"Blithe Spirit". Keble O'Reilly

The magic of a great theatrical production is that it can redraw the world around an old text, and not only make you see it in a completely new light, but also make you feel that this is the way it was always meant to be.

Such is the case with A²’s astonishing production of Noel Coward’s 1941 classic supernatural comedy Blithe Spirit.

The only disappointment with this show is that Coward himself can’t be brought back from the dead, like the ghostly Evelyn and Ruth, to see it. Because he would have loved it. Alex Foster and the cast have delicately uncovered the gay subtext that Coward undoubtedly buried in his play, and have brought it to the fore with pride and sheer hilarity. Coward’s homosexuality, following the repressive conventions of his times, was never publicly acknowledged. Instead it found its way into his plays via queer coding that would have passed over the heads of the majority of his audiences. David Lean completely missed it in his somewhat staid 1945 film, and the few theatrical productions I’ve seen have felt similarly repressed.

Simply put, it just never occurred to anyone to do it like this before.

(It’s a particular shame that David Lean failed to bring out any of the sexuality in Coward’s script. The two men knew each other well and worked closely together. And of course Lean’s masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia benefits from a palpable gay subtext. Famously, when Coward went to the premiere, he commented on Peter O’Toole, ‘If he had been any prettier, they would have had to call it Florence of Arabia’.)

This production is built around two bold innovations. The first is that the central character Charles’ original spouse, deceased for the last seven years, has been changed from Elvira to Evelyn. Since Evelyn’s death Charles has been married to Ruth, and his bisexuality, when pasted onto the original text, is of course accepted unquestioningly by his wife. When Evelyn reappears, Charles finds him irresistible, leading to him being torn not only between his two spouses but between his two sexual identities. Resolving them becomes the story of the play.

The second innovation is that the medium Madame Arcati, normally portrayed as a dotty old woman (Margaret Rutherford in her pomp) is presented here as a full-on drag queen, complete with sparkly body-stockings, massive hair and outrageous eyelashes. Alfred Dry, using his drag character Miss Take, completely embodies Arcati, and once you’ve seen this interpretation, you’re never going back. He fills every line with innuendo, humour and sheer raunch. And if you thought this might put him at odds with the 1930s mannerisms of the other characters, think again. Arcati always stands out for her oddness anyway, so the somewhat taken-aback reactions of the other characters make perfect sense. This Madame Arcati was like Tim Curry’s Frank N. Furter, bursting into Brad and Janet’s world, and showing them what they could have if they gave themselves over to absolute pleasure.

The performances are uniformly brilliant, not only from the leads (who were simply outstanding) but also the secondary characters. There’s one moment where Dr Bradman says to his wife, ‘Come along, my dear. You’re talking too much as usual’, and she replies, ‘You are horrid, George.’ Florence Purcell filled that line with a chilling moment of unexpected pain and hatred, contrasting her imprisoned hetero world with the vivacity of the more sexually liberated Condomines. Also, as an example of sheer improvisational skill, on the night I was there one of the props took on an accidental life of its own (the horn fell off the gramophone player) and the ghost Evelyn swiftly used it as part of his poltergeist routine, to rapturous applause.

A word of praise also about Evie Cakebread’s lighting design, which was professionally subtle and powerful.

In his programme notes the director Alex Foster says, with some desperation, that he’s done almost no work for his finals. Alex, look beyond finals. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.