Fine "Blithe Spirit" needs its proper three acts
The one way - the only way - to make the lively, delightful Delaware Theatre Company production of Blithe Spirit even better would be to stage it as Noël Coward wrote it: in three acts.
The one way - the only way - to make the lively, delightful Delaware Theatre Company production of Blithe Spirit even better would be to stage it as Noël Coward wrote it: in three acts.
Lots of plays are nowadays done with fewer breaks. If you're a modern director, staging (and editing) Shakespeare as you like it, one intermission will often do in a work of many acts.
That's not true all the time with more modern three-acts, written with natural breaks and frequently produced in two halves. Coward wrote his supernatural Blithe Spirit with such natural breaks in five days in 1941, determined to give fellow Britons an escape from war gloom. It's long. It needs three acts.
The Delaware Theatre Company production, which otherwise glistens under the direction of Domenick Scudera, clocks in at three hours and, true, would be 15 minutes longer under Coward's plan, with a second intermission.
But cut us a break: Not only does this Blithe Spirit strain our haunches with two long halves, it seems to beg for editing. That's because what appears repetitious, especially in part two, wouldn't if the show were performed in three parts. (Coward, by the way, was proud when only two lines were cut at the show's premiere.)
The show we get is wonderfully rich and entertaining - a comedy Coward called "an improbable farce," done here by actors who work together flawlessly.
The production is tied to Delaware Theatre Company's roots. Two of its founding partners (and partners in marriage) - Ceal Phelan and Peter DeLaurier, who went on to make their marks with People's Light & Theatre - are witnesses to a seance conducted by the peculiar Madame Arcati (Meghan Colleen Moroney) at the home of a couple where the play is set.
They are the young Ruth (Christie Parker) and Charles (James Michael Reilly); he secretly wants details of the seance for a new book he's writing. The seance produces what Madame Arcati has wanted all her life (or many lives): an "ectoplasmic manifestation" - a ghost (Beth Hylton). She is the spirit of Charles' first wife, which is not good for his current marriage.
The cast members also include Sarah Doherty, who is beginning to specialize in bizarre maids - the clueless one here and another last season in Act II's production of Boeing-Boeing.
In addition to being a superbly oiled ensemble, the actors are handsome in Brian Strachan's costumes and Shelly Hicklin's lighting, and on John Raley's expansive living-room set. And all very spirited, indeed.
Blithe Spirit
Through March 30 at Delaware Theatre Company, 200 Water St., Wilmington. Tickets: $35-$49. Information: 302-594-1100 or www.delawaretheatre.org.EndText