Noël CowardBlithe SpiritAn Improbable Farce Blithe Spirit is the most commercially successful, longrunning and frequently revived of all Noël Coward’s sixty plays, but it is theone that nearly didn’t get written at all. At the outbreak of World War II,when he and the century were at the very end of their thirties, Noël had takena curious decision not to write anything new for the duration. Twenty monthslater, although already exhausted from long and arduous troop concert tours, hebegan to realize the pointlessness of abandoning his craft as a dramatist, andover five days during a brief Easter ‘holiday’ in 1941 at Portmeirion in NorthWales, he constructed the ‘improbable farce’ that is Blithe Spirit. ‘I shallalways be grateful,’ Noël later wrote, ‘for the almost psychic gift thatallowed me to write this script so fast. It was not meticulously constructed inadvance, and only one day elapsed between its original conception and themoment I sat down to write it; six weeks later it was produced, and it ran fornearly five years in the West End.’For more than thirty years, Blithe Spirit was to remain thelongest-running comedy in the history of British theater; Noël himself directedthe first cast, in which Cecil Parker played Charles alongside a then-unknownMargaret Rutherford as Arcati and Kay Hammond (who later also went into theDavid Lean film version with Rutherford and Rex Harrison) as Elvira. Reviewswere generally ecstatic, though Graham Greene (writing in the Spectator) calledit ‘a weary exhibition of bad taste’; Noël’s revenge was swiftand sure – in a 1946 play called Peace In Our Time he suggested that, hadBritain ever had to suffer a Nazi occupation in 1940, the first tocollaborate would have been ‘left-wing journalists and novelists’. But Blithe Spirit still lies outside the mainstream ofNoël’s earlier stage work, in that we are not here faced (as in Private Livesand Hay Fever and Present Laughter) with a closed, self-regarding andself-perpetuating group of insiders ranged and raging against the supposedly‘real’ people who would nowadays be called ‘civilians’. Instead, the abruptending of the 1930s, in which he had been the playboy of the West End world,jack of all its entertainment trades and master of most, together with thecoming of the war itself, and then two years cut off from the typewriter, seemto have changed both Noël’s style as a dramatist and his sense of development;there is more plot in Blithe Spirit than in almost any of his earlier stagecomedies, and more careful development of character. If, moreover, it should seem odd that a farce about death,featuring at least two ghosts, should have so triumphed when London was undernightly bombardment and audiences were losing their loved ones on battlefieldsall over the world, consider this: it is, I believe, precisely because BlitheSpirit makes fun of death, suggesting that you can return from it almost atwill, that World War II theatergoers all over the country found it so curiouslyand constantly reassuring. After Blithe Spirit, all Noël Coward comedies were to existin their own right, without back-references to the poor little rich girls andthe Mayfair or West End high society, which had so characterized his earlierwork for and with Gertrude Lawrence. She had in fact settled in America a yearor two earlier, and was never to come home to him again. This could be oneother reason why what one thinks of as the last ‘Gertie’ role (even though sheonly ever played it on radio and US army tours) was in fact written as a ghost.Noël and Gertie, who had been together as child actors since 1912, were nowseparated by the war, by the Atlantic and by her marriage to an Americantheater manager, Richard Aldrich. In that offstage sense, Blithe Spirit marks the borderlinebetween the prewar and the postwar Noël, and it has lived in almost constantrevival ever since. Apart from the film and television versions, major revivalshave included one at the National Theatre directed by Harold Pinter with MariaAitken and Richard Johnson, and then a long-running West End revival of 1985with the late Simon Cadell and, as Elvira, Joanna Lumley who plays the partagain on this recording. Most recently, Twiggy and Dora Bryan revived it atChichester.Blithe Spirit has also been seen as a Broadway musicalretitled High Spirits, which starred Beatrice Lillie in her farewellappearance, and had a score by Hugh Martin and Timothy Gray, which Noëldirected and for which he also wrote (uncredited) some of his very last lyrics. This is the first complete recording made purely foraudiotape and compact disc. For the scene changes, we have used some vintageNaxos recordings of Noël singing his own early songs. Notes by Sheridan Morley The Cast of Blithe Spirit Charles Condomine . . . . . . . . . . .Colin RedgraveRuth Condomine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Kika MarkhamElvira JoannaLumleyThe Reeve JohnRoweMadame Arcati ThelmaRubyDr. Bradman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David TimsonMrs. Bradman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Abigail FrancisMaid CathySara Director SheridanMorley with David TimsonProducer . . . . . . . . . . . Nicolas SoamesStudio Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..Peter NovisRecording Engineer MikeEtherden CORIN REDGRAVE’s theater credits include No Man’s Land, TheCherry Orchard, De Profundis (Royal National Theatre) and The Browning Versionfor Derby Playhouse. Television credits include Trial and Retribution 6, Bertieand Elizabeth (BBC), Forsyte Saga (Granada), Shackleton (Channel 4) and Sunday(Box Television). Films include Cromwell and Fairfax, Doctor Sleep, Gypsy Womenand Enigma.KIKA MARKHAM has worked with Sheridan Morley in NoëlCoward’s Song at Twilight for which she was awarded an Oliver nomination forBest Supporting Actress 1999. She has also been seen in Homebody/Kabul by TonyKushner. JOANNA LUMLEY has appeared in various stage productionsincluding Blithe Spirit, Hedda Gabler and Vanilla. Her most notable televisionappearances are Absolutely Fabulous, A Rather English Marriage, Cold ComfortFarm and The New Avengers. Her film credits include James and the Giant Peach,Sweeney Todd and The Cat’s Meow. She has also written four books.THELMA RUBY has starred in many West End shows includingCabaret, Kvetch and For Amusement Only. She has played Golde opposite the Tevyeof Topol in Fiddler on the Roof four times, and played Golda Meir with herhusband Peter Frye for eight years in Momma Golda. She has performed aone-woman show That’s Entertainment and has written her double autobiography,Double or Nothing, with her husband. DAVID TIMSON has performed in modern and classic playsacross Great Britain and abroad, including Wild Honey for Alan Ayckbourn,Hamlet, The Man of Mode and The Seagull. He has been seen on television inNelson’s Column and Swallows and Amazons, and in the film The Russia House. Afamiliar and versatile audio and radio voice, Timson is a popular reader forNaxos AudioBooks. ABIGAIL FRANCIS trained at the Drama Centre. Her theatercredits include Gertie in Noël and Gertie, Emma in Very Dark Blue, Rosalind inAs You Like It, Jennifer in The Misantrope, Jessie Taite in The Silver Tassie,the Mother in Here Comes A Chopper, Leni in Judgement Day, Lady Fanciful in TheProvoked Wife, Genia Hofreiter in Open Country, Paulina in The Winter’s Tale,Libby in Paradise Lost and Annie in Anatol. She has also appeared in the filmThe Will To Resist. CATHY SARA has worked for the New Shakespeare Company in TheTaming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet, as well as the Stephen JosephTheatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse and in King Lear at the Hackney Empire. Hertelevision appearances include Kavanagh QC, Beck, The Detectives and Heartbeat,and she has worked extensively for the BBC Radio Repertory. SHERIDAN MORLEY is the drama critic of the InternationalHerald Tribune and an award-winning broadcaster; his Noël & Gertie is acelebration of the private lives of Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in theirown words and music. He has been literary executor of the Coward Estate forthirty years, having written Noël’s first biography, A Talent To Amuse, in1969. His latest book is the authorized biography of John Gielgud, availableboth in paperback and audiobook formats.