Blithe Spirit

Blithe Spirit strands a novelist between two wives, one living and one dead. Charles Condomine arranges a seance as research for a book, expecting harmless theatre from an eccentric medium. What he gets is the returning ghost of his first wife, Elvira, visible and audible to him alone.

Elvira has no intention of leaving. She rearranges the household, needles Charles's second wife Ruth, and speaks freely in the knowledge that Ruth can hear only half of the exchange. Charles, defending himself against accusations he cannot explain, discovers that Elvira's plans for their reunion are more literal than he had assumed. The medium who opened the door has no idea how to close it.

Noel Coward wrote the play in 1941 and called it an improbable farce. Its first run lasted years, and it has since settled into the repertoire as one of his most frequently revived works. Critics have set it beside Wilde for the precision of its construction and for the coolness with which it treats death.

The tone is light and the subject is mortality, which is the joke. Grief is treated as an inconvenience, marriage as a negotiation conducted in front of guests, and the supernatural as a social embarrassment. The wit is fast, the cruelty is affectionate, and the play keeps finding new ways for Charles to be wrong.

It suits audiences who like a comedy of manners with a supernatural hinge, and anyone who enjoys watching a self-satisfied man lose control of his own drawing room. The laughs are verbal, and they land faster in a full house.