REPERTORY PRESENTATION OF COWARDS “BLITHE SPIRIT”
Hail to yet another “Blithe Spirit.” Repertory’s revival of Coward’s comic version of the eternal triangle was, judging by the laughter and applause from Saturday night’s full house, fully justified. The play and the performance were certainly good enough to be pleasantly entertaining. But it wasn’t as funny as it should have been. This was partly because “business” was kept to a minimum: a more inventive production might have freshened up the dull patches in a script which is beginning to show its age. it was partly, too, because the cast mistimed some of their lines, thus losing the rhythm of the dialogue which Coward plans so exactly to lead up to each laugh.
William Scamell as the husband who had two wives more or less, here and there, off and on, gave an urbane performance, nicely mannered, with a delightful sense of the line to be built up, and the line to be thrown away. Uncertainty about his lines, however, sometimes detracted from his attack and confidence. His earthly wife was Kay Scrivener who worked hard without developing the subtleties of Coward’s lines. But her scene at the breakfast table was full of verve, and her angry climaxes gave considerable life to the play. Janet Buckley made a breathtakingly ethereal entrance and, although one could have asked for more gaiety and laughter from this blithe spirit, she sustained a spirited presence throughout. Her makeup was excellent.
As the medium whose zest for the occult produced results which surprised herself as much as anyone, Jean Muirhead embellished her characterisation with telling eccentricity in dress, gesture and voice without over-domin-ating the stage. It was not a virtuoso performance. Pamela Ferris could hardly have got more than she did from the maid’s part—a promising actress indeed.
The Canterbury Repertory Theatre Society has opened the year’s programme with a production which is nearly always amusing without ever becoming hilarious. It deserves to make enough at the box office to be able at least to afford a new recording of “God Save the Queen.” The season continues all this week. D D C
REPERTORY PRESENTATION OF COWARDS “BLITHE SPIRIT”
Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30711, 29 March 1965, Page 12
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