We've been to see the latest Coward revival headed for the London stage. We thought it lacked style and spirit - though the version of Madame Arcati offered by Jennifer Saunders is a great comic creation.
Another Noël Coward revival is heading for London’s West End, hot on the heels of last summer’s smash hit production of Present Laughter at the Old Vic.
This time, it’s a new production of Noël Coward’s 1941 comedy Blithe Spirit, last seen in London six years ago starring veteran Broadway star Angela Lansbury as the spiritualist medium Madame Arcati. The production was an undoubted hit, attracting stellar reviews during a sell-out run.
Six years on, and Jennifer Saunders steps up to play the medium in Richard Eyre’s production, first seen at the Theatre Royal in Bath last summer. This version is currently on a short regional tour ahead of a short season at the Duke of York’s Theatre, and we saw it last weekend at the Theatre Royal in Brighton.
Judging by the sold-out house and the very good reception, this version too can expect to do very well – but sad to say it did not live up to its promise and both Michael and I thought it was the weakest version of the five or six we had seen.
As the play opens, successful novelist Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth are preparing to host a dinner for the local GP and his wife, and a spiritualist medium who recently moved to the area, Madame Arcati. She has been invited in order to conduct an after-dinner séance. The Condomines have feigned interest in Madame Arcati’s work, but in reality the evening has been arranged as part of Charles’s research for his next crime novel featuring an evil medium.
The séance duly takes place, but something actually does happen, bringing the ghost of Charles’s first wife Elvira back to the house – with disastrous consequences, to Charles’s second marriage and the well-being of his second wife Ruth. Madame Arcati endeavours to exorcise first one and then two late wives, and eventually succeeds with the unwitting help of the maid Edith.
These days when Blithe Spirit is revived, the media attention tends to focus on the person playing Madame Arcati, but in reality the play rests heavily on the shoulders of Charles and his two wives – especially Elvira. They all have some cracking lines to deliver, and the progressive fracturing of Charles and Ruth’s marriage in the face of Elvira’s return can be quite gripping. We see Charles’s growing nostalgia for the years with his first wife – and we get a brief picture of a relationship not unlike Eliot and Amanda from Private Lives.
Sadly, in this production, the three principals disappointed - Emma Naomi as Elvira, Geoffrey Streatfield as Charles and Lisa Dillon as Ruth did not seem at ease with the play or their characters. Too often, they were shrill and fidgety, and shouting tended to substitute for projection. They tripped over each other several times. They seemed out of their time, too: a small but important detail was the failure to dress for dinner in the opening scene. This is the 1930s, folks, when people of this class almost always did so. Indeed, Charles actually has a line later in the play when he says “We always dress for dinner”. To me, seeing him sitting down to dinner in a green blazer and tan slacks got the piece off to an awkward and unconvincing start. The set design, too, sat oddly with both the times and the status of the Condomines.
Jennifer Saunders did a fine job as Madam Arcati – she built a character and gave her consistent mannerisms – plenty of scope for stage business whilst staying true to Coward’s rather prickly, ultimately lonely character. She is a great comic creation.
Ultimately, though, this is an ensemble piece, depending for its success as much on the waspishness and wit of the three main protagonists as it does on Madame Arcati. Sadly on this occasion the ensemble lacked the necessary spirit. Let’s hope the new film version starring Dame Judi Dench, due for release this summer, does a bit better.