For the fourth filmed version of Noel Coward s hit stage play Blithe Spirit, director Edward Hall and his battery of script writers have managed to keep much of the ditzy original flavor of the Coward piece - it s still set in 1930s England - but also make it accessible to and funny for modern audiences.
The basic plotline is that Charles Condomine, an alcoholic novelist, has been hired to adapt one of his books into a Hollywood-bound screenplay. But he s suffering from writer s block, and can t type a word. Hold on, the problem is bigger than that. He isn t the person who wrote those books. Never mind the writer s block. He s never even been a writer. The books were ghost written, or more likely dictated to him, by his wife Elvira.
It’s been 79 years since Noël Coward’s comic play,
Blithe Spirit, debuted in West End theatres, and 75 years since he adapted it for the big screen with his friend and revered director David Lean. The supernatural classic starring Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings and Margaret Rutherford won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects; its depiction of a luminous green ghost, a memorable marvel.
Since then, multiple versions of
Blithe Spirit have played on Broadway, in London’s theatres, and on radio and television. Former artistic director of the Hampstead Theatre, Edward Hall’s spirited adaptation marks the 75th anniversary of Lean’s comedy and shows that Coward’s ghost story about death has lots of life left in it still. Fleshing out characters’ backstories and taking the narrative in a new and timely direction, with undercurrents of feminism, Hall creates a fresh slant on Coward’s play for a modern audience.