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Allan Bartholle, Carol Denster, Dan Blue, Eliot Shapiro, Fred Marhack, Gail Strewen, Albert Straw, Devin Lehany, Mahumud Surra, Nat Matcem, Daryl Louis, Marjorie Lewis, Aaron Ravel, Len Coonan, Alice Apps, Millie Kazoon.

“BLITHE SPIRIT”
SHUBERT THEATRE
225 W. 44th St.

Review by Ronald Gross
New York Theater Buying Guide

BOTTOM LINE: Our highest recommendation! Tony nominee Angela Lansbury, 83, gives the most astonishing comic performance currently on Broadway, in Noel Coward’s classic farce.

If you relished Angela Lansbury’s wry humor in Murder, She Wrote, you’re going to love seeing her let out all the stops as Madame Arcati, the psychic who plays havoc with the living by conjuring up the dead. And theater-goers will appreciate rich echoes of her Tony-winning performances in Mame, Gypsy, and Sweeney Todd.

Lansbury practically gets a standing ovation just by walking onto the stage – but then, more importantly, she earns one by turning in the best comedic performance currently on Broadway. I have never seen an audience get to their feet faster than when she took her bow after two-plus hours of hilarity, including several eccentric dances around the set which are different at every performance but often include an homage to Steve Martin’s King Tut.

Blythe Spirit was written as an antidote to the stress which the Brits were feeling under the Nazi attacks of 1941. “People needed some cheering up,” he said. So do we. Some critics attacked the play as making light of death at such a grave moment, bu t the comic spirit prevailed and the play had an unprecedented run of almost 2,000 performances, subsequently becaming a motion picture starring Rex Harrison.

The plot concerns a self-satisfied British writer, who in this production much-resembles the real Noel Coward, who hires a psychic, Madame Arcati, to conduct a séance at his luxurious home. Things get out of hand, of course, and to everyone’s surprise Elvira, the writer’s deceased first wife, “manifests” herself and begins seducing her once-husband. This lady won’t take ‘til death do us part’ for an answer!

The hilarity builds with the consternation of Wife #2, Ruth, who is very much present but cannot see or hear the ghost. Complications ensue, so that eventually there’s more than one ghost, mishaps galore, poltergeistian antics, a maid who runs at two speeds, and a set that takes on a life of its own.

All this is falling-down funny (the person in the seat in front of me literally feel out of his chair into the aisle during the second act).

The performances are faultless. Lansbury dominates the production, of course, but her success is heightened by outstanding ensemble performances by the supporting cast.

Rupert Everett as Charles, the bedeviled writer, serves up a perfect dry martini of a performance in his New York debut. He exemplifies the hauteur, wit, and elegance that we asso ciate with Coward.

The ineffable Christine Ebersole, who won every award in sight for her work in Gray Gardens, plays the ghostly Elvira much more alluringly than in previous portrayals.

Charles’ second and current wife, Ruth, is played by Jayne Atkinson, best-known for her scene-stealing turn as Homeland Security Director Karen Hayes on FOX’s 24. Atkinson has the most emotional range of any of the characters, and plays it perfectly.

Because the performances are so fine, they evoke the deeper meanings lurking under the surface of this brash farce. A marriage is under attack; a true femme fatale is luring people to the cliff-edge; sexual passion is rearing its head. The more serious Noel Coward of Private Lives and Brief Interlude is lurking in the sub-text. We are invited to notice this by one of the many excellences of Lansbury’s portrayal: she makes Madame Arcati a character we not only laugh at, but respect – and therefore, as Ben Brantley noted his Times review, “she’s a walking reproof to those who would lives their lives unexamined.”

Director Michael Blakemore, who helmed Noises Off, paces the show marvelously, capturing both the antiquarian charm of the play, but adding the baba-boom rhythm of contemp orary comedy.

See Blithe Spirit, lest you be haunted by having missed one of the most rewarding shows New York has to offer.

© 2009 by NYTBG