Theatre Calgary’s Blithe Spirit is an irresistible feat of lively wit
By Ansharah Shakil, May 4 2025—
Noël Coward’s comic play Blithe Spirit has a timeless charisma that has lasted throughout the years, from its first performance in London in 1941 to its continued current revivals. The longest running non-musical in London prior to The Mousetrap opening in 1952, Blithe Spirit has made its way to Broadway, the cinema twice, radio and television, a musical stage and countless others, including Theatre Calgary’s recent production in April.
Nikki Loach’s direction exactly matches the manic, magnetic energy the play requires. Coward described Blithe Spirit as an improbable farce, and its plot remains both wildly eccentric and entertaining. Novelist Charles Condomine (Tyrell Crews) invites clairvoyant Madame Arcati (Corrine Koslo) for a séance to get material for his next book, only to end up being haunted by the ghost of his first wife, Elvira (Emily Howard), who merrily wreaks havoc on Charles’s new life and relationship with his second wife, Ruth (Louise Duff).
Beyond these four main characters, also populating the play’s landscapes are Ali DeRegt as Edith, Charles’s and Ruth’s maid whose humorous antics had the audience in stitches, and Christopher Hunt and Meg Farhall as the Bradmans, invited to the original séance as friends of Charles and Ruth.
It’s a light number for a cast, but a purposeful one. The Bradmans are the kind of painfully normal socialite couple Charles and Ruth, and indeed Charles and Elvira, are fated not to be. The crowd-pleasing Edith makes the most of her screen time. Madame Arcati, meanwhile, is the driving force behind the plot. It is to the production’s benefit that she is played with great skill and joy by Koslo, whose physical performances and dedication to her (sham) spiritual techniques are portrayed with and received by utter delight. Madame Arcati’s quirks — like her bicycle riding — are as amusing as her ridiculous lines, delivered endearingly by Koslo.
In addition to how the performances all admirably carry out the script, Scott Reid’s set design is perfectly well-crafted and suited to the play, self-contained and managing to convey a number of moods and changes. Charles’s house itself is a character. Narda McCarroll’s lighting is equally atmospheric — it’s always stunning, whether it’s a peaceful early morning light, an eerie and shadowy dark, a ghostly blue light or the pink orange of sunrise.
The greatest combination on the stage is any that exists between Charles, Elvira and Ruth. Elvira haunts the narrative before she ever steps foot on stage, the subject of a conversation between Charles and Ruth in the very first scene of the play. Once she does arrive, and once it is revealed that Charles is the only person who can see or hear her, the pace of the play ramps up immediately. Some of the funniest moments in the play are Ruth thinking Charles is speaking to her when he is speaking to Elvira.
This ménage à trois goes through several stages, but in all of them, Charles is pulled from side to side by Elvira, a shameless flirt whose youthful hijinks appeal to Charles’s boyish tendencies, and by the more mature and steadfast nature of Ruth. Despite all her teasing, Elvira has a clear, passionate love for Charles, one that goes beyond the grave just as his does for her. Central to Elvira’s ghostly arrival is Elvira’s favourite song, Irving Berlin’s “Always”, a haunting and beautiful number which served as a gift for Berlin’s second wife — his first died of illness, like Elvira. But Ruth is just as determined to hold on to her marriage, and to figure out what Elvira is up to.
Watching Charles struggle to choose between these two sides, and watching the battle of wits between Elvira and Ruth, is endlessly compelling. While Charles begins the play off calm and collected, he gets increasingly more harried and desperate as time goes on, a transformation Crews portrays perfectly, all the while retaining Charles’s characteristic dry humour, emblematic of the play’s wit.
Duff knows how to show the two sides to Ruth’s character — stern and not tolerating any wrong move of Charles, but also clever and determined, trying to retain some semblance of order in her life. Ruth isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty if the situation calls for it, which it does, and one can see why Charles would fall for her.
Elvira herself is a showstopper of sparkling chaos. Gliding about in her white satin dress and fluffing up her hair, Howard’s charismatic performance is reminiscent of old Hollywood heroines. It’s a gorgeous dress, just one example of Ralamy Kneeshaw’s magnificent costume design, and it’s incredibly welcome when a similar costume shows up on Ruth later on.
Whether Elvira is sighing over Charles trying to appease Ruth, swaying Charles over to her side, getting irritated over Madame Arcati’s excitement over her materialisation or having fun moving objects and scaring others, she doesn’t take anything seriously. It’s a breath of fresh air, just like the play itself, which leaves its audience first in stitches and then with a satisfied sense of enjoyment.