius of a sort".[43] After the London premiere, Ivor Brown commented in The Observer on the skill with which Coward had treated his potentially difficult subject; he ended his notice, "But here is a new play, a gay play, and one irresistibly propelled into our welcoming hearts by Miss Rutherford's Lady of the Trances, as rapt a servant of the séance as ever had spirits on tap."[44] The London correspondent of The Guardian wrote, "London received Mr Noel Coward's ghoulish farce with loud, though not quite unanimous acclaim. There was a solitary boo – from an annoyed spiritualist, presumably."[45] The Times considered the piece the equal not only of Coward's earlier success Hay Fever but of Wilde's classic comedy The Importance of Being Earnest.[46] There were dissenting views. James Agate thought the play "common",[47] and Graham Greene called it "a weary exhibition of bad taste".[48]
When the piece had its first West End revival in 1970 the play was warmly though not rapturously praised by the critics,[49][50] but by the time of the next major production, in 1976, Irving Wardle of The Times considered, "Stylistically, it is Coward's masterpiece: his most complete success in imposing his own view of things on the brute facts of existence,"[51] and Michael Billington of The Guardian wrote of Coward's influence on Harold Pinter.[18] Coward's partner, Graham Payn, commented to Peter Hall that Coward would have loved the production (directed by Pinter) "because at last the play was centred on the marriage between Charles and Ruth; Elvira and ... Madame Arcati were incidentals".[52][n 7] After the Broadway revival in 1987 Newsweek commented that the play reminds us that Coward was the precursor of playwrights like Pinter and Joe Orton.[54]
In 2004 Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph wrote, "With Hay Fever and Private Lives, Blithe Spirit strikes me as being one of Coward's three indisputable comic masterpieces. [It is] the outrageous frivolity with which Coward treats mortality that makes the piece so bracing."[55]
Adaptations[edit]
Film[edit]
Blithe Spirit has twice been adapted for the cinema. A 1945 film was directed by David Lean, and starred two of the principals from the original stage production reprising their roles: Kay Hammond as Elvira and Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati. Constance Cummings played Ruth, and Rex Harrison Charles.[56] Coward was out of the country during the filming and was therefore obliged to leave the direction to Lean. The author was less than impressed with the result. He found Lean's direction static and said that the film "wasn't entirely bad but it was a great deal less good than it should have been".[57]
A 2020 film adaptation was directed by Edward Hall, with Dan Stevens as Charles, Isla Fisher as Ruth, Leslie Mann as Elvira and Judi Dench as Madame Arcati. In The Guardian Peter Bradshaw gave the film one star out of a possible five: "a festival of mugging and farcical overacting".[58] The New York Times also published an unenthusiastic review: "more screw-loose than screwball ... a ludicrous adaptation of Noël Coward's 1941 stage play, reimagines its source material as little more than a slip-and-fall farce".[59]
Radio[edit]
American radio adaptations were transmitted in 1944 (NBC, with Ronald Colman, Loretta Young and Edna Best), 1947 (ABC, with Clifton Webb, Leonora Corbett and Mildred Natwick), and 1952 (NBC, with John Loder and Mildred Natwick).[60]
BBC Radio's first adaptation was broadcast in 1954, with Michael Denison (Charles), Thelma Scott (Ruth), Dulcie Gray (Elvira) and Winifred Oughton (Madame Arcati).[61] A second version with Denison and Gray was broadcast in 1972, with Gudrun Ure as Ruth and Sylvia Coleridge as Madame Arcati.[62] A 1983 version featured Paul Eddington as Charles, Julia McKenzie as Ruth, Anna Massey as Elvira and Peggy Mount as Madame Arcati.[63] A 2008 adaptation featured Roger Allam as Charles, Hermione Gulliford as Ruth, Zoe Waites as Elvira and Maggie Steed as Madame Arcati.[64] In December 2014 an adaptation of the play featured cast members of The Archers in a supposed amateur production.[65]
Television[edit]
An American television adaptation was broadcast in 1946, with Philip Tonge as Charles, Carol Goodner as Ruth, Leonora Corbett as Elvira, Estelle Winwood as Madame Arcati and Doreen Lang reprising the role of Edith.[66] In Britain, BBC television broadcast a production in 1948, directed by George More O'Ferrall, with Frank Lawton as Charles, Marian Spencer as Ruth, Betty Ann Davies as Elvira and Beryl Measor reprising her stage role of Madame Arcati.[67] On 14 January 1956 Coward directed a live American television adaptation for the Ford Star Jubilee series, in which he also starred as Charles, with Claudette Colbert as Ruth, Lauren Bacall as Elvira and Mildred Natwick as Madame Arcati.[68] A British commercial television adaptation in 1964 was directed by Joan Kemp-Welch, with Griffith Jones as Charles, Helen Cherry as Ruth, Joanna Dunham as Elvira and Hattie Jacques as Madame Arcati.[69] Another American television TV production was presented in 1966 on Hallmark Hall of Fame, with Dirk Bogarde as Charles, Rachel Roberts as Ruth, Rosemary Harris as Elvira and Ruth Gordon as Madame Arcati.[70]
Musical[edit]
The play was adapted into the musical High Spirits in 1964, with book, music and lyrics by Hugh Martin and Timothy Gray. It had a Broadway run of 375 performances, starring Edward Woodward as Charles, Louise Troy as Ruth, Tammy Grimes as Elvira and Beatrice Lillie as Madame Arcati.[54] It had a three-month West End run in 1964–1965, with Denis Quilley as Charles, Jan Walters as Ruth, Marti Stevens as Elvira and Cicely Courtneidge as Madame Arcati.[71]
Novelisation[edit]
The play was novelised by Charles Osborne in 2004.[72]