The annual staging by HER Productions, in conjunction with Unseemly Women, of a Shakespeare play takes a radical and revisionist approach to the material. It is a surprise, therefore, that their version of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit is highly respectful. Apart from a discrete soundtrack featuring orchestrated pop songs (including "Ghostbusters"), director Hannah Ellis Ryan faithfully retains the original setting and style, albeit with a dangerous, flirtatious vibe between the characters.
Author Charles Condomine (Peter Stone) and his wife Ruth (Ntombizodwa Ndlovu) host a dinner party to which eccentric medium Madam Acarti (Karen Henthorn) is invited. Charles intends to use Acarti as the basis for a fraudulent spiritualist in his forthcoming book. However, she turns out to be the real deal and accidently causes Charles’s late wife Elvira (Kayleigh Hawkins) to materialise. Elvira is visible only to Charles, so Ruth is understandably confused by his conversing with, apparently, thin air and concerned when it becomes clear Charles still has feelings for his first wife despite her being deceased.
HER Productions has pushed the boat out with lavish period costumes and stage set from, respectively, Jenny Holt Wright and Zoey Barnes; the hairstyles on Ntombizodwa Ndlovu and Laura Littlewood are certainly eye-catching.
The humour in the script has a cruel tone, the play having been written when it was acceptable for a husband to tell his wife to stop talking and even hit her with a pool cue. Many of the laughs in the opening scene come from Charles and Ruth mocking the gauche behaviour of their servant, Edith (Riah Amella). Charles’s favouring of Elvira hurts Ruth’s feelings and, of course, everyone laughs at Madam Acarti behind her back.
Peter Stone opens with a sense of restrained hysteria as Charles tries to comprehend developments but, as things slip out of hand, becomes increasingly desperate and even funnier—casting longing looks at the drinks trolley. Rather than opt for the obvious and make Elvira a seductive Morticia Addams type, Kayleigh Hawkins generates much of the comedy by way of the character’s voice—an exaggerated Sandringham accent, rich in nasty condescension. As Elvira is willing to commit murder to get together with Charles, there is the disturbing impression she is genuinely dangerous and that Charles finds that characteristic attractive.
Everything about Karen Henthorn’s Madam Acarti is comedic. With a fishwife’s bawl, the character is out of place in the posh household and blissfully unaware she is held up to ridicule. Henthorn gives a very physical and show-stealing performance making grand gestures and elaborate head movements. Everything is timed to cause maximum comedic embarrassment—scrambling over the furniture in a vulgar manner. Yet Henthorn makes Acarti the only really innocent character in the play, showing a childlike delight as she confronts a genuinely supernatural manifestation.
After a restrained first act, director Hannah Ellis Ryan loosens up considerably in the second. The verbal confrontation in which Charles and Elvira angrily compare infidelities is melodramatic and has a distinctly erotic undertone. Charles becomes almost predatory as he contemplates being free from both of his wives.
Ironically, with Blithe Spirit HER Productions, one of Manchester’s more iconoclastic theatre companies, stages a riotously entertaining blast from the past.
Blithe Spirit runs at Hope Mill Theatre until 22 February, 2025, then The Dukes Lancaster 25 February to 1 March 2025.