GHOST BUSTED (BLITHE SPIRIT)

When Noel Coward's 'Blithe Spirit' opened in Manchester's Opera House in 1941 and transferred to the Picadilly Theatre in London's West End, it was a huge hit with audiences and it charmed most critics.

With Margaret Rutherford in the cast, it also caught the eye of David Lean who adapted it for the big screen in 1945.

Rutherford reprised her role as the psychic Madam Arcati, with Rex Harrison taking on the part of the struggling crime novelist Charles Condomine, Constance Cummings as his wife Ruth and Kay Hammond as Elvira, his deceased former wife whose spirit in conjured up at a seance.

Lean's adaptation fell short of box office expectations despite decent reviews but it has over the years grown in stature to become a British classic.

Coward's play has also been a frequent fixture on the West End and Broadway and with touring productions too, drawing actors like Patrick Cargill, Beryl Reid, Maria Aiken, Joanna Lumley, Jane Asher, Simon Cadell, Twiggy, Penelope Keith and Alison Steadman.

Harold Pinter even directed a production for the National Theatre in London in 1976, while it was revived twice on Broadway in 1987 at the Neil Simon Theatre with Richard Chamberlain, Blythe Danner and Geraldine Page and in 2009 at the Shubert Theatre with Rupert Everett and Angela Lansbury.

There have been many radio and TV productions as well on both sides of the Atlantic.

In an article for the Guardian in 2014, Lyn Gardner attributed its enduring popularity to the desire of audiences to believe in an afterlife - especially during the Second World War.

"When Coward wrote 'Blithe Spirit,' the need to believe, particularly in an afterlife, was strong in a world that was being touched daily by death," she observed.

It would be reading too much to claim Edward Hall's new big screen version of Coward's play will resonate in quite the same way with audiences in a world now immersed in daily death tolls from Covid.

The production wrapped before the Coronavirus started to ravage the world and was originally slated for a cinema release in May 2020, with subsequent release dates pushed back in September 2020 and December 2020 because of different phases of the pandemic.

With cinemas on lockdown again across the UK, Sky Movies have swooped in to provide a platform for the film through its subscription channels.

The film Hall and his screenwriters Nick Moorcroft, Meg Leonard and Piers Ashcroft has conjured up is a curious mix of art deco period drama and a contemporary satire of New Age beliefs.

Dan Stevens is cast as the frustrated, temperamental crime author Charles Condomine who has been tasked with coming up with a screenplay by his father-in-law Simon Kunz's Henry Mackintosh, a senior executive at the Rank Organisation.

However Charles has struggled to come up with any story since the untimely death of his first wife, Leslie Mann's Elvira Condomine.

His current wife, Isla Fisher's Ruth is frustrated by her husband's lack of interest in the bedroom, confiding in her friend Emilia Fox's Violet Bradman at the local tennis club.

Around the same time, Violet's husband, Julian Rhind-Tutt's Dr George Bradman gives Charles some Benzedrine to perk up his lust for life and get his creative juices flowing.

Charles hits upon the idea of a murder mystery built around a seance and brings his wife and the Bradmans to the local theatre to see Judi Dench's psychic Madam Arcati.

During the show a levitation trick goes wrong, with the pulley lifting Madam Arcati snapping and sending her crashing to the floor.

While angry punters demand their money back, Charles goes backstage to persuade Madam Arcati to carry out a seance in her home.

But when she arrives days later, she is ridiculed by the deeply sceptical Bradmans and it also becomes clear that Charles is only interested in observing her act up close for the purposes of research for his screenplay.

However the seance unleashes the spirit of Elvira who appears to Charles but cannot be seen by others.

So when he flies into a rage at her ghost, it is either interpreted as the mad behaviour of a raving lunatic or people think he is directing his comments at them.

What follows is a rather slight tale that is delivered with great gusto by its cast but which never quite satisfies.

Part of the problem lies with Hall and his scriptwriters efforts to go beyond the confines of Coward's play.

So scenes where Charles causes mayhem on the set of an Alfred Hitchcock film in Shepperton Studios and encounters the Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper on the set of a Cecil B De Mille movie starring Clark Gable and Greta Garbo feel very forced and frankly naff.

Realising Madam Arcati as well as Dench are audience favourites, they also build a lot more around her character including a scene where James Fleet's psychic association chief Harry Reid rips up her membership card, denouncing her as a fraud.

But while Stevens, Fisher and Dench give their all and play it big, the humour rarely rises beyond the mildly amusing.

Leslie Mann strikes a rather jarring note as Elvira in a woefully misjudged, campy performance that fails to make the most of the richest role in Coward's play.

Hall seems to be reaching for the same kind of camp chic that Robert Zemeckis' 1992 comic fantasy 'Death Becomes Her' with Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis and Ian Ogilvy.

To be fair, however, to production designer John Paul Kelly, supervising art director Kevin and his colleague John McHugh, set decorator Caroline Smith and costume designer Charlotte Walter, the movie looks fantastic.

But while it is pleasing on the eye, Hall's version of Coward's play feels like a missed opportunity with Dave Johns, Michelle Dortrice, Adil Ray and Aimee Ffion-Edwards among the supporting cast.

With the exception of Ffion-Edwards who gets a few moments to shine as the maid Edith, they are mostly underused.

Adapting a beloved play for the big screen is always a huge challenge and Hall and his screenwriters certainly do their best to expand Coward's world beyond the confines of the stage.

But in doing that, they have created huge pressure on themselves to live up to the high standards of Coward's sharp dialogue and even sharper wit.

It is a goal Hall and his screenwriters can never achieve.

While not a total disaster, 'Blithe Spirit' is not without its charms.

Unfortunately those charms are almost smothered by some woeful casting decisions, ill judged narrative choices and an overwhelming sense of mediocrity.

('Blithe Spirit' premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival in California on October 8, 2020.and was made available for streaming in the UK and Ireland on Sky Cinema and Now TV on January 15, 2021) 

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