Blithe spirit dating
02-Oct-2020 01:06
When Madame Arcati unleashes the spirit of his first wife, Elvira, things go from “oh dear” to “oh no!” as Elvira wreaks havoc on Charles, Ruth, and the house.Tagsangela lansbury, bbc, blithe spirit, charles condomine, cornwall, daphne du maurier, david lean, gertrude lawrence, gielgud theatre, influence, inspiration, intertexts, literature, london, madame arcati, manderley, margaret rutherford, mrs danvers, noel coward, origins, portmeirion, rebecca, theatre last night, the wonderful new production that is currently at the Gielgud Theatre.It stars Angela Lansbury as Madame Arcati, the medium who unwittingly summons Charles Condomine’s first wife back from the dead.And both eventually pin the blame for the strange goings-on on the servants, Edith in Ultimately, each concludes with the destruction of the property in which the story has occurred: the Condomine mansion in Kent, which falls down, and Manderley in Cornwall, which is razed to the ground by fire.The connections seem so strong to me that I was surprised not to find anything about them online, neither on Noel Coward fan sites (of which there are many) nor in the usual scholarly journals.
Enter Deirdre Davis as the medium Madam Arcati, like a former Scottish schoolteacher gone full new-age; and enter also, after an experimental seance, the pouting blonde ghost of Charles’s late wife Elvira, brilliantly clad by Adrian Rees in a searing scarlet that cuts straight across Ruth’s tasteful range of green-blue smart-casual outfits.If you are in London before the middle of June 2014, I really recommend it.