Blithe Spirit - Apollo Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
NEXT year, Alison Steadman will star in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, which runs at the Apollo Theatre, Shafesbury Avenue, for a limited season – from March 2 to June 18, 2011.
Novelist Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth are literally haunted by a past relationship when an eccentric medium (Steadman) manages to conjure up the ghost of Charles’s neurotic first wife, Elvira, at a seance.
They have assumed the preposterous Madame Arcati is a fraud who will simply entertain their dinner guests with a little chicanery and supply Charles with material for his forthcoming novel. But when Elvira appears, visible only to Charles, and determined to sabotage his current marriage, life – and the afterlife – begin to get complicated.
Steadman, who was last seen on the West End stage in Alan Bennett’s Enjoy, created the role of the monstrous Beverly in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party and starred in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, for which she won an Olivier Award. Her screen credits include Shirley Valentine, Life Is Sweet and Topsy Turvy (film); Fat Friends, Selling Hitler, The Singing Detective, Pride and Prejudice and Gavin and Stacey (TV).
Blithe Spirit will be directed by Thea Sharrock, whose work includes The Emperor Jones, Happy Now? and the current After the Dance (National Theatre); The Misanthrope, Equus, A Voyage Round My Father and Heroes (West End); Cloud Nine (Almeida Theatre); and several productions for The Peter Hall Company including Blithe Spirit in 2004, when Penelope Keith led the cast.
Blithe Spirit originally opened in 1941 when it played for over 2,000 performances and hugely raised wartime spirits. And in 1945, a film version starred Rex Harrison and Margaret Rutherford.
Prior to the West End, Blithe Spirit will open at the Theatre Royal Bath (November 3 to November 13, 2010), before visiting Brighton, Cambridge, Milton Keynes and Richmond (February 21 to February 26, 2011).
All My Sons continues at the Apollo Theatre until October 2, 2010. It will be followed – from October 6, 2010 to February 26, 2011 – by The Country Girl.