It took English playwright Noel Coward less than a week to write Blithe Spirit. It was penned in 1941, not long after the Blitz bombings of London. Many critics surmise that Coward sought relief from what was an increasingly mad world through his immersion in the bizarre world he creates. Coward himself suggested the same: ‘I will be ever grateful to the almost psychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spirit in five days during one of the darkest years of the war.’
The irony is that Coward chooses to write a comedy about death. Murder mystery writer Charles Condomine and his wife, Ruth, invite the local psychic, Madame Arcati, to their home to perform a seance. Charles is writing a novel about a fraudulent homicidal psychic and wants to draw material from Madame’s behaviour to flesh out his character.
The trouble occurs when Charles’ first wife, Elvira, speaks to him during the seance. He is the only one present who can hear her voice. Elvira then appears to Charles—and Charles only—having apparently been summoned back to the world of the living. In spite of himself, Charles is lured into her ‘reality’ and manipulated into enjoying himself with Elvira at the expense of poor Ruth.
Blithe Spirit explores the relationship between husband and wife; it profits from the insatiable curiosities we have about our partners’ previous loves, the jealousies and the misunderstandings. The interaction between Charles (William McInnes) and his wives—alive and dead—proves full of comic opportunity.
McInnes does well playing the hen-pecked husband, whose life has been run by women, starting with his mother and continuing with his two wives, even though he remains in denial. ‘You won’t even let me have my own hallucinations,’ he cries to his second wife.
The banter between Charles and Ruth and Charles and Elvira is perhaps the most enjoyable part of the show. The contrast between the strait-laced, uptight Ruth, played by the very funny Roz Hammond, and the sexy, carefree Elvira, played by Pamela Rabe, turns the concepts of alive and dead on their heads. Rabe appears to be the most ‘alive’ of the play’s characters, with the exception perhaps of Madame Arcati.
The scene in which Elvira makes the transition from a spirit to the ghost that Charles can see and interact with is excellent. The lighting on Rabe and her dress, and even her skin colour, seem somehow
ethereal. She plays the mischievous, cheeky