Jennifer Saunders is one of the UK’s most popular comic actresses. Her gleefully funny performance as the eccentric clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, delighted both critics and audiences alike when the production opened in Theatre Royal Bath’s 2019 Summer Season. With a distinguished creative team who have won a plethora of awards between them, this is a Blithe Spirt full of sparkling and spirit-lifting hijinks.
Novelist Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth are literally haunted by a past relationship when an eccentric medium – Madame Arcati - inadvertently conjures up the ghost of his first wife, Elvira, at a séance. When she appears, visible only to Charles, and determined to sabotage his current marriage, life – and the afterlife – get complicated. Jennifer Saunders is much loved for the sketch show French and Saunders, for which she and Dawn French received a BAFTA fellowship in 2009, and for the hit comedy series and subsequent film, Absolutely Fabulous, which she both starred in and wrote.
Lisa Dillon (Ruth) is best known for her role as Mary Smith in BBC 1’s Cranford. Geoffrey Streatfeild’s credits include Spooks, The Thick of It, Traitors and the Histories Cycle at the RSC.
Richard Eyre, director of the National Theatre for ten years, is the winner of five Olivier Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award. Designer Anthony Ward’s numerous productions include Tony Award winning Mary Stuart and Olivier Award winning Oklahoma!
16th September, 2021
6th November, 2021
Noël Coward’s classic comedy starring Jennifer Saunders
By: Noel Coward
Director: Richard Eyre
Cast list: Jennifer Saunders, Geoffrey Streatfeild, Lisa Dillon, Emma Naomi, Simon Coates, Lucy Robinson and Rose Wardlaw
Design: Anthony Ward
Lighting: Howard Harrison
Sound: John Leonard
Other info: Illusions by Paul Kieve
Location: West End
Railway station: Charing Cross
Bus numbers: (Haymarket) 3, 6, 12, 13, 19, 23, 38, 88, 139; (Piccadilly Circus) 14, 22, 94
Night bus numbers: (Haymarket) 6, 12, 23, 139, 88, N3, N13, N18, N19, N38, N97, N136, N550, N551; (Piccadilly Circus) 14, 94, N22
Car park: Leicester Square, Whitcomb Street (1min)
Directions from tube: (3mins) Take Coventry Street up to Oxendon Road; the theatre is 100 metres along on the right.
We all wish we could conjure up someone from the dead. Even if we could, it’d be pretty difficult to reunite with the certain person you dream of having one more conversation. So when a medium brings up an unexpected guest at a polite dinner party, things are going to get tricky. Make sure you’ve got your place around the dinner table.
Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit play starts off with novelist Charles Condomine. Struggling for creative ideas for his latest big hit, he invites Madame Arcati around for a dinner with him and his second wife, Ruth. During the dinner, Arcati manages to make contact with the dead, which seems great at first. The seance has worked! That’s until Charles realises it’s his first wife, Elvira. Life for those in Blithe Spirit is going to change forevermore, but what can Arcati do?
No Blithe Spirit London play is complete without a star as Madame Arcati. Thankfully, we’re treated to luxury casting, with BAFTA-winning Jennifer Saunders as the spiritualist. There’s a top creative team too, including the five-time Olivier Award-winning director Richard Eyre and illusions by Paul Kieve that suspend all notions of reality. You can escape the real world for a few hours with a trip to theatre to see Blithe Spirit in London.
Unfortunately, tickets for this event are no longer available.
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