event
Blithe Spirit
23 January 2012 - 28 January 2012
Keighley Playhouse, Devonshire Street, Keighley
Keighley Playhouse has ghostly carry-ons spirited with stylish but classy comedy for their next production.
Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit has been a sure-fire crowd-pleaser since its premiere – over 70 years ago! But it still manages to entertain and surprise even to this day.
Novelist Charles Condomin is refined and flippant (rather like Coward himself) and he is seeking some research about psychics for his next work, so he and his pragmatic, class-conscious wife invite another couple along with a medium for the evening. The last thing he or his second wife dream of is that the séance will bring back his first wife. Things are further complicated by his current wife Ruth, who does not believe that Elvira exists which results in some hilarious exchanges and misunderstandings.
Director David Hardman said, “The England that Noel Coward dramatised – with all its sangfroid elegance, manicured wit and bourgeois brittleness – has long since died. But he constructed a highly efficient laugh machine, sheathed in the satiny sophistication his audiences expected of him.”
The Keighley Playhouse production serves up a story where the past and present exist concurrently; as if Charles can be married to two women - one dead and the other alive. If his initial terror at Elvira's return doesn't quite convince, his exasperation at having to balance her everlasting pettishness with Ruth's sour disbelief hits the mark perfectly.
David added, “Charles finds himself inhabiting a world where the three-dimensional veil becomes increasingly thin. His life becomes a love-amalgam of the present and the linearity of the life-death struggle vanishes as his consciousness is forced into expansion.”
Many consider Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit to be one of his best and most unusual farces.
The cast David Poole, Barbara Boothroyd, Julia Roberts, Gilly Rogers, David Templeton, Yvonne Templeton and Rebecca Mitchell.
Blithe Spirit is directed by David Hardman Blithe Spirit runs from Monday 23rd – Saturday 28th January 2012
Evening performances begin at 7.30pmTickets range from £4 to £6 Tickets are available by calling the box office on 08451 267 859 during office hours.
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