We'll be loving you, always

Review: Blithe Spirit

Shubert Theatre, New York
March 11, 2009

I still have fond memories of watching Judi Dench skip across the Haymarket stage in London, doing charades for the word "winsomely." The play was Noel Coward's Hayfever; Dench was vivacious and earthy, yet light as air. And now another Coward play, Blithe Spirit, returns to Broadway with another winsome leading lady.

A better word for Angela Lansbury would be "legend," but she doesn't rest on her laurels. At 83, despite some fumbling for lines, she's dancing about the Shubert, tossing herself into trances, sprawling across the upper-crust furniture indecorously. You see, she plays Madame Arcati, a psychic who bikes eight miles from home and is beyond thrilled to summon the spirit of Charles' first wife back from the dead. Lansbury never submits to the cuteness of Murder, She Wrote. Her face, with those giant Tweety-bird eyes, registers best when she shoots cold glares at those who question her spiritual powers. And she's full of dotty energy: "Let's really throw our backs into it," she says as the seances kick off.

Despite Lansbury's generous supporting role, Coward's play requires other actors to sharpen their teeth and their wit. Rupert Everett looks right at home in his character's posh English manor; he lives up to the wry but weary dialogue as a man-child in love with his brandy and in dread of his two wives' machinations. His second wife, Jayne Atkinson, is the strongest on stage; she finds humor in being so stalwart and uncompromisingly English. Christine Ebersole, the sexy Elvira who filed the right paperwork to return from death, is a luminous, slightly off-kilter comedienne, but she is miscast. Her nasal, American voice and contemporary line readings feel out of place among the other actors. What fits is how, over scene changes, she applies her ghostly soprano to Noel Coward songs, and to one Irving Berlin standard ("I'll be loving you, always...").

With many rounds of exit applause, Angela Lansbury proved why she's such a loved actress in the theater. If she never does another play, her buoyant performance here will be a solid farewell. If she chooses to come back again, say in A Little Night Music, we could only be so lucky. With the Broadway climate looking so green -- not just the ogres and high-belting witches, or the ticket prices, but also the untried, naive TV stars -- she proves there's room for experience.