About the Play:

Blithe Spirit has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.

Blithe Spirit is a full-length comedy by Noel Coward. Researching material for a new novel, Charles engages eccentric clairvoyant Madame Arcati, a spiritual medium of uncertain talent, to conduct a séance in his home. Quite by accident, she summons the spirit of Charles's first wife and cannot make the disruptive spirit go away. Dealing with relationships on both sides of the grave, Blithe Spirit is an enduring classic.

Blithe Spirit was a hit on the London and Broadway stages. This much-revived classic from the playwright of Private Lives offers up fussy, cantankerous novelist Charles Condomine, re-married but haunted (literally) by the ghost of his late first wife, the clever and insistent Elvira. When Charles invites a visiting "happy medium", one Madame Arcati, to his house in order to learn about the occult for his new book, the last thing he or his second wife dream is that the séance will bring back his first wife, who wants Charles all to herself! This leads to the most unusual ménage a trois in the history of the stage. As the (worldly and un-) personalities clash, Charles' current wife Ruth is accidentally killed, "passes over", joins Elvira and the two "blithe spirits" haunt the hapless Charles into perpetuity. Blithe Spirit is a joyous theatrical classic from the pen of a quintessential English wit.

Blithe Spirit premiered in 1941 at the Manchester Opera House, and then opened in the West End of London later that year at the Piccadilly Theatre, and remained the longest-running comedy in the history of the British theatre for three decades thereafter. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is a mainstay of regional and community theatres.

Cast: 5 female, 2 male

What people say:

"The wide-set eyes flash, the fingers fly like knitting needles, the teeth bulge and the cheeks quiver to comic effect. It is like being in a pre-war Lagonda and watching the old dashboard dials dance into life. This play ... holds up well when played in a properly blithe spirit." — Daily Mail

"...one of Noel Coward's most inventive comedies ... It is a comedy that still startles and delights. Coward wrote it in the darkest days of the Second World War and in the circumstances its determinedly frivolous attitude to morality seems downright heroic." — Daily Telegraph

"...it remains a fine example of Coward's craftsmanship and polished economy with words." — Daily Express

"As Coward liked to say, what's so wrong with mere entertainment?" — Sunday Times

"...Noel Coward's eternal comedy classic." — Jewish Chronicle

About the Playwright:

Sir Noël Coward (1899-1973) was one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th Century. Also a composer, director, actor and singer, he first made his name as a playwright with The Vortex, in which he also appeared. His numerous other successful plays included Fallen Angels, Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, and Blithe Spirit. He was knighted in 1970.