Broadway Monday

Blithe Spirit Novelist Charles Condomine, living with his second wife, Ruth, invites a local medium, Madame Arcati, to his house. His intention is to do some research into the spirit world for his new book. But he gets more than he bargained for when Arcati conjures up the ghost of Charles' first wife, Elvira. Caught between one live wife and one dead wife — both jealous of the other — Charles thinks matters couldn't be worse. Blithe Spirit is playwright Noel Coward's best known work and he definitely reworked the effort to make the most of it's life on various stages. The work has been seen onstage, television and the silver screen.

The original stage production appeared on the West End stage in 1941 for 1,997 performances. The Broadway premier also occurred in 1941 and played for 657 performances at the Booth Theatre. There have been many revivals in both London and New York since the 1940's including the current production which opened March 15, 2009 at the starring Angela Lansbury, Christine Ebersole, Rupert Everet, and Jayne Atkinson at the Shubert Theatre.