On this date in 1941, 85 years ago, Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit premièred in London. Ten facts about the play.
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The title is taken from Shelley's poem To a Skylark, ("Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! / Bird thou never wert").
What’s it about? A novelist called Charles Condomine holds a séance at his house in order to gather material for his next book. The clairvoyant medium is called Madame Arcati. The séance has the unfortunate side effect of summoning the ghost of Condomine’s deceased first wife, Elvira, who continues to haunt him afterwards and tries to disrupt his second marriage to Ruth. Charles can see and hear the ghost; Ruth cannot. Elvira’s plot to get Charles to join her in the spirit world by sabotaging his car backfires when Ruth uses the car and is killed instead. Her spirit returns to get revenge on Elvira. Charles can’t see Ruth, but can tell something is tormenting Elvira. He calls Madame Arcati back to exorcise both the spirits, but instead she unintentionally materialises Ruth. It turns out, one of the housemaids is psychic and has been the conduit for the ghosts. With that knowledge, Madame Arcati manages to make the ghosts vanish, but warns that just because Charles can’t see them doesn’t mean they are not still there potentially causing havoc and that he should move as far away as possible. He takes her advice and after he leaves the ghosts trash the house.
Coward had been toying with the idea of a play about ghosts for some time. His original idea was not unlike the concept of the BBC TV series Ghosts: an old house haunted by spirits from different periods in history, only set in Paris, with humour arising from their different attitudes to things. However, he could never quite figure out an exact plot.
The breakthrough came after Coward’s flat was bombed during The Blitz and he took a holiday in Wales, Portmeirion on the coast of Snowdonia, to be exact. His companion for the trip was Joyce Carey, an actress who was writing a play about John Keats. Sitting on the beach one morning, Coward ended up bouncing ideas off of Carey and later wrote that by lunchtime he had a basic plot, the title and the names of the main characters. The next morning, Coward sat down at a Typewriter and started writing.
The script changed little from that first draft, although he did tone down some of Madame Arcati’s humorous lines as he decided she should be a person who took herself rather seriously.
He had to change the name of one person referred to in the séance. The late “old Mrs Leggatt” had to change because of a tragic event in real life. Lord Monkton’s secretary Shelagh Leggatt was killed in a plane crash around that time and it made the news. The script was immediately changed to say ‘Mrs Plummet’, which, you could argue, wasn’t much better!
The reception from critics was positive. The Manchester Guardian thought it "not untouched by genius of a sort”, and The Times said it compared favourably, not only with Coward’s previous plays but also with Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
This was in spite of initial reservations that writing a comedy about death in the middle of a world war was a bit of a risk. The risk paid off, though, and showed Coward’s sheer talent as he was able to pull it off. Blithe Spirit ran for 1,997 performances, a new record for a non-musical play in London.
Charles Condomine was played by Coward himself at some points during the play’s tour and also by John Gielgud. The role of Madam Arcati has been taken on by some big names, too. Actors who have played her include Margaret Rutherford (in the original 1941 production), Beryl Reid, Dora Bryan, Penelope Keith, Alison Steadman, Hattie Jacques, Angela Lansbury and Jennifer Saunders. Twiggy also played Elvira in one production.
Blithe Spirit has been turned into a musical, High Spirits, and has been adapted for film twice, in 1945 and 2020. It has also been adapted for TV and radio.
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