Blithe Spirit
From: Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
To: Saturday, 18 June 2011
Our Review: 
Your Reviews:
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Synopsis
Blithe Spirit opened in 1941 when it played for over 2,000 performances and hugely raised wartime spirits. It has been one of the world’s favourite comedies ever since. Its razor-sharp wit and wonderful characters have continued to raise spirits both in the audience and on stage.
In Blithe Spirit Novelist Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth are literally haunted by a past relationship when an eccentric medium manages to conjure up the ghost of Charles’s neurotic first wife, Elvira, at a seance.
They have assumed the preposterous Madame Arcati is a fraud who will simply entertain their dinner guests with a little chicanery and supply Charles with material for his forthcoming novel. But when Elvira appears, visible only to Charles, and determined to sabotage his current marriage, life – and the afterlife – begin to get complicated.
Alison Steadman plays the improbable clairvoyant, one of theatre’s most hilarious comic creations. Alison Steadman is one of our best-loved and most prolific actresses who recently enjoyed a West End run in Alan Bennett’s Enjoy. Also on stage she created the role of the monstrous Beverly in Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party and starred in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, for which she won an Olivier Award. Her films include Shirley Valentine and Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet and Topsy Turvy. Television work includes Fat Friends, Selling Hitler, The Singing Detective, Pride and Prejudice and Gavin & Stacey.
Hermione Norris stars as Ruth Condomine. Hermione is probably best know as Karen Marsden in the hugely popular Cold Feet for which she was nominated for Best Actress in the British Comedy Awards. Other credits include Wire in the Blood, Spooks and Kingdom.
Robert Bathurst plays Charles Condomine. Previous television credits include Cold Feet and Joking Apart. Recent theatre work includes Whipping It Up, Alex and Present Laughter.
Thea Sharrock is an award-winning director who has previously worked with Daniel Radcliffe, Keira Knightley and Damian Lewis in the West End.
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Our Review:
Michael Coveney - 10 March 2011
Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit was written to cheer everyone up in the War, even though Graham Greene thought that a comedy of death and ghosts was a weary exhibition of bad taste.
Is it bad taste to make fun of psychic babble, séances, poltergeists and “ectoplasmic manifestations” in a style of drawing room comedy with high pressure dialogue, many good jokes and a keen sense of social decorum and its vulgar opposite?
The play still seems strikingly fresh and original, and brilliantly entertaining in its analysis of two husk-like marriages reeking of mortality and the after-life; the chill wind is blowing through the living room curtains in Kent from the very start of the play.
The first marriage was that of novelist Charles Condomine (Robert Bathurst) to the dead but still mischievous Elvira of Ruthie Henshall in a grey silk shroud; the second, his current alliance with the extremely svelte and snobbish Rut...
Latest User Review
M on - 15 April 2011:
Loved it especially Robert Bathhust: so cool and elegant. Hermione Norris's accent didn't seem posh enough and Ruthie Henshaw was simply not at all ethereal . I loved Alison Steadman's Madame Arcati really funny! Great entertainment ...
Cast
Alison Steadman (Madame Arcati)
Hermione Norris (Ruth Condomine)
Robert Bathurst (Charles Condomine)
Ruthie Henshall (Elvira)
Creative
Noel Coward (1941) (Author)
Danny Moar (for Theatre Royal Bath Productions) (Producer)
Thea Sharrock (Director)
Hildegard Bechtler (Design)
Mark Henderson (Lighting)
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