Remarkable Spirit! (LAArtsOnline.com)

Angela Lansbury stars in Blithe Spirit at the Ahmanson Theatre (Photo: Johan Persson)

Remarkable Spirit!

Noel Coward’s classic comedy Blithe Spirit, arriving at the Ahmanson Theatre this month starring the redoubtable Angela Lansbury, was first seen in London’s West End in 1941 creating a new long-run record for a non-musical British play with 1,997 performances. It opened on Broadway later that same year (657 performances) and has since enjoyed several critically acclaimed West End and Broadway revivals, most recently in 2009, winning Lansbury her fifth Tony Award.

Coined “an improbable comedy,” the play tells the tale of novelist Charles Condomine who, hoping to gather material for his next book, invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati (Lansbury) to his house to conduct a séance. The scheme backfires when his annoying and temperamental first wife Elvira is summoned from the dead and makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles’s marriage to his second wife Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost. As we are fond of saying in America, hijinks ensue!

The history of Blithe Spirit is remarkable. Coward himself adapted the play to film in 1945 and then directed a musical adaptation entitled High Spirits on Broadway in 1964. The play has also been adapted for television and radio, and it is considered to be Coward’s most popular comedy, which, considering the classic canon of work he left behind, is really saying something. So, the question now is, do we believe in spirits? Do we believe in ghosts? It seems we will soon find out!

Blithe Spirit runs December 9 to January 18 at the Ahmanson Theatre.