COWARD'S COMEDY CONTINUES TO RAISE SPIRITS

After her award-winning 2011 production of Terence Rattigan's After The Dance, director Thea Sharrock returns to the West End with one of Noel Coward's best-known plays, Blithe Spirit. Described by Coward as "a light comedy about death", Blithe Spirit takes a comical glance at the supernatural and entangling personal commitments, suggesting that the dead are never gone and past relationships always influence present ones.

Set in a well-to-do house in rural Kent, England, author socialite Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth are having a dinner party for their neighbours. As the after-dinner entertainment and as a means to attain some new material for a new book, Charles has invited Madame Arcati, an eccentric medium, to hold a seance. However, getting her procedure wrong, which actually turns out to be the correct, she mistakenly conjures up the ghost of Elvira, Charles' deceased first wife, who is only visible to Charles and wants her husband back, whatever it takes.

Blithe Spirit, which first opened in 1941 and played for over 2000 performances, became one of the nation's a much-loved comedies. Thea Sharrock's revival stars Olivier award-winning actress Alison Steadman as Madame Arcati, and Hermione Norris and Robert Bathurst, who once played the Marsdens couple in ITV's Cold Feet series, as the Condomines.