BLITHE SPIRIT Reviews — Page 2

"Apparently she has been having some serious line problems. She is wearing an earpice to prompt her when she goes up."


That is a total lie and vicious fabrication.

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Updated On: 3/15/09 at 10:15 PM

Apparently she has been having some serious line problems. She is wearing an earpiece to prompt her when she goes up.

This nonsense about an earpiece is nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors.

The New York Times [with Brantley] is Mixed-to-Positive:

"Putting heart aside, Coward constructed a highly efficient laugh machine, sheathed in the satiny sophistication his audiences expected of him. (The show ran for 1,997 performances in wartime London.) Mechanical comedies creak as they age, and “Blithe Spirit” is no exception. But if it is perfectly paced, it can still keep an audience in a state of tickled contentment.

Mr. Blakemore’s production is not, at this point, perfectly paced, which is surprising given that this British director is the man who originally whipped Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off,” that most frantic of backstage comedies, so expertly through its complicated maneuvers.

As designed by Peter J. Davison (set) and Martin Pakledinaz (costumes) “Blithe Spirit” has the comforting luxuriousness you associate with a Coward play. (The production emphasizes the quaint historical distance of it all by prefacing each scene with arch place-setting title cards.) But on the night I saw it, the leading performers seemed slow in picking up their cues. The rabbit-out-of-a-hat scene closers never landed firmly. And there’s no denying that the red-blooded Ms. Ebersole, as delectable as she looks here, was not born to play the ethereal Elvira.

Yet despite such shortcomings I wound up enjoying this “Blithe Spirit” more than I had many a slicker version. Much of that pleasure came from watching what Ms. Atkinson, Mr. Everett and particularly Ms. Lansbury make of their roles. If “Blithe Spirit” itself misses comic greatness, Coward did create a genuinely great comic character in Madame Arcati, and Ms. Lansbury gleefully makes it her own."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/theater/reviews/16blit.html

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Updated On: 3/15/09 at 10:23 PM

Check my post history. I don't think I ever posted anything about Aaron Tveit in Pippin. You have me confused with someone else, I thinkAnyone who knows me, would know that I only post things that I know to be true.

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No, you were implying that Neverandy spread those rumors.

Get lost, Neverandy.

You're the epitome of what we all find loathsome.

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Wow! I think this is my first flaming! Anyway, since I can't "out" my source, there is nothing more to say about the specifics of this.
Re: earpieces worn by actors. It happens all the time. The public, for obvious reasons, is often kept in the dark.
Mary Martin (how many Tony's did she win?) wore one in the national tour of "Legends" in 1986 (she was 73 at the time)
Sir Michael Redgrave (Father of of Lynn and Vanessa) famously wore one in 1971 inLondon in "Old Boys".
Richard Dreyfuss wore one in "Complicit" in London.
Get over it people. It happens.

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No one cares. You're creepy. Go away.

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TheaterMania is a RAVE:

"There are abundant reasons for racing to top-drawer director Michael Blakemore's just-about-perfect revival of Noel Coward's 1941 boulevard-comedy trifle Blithe Spirit, now at Broadway's Shubert Theatre, but the chief attraction is definitely Angela Lansbury's side-splitting performance as the zany medium Madame Arcati.

...

As the women in his life, Ebersole -- another expert at on-stage flightiness -- sees Elvira's calculated ditziness as sounding and looking like Marilyn Monroe in the footage from her uncompleted film, Something's Got To Give. (Wigmaker Paul Huntley happily colludes in the appearance and Pakledinaz obliges with a diaphanous gown featuring sleeves down to there that ripple whenever Ebersole moves.) Atkinson has a less showy role as the at first baffled and eventually frustrated Ruth, but she hardly allows herself to fade into the fancy woodwork. Incidentally, she astutely revives the one-arm-akimbo posture that women assumed back in that day but have long since abandoned.
..."



Full Review

Backstage is Very Positive:

"If theatregoers came for Lansbury, they'll stay for Coward, as smartly directed by Michael Blakemore. If not properly staged, this 1941 staple of community theatre can come across as dated, as its main conceit -- the hero conversing with a spirit no one else on stage can see or hear -- has been repeated in countless films and TV sitcoms. Blakemore treats the premise and the characters seriously and allows the comedy to emerge without forcing it. We empathize with Charles Condomine's predicament -- his first wife returns from the dead to the scene of his second marriage -- because Rupert Everett doesn't overplay his distress. This matinee-idol movie star proves to be as dry as the martinis he serves.

My only quarrels with Blakemore's choices are Peter J. Davison's cavernous drawing-room setting and allowing costume designer Martin Pakledinaz to dress Jayne Atkinson as Ruth, the second spouse, in matronly attire, so that she seems more like Charles' mother. Atkinson handles her assignment admirably, perfectly timing her properly British responses to flying furniture and ghostly jealousy until she finally reaches the breaking point and runs screaming up the stairs."

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003951611

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Lansbury can pretty much pick up her Tony now, don't you think?

Maybe. Unless the voters don't think her performance is, by her standards, original enough.

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I do hope that in all the praising of Lansbury (earpiece or not, and really who cares?), that people and the Tony voters don't forget the remarkable job Jayne Atkinson did.

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I, for one, so last Saturday's preview performance and it does feel as though she is being fed her lines. But I felt the same for the entire cast.

I chalked it up to it being a preview performance at the time, but after reading through these comments, there may be some truth to this.