The Dead Arise and Wit Ensues

The scene opens: you're in the drawing room of a simple yet elegant English cottage, the soothing strains of Ella singing "Always" wafting in the background, fresh flowers on the table and a decanter of wine waiting for you. Suddenly, from stage left, caustic British wit slices through the air and shatters the soft stillness. This, my friends, is a Noel Coward play.

In other words, Lyric Stage's production of Blithe Spirit fits the mold. Just as Coward himself was perceived in the first half of the century, it deserves both adoration and derision. Blithe Spirit is splendidly witty at some points and horribly tedious in others.

The play explores the classic romantic triangle but with a twist: The "other woman" is an ectoplasmic ex-wife. Charles Condomine (Robert Bouffier) is a writer researching the occult for his next novel. Together with his second wife, Ruth (Sheila Ferrini), he summons the delightfully eccentric medium Madam Arcati (Mara Clark) to perform a seance in his home. Through some mysterious circumstances, his first wife Elvira (Dee Nelson) appears--and refuses to leave. One disaster after another ensues as Elvira and Ruth fight it out for their husband--fertile ground for Coward to flex his comic muscle.

Unfortunately, his insistence on repetition beats his jokes to death. The running gag of the show is the neurotic cockney maid Edith, who is unable to perform her duties at a normal pace. To clear the breakfast trays she needs a running start, and Ruth spends the duration of the play trying to slow her down. The triviality of this detail is magnified enormously as it is repeated, endlessly. Also distracting is the number of times Charles visits the liquor cabinet and meticulously makes dry martinis--stirred, not shaken. The pace of the plot is not quick enough to keep from being bogged down by these contrivances.

But the actors attempt--sometimes successfully--to overcome Coward's theatrical missteps. The effortless performance of Mara Clark as Madam Arcati is the highlight of this show. She alone is able to transcend the weighty constraints of her character and convince the audience of her authenticity.

As Charles, Robert Bouffier achieves moments of comic mastery as he fumbles over how to deal with his two wives. His expressiveness appears most in his delicious handling of lascivious scenes with the ethereal Elvira, but his incompetent-and-clueless-husband act nonetheless gets old quickly.

Some impatience with the play perhaps results from seeing this scenario one too many times. Popular movies (Ghost, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters) with the same treatment of otherworldly experiences have numbed us to the once-ingenious plot. It's particularly ironic that his plays should seem hackneyed, since Coward's ideas broke into the conservatism of the 1940's with his sexual innuendo and fresh comedic touch. Damn that Hollywood.