Noel Coward's 'Blithe Spirit' at Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

Now on the mainstage, Coward’s comedy still plays with wit, elegance, and a darkly funny streak that makes it unique among romantic comedies.

Ian Merrill Peakes plays Charles, a successful writer researching séances for his next novel. He and wife Ruth (Karen Peakes) invite Madame Arcati (Linda Thorson) to perform her otherworldly services, along with Dr. and Mrs. Bradman (Carl Wallnau, Joyce Cohen). Many dry martinis are consumed and the séance, enlivened by Thorson’s writhing, spinning, and collapsing in her histrionic efforts to converse with spirits, fulfills Charles’ prediction that she’s an entertaining fraud.

Stage Magic 101

That is, until his seven-years-dead first wife, Elvira (Eleanor Hadley, in a grey gown and glowing blonde hair) shows up — seen and heard only by Charles. Coward borrows a trick from Shakespeare, creating invisibility on stage simply by declaring it and having the actors create the illusion; Ruth can’t see Elvira but Charles can, inspiring a lot of laughter as Ruth assumes that Charles’ remarks to Elvira are meant for her. Soon, Ruth is calling Charles an “astral bigamist,” and each woman wants the other to disappear, while Charles frantically tries to appease both.

(Shakespeare does this in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when fairy king Oberon says “I am invisible” and the characters no longer see him, and in Macbeth, when the title character sees the ghost of his murdered friend Banquo, but everyone else assumes Macbeth is mad.)

This works splendidly all through director Anne Lewis’s fine production. Both Ian and Karen Peakes are excellent actors, splendidly adept at Blithe Spirit’s combination of British understatement and panic at the supernatural; being a married couple probably doesn’t hurt their rapport. Handley makes the “morally untidy” Elvira appropriately mischievous and restless. Her ghostly presence was summoned, she has no choice but to be here, and ghosts just want to have fun.

Repertory’s special challenges

All seven actors – including Ally Borgstrom in the small yet vital role of Edith, the hapless maid – also play significant roles in The Taming of the Shrew, which alternates on the same stage; Handley and Ian Merrill Peakes in particular play demanding leading roles in both. Seeing them both in one day vividly proves how hard actors work.

David P. Gordon’s sumptuous two-level English drawing room with staircase, piano, French doors into the garden, and fireplace is all the more impressive given that it must be torn down and moved every other day. Thom Weaver has great fun with the play’s supernatural lighting effects, as does Kristian Derek Ball with the sound, and Charlotte Palmer-Lane’s costumes are elegant for the upper crust, and a fun mix of patterns and colors for the eclectic Arcati.

This Blithe Spirit drags a bit by modern standards, but that’s more about us than the actors’ dynamic commitment and Coward’s sparkling dialogue. I was pleasantly surprised that this Blithe Spirit lives up to my memory of director Aaron Posner’s 1998 production; there aren’t many actors who can match Greg Wood, Grace Gonglewski (as Elvira), Megan Bellwoar (Ruth), and Sally Mercer (Madame Arcati) but, as the show’s featured song hauntingly says, I’ll remember this cast “Always.”