Blithe Spirit Opening Night Reviews
It was another exciting Broadway opening, as Angela Lansbury took the stage to star in the classic Noel Coward comedy Blithe Spirit at the Shubert Theatre last night. Today, the Broadway critics have voiced their opinion of the revival that also marks the Broadway debut of Rupert Everett. Collectively critics are in praise of the Angela Lansbury’s performance as Madame Arcatti, a spiritualist and classic comic role. Lansbury’s notices praise her agility, comedy, and choreography; they are some of the finest reviews of the current Broadway season. Praise is nearly unanimous for the production, and while some critics may have quibbled with an odd point or two, all seem to agree that Coward is well served in this comedy revival. Excerpts from some of the opening night critics below:
• Lansbury’s performance also captures the essence of the elegant Coward fizz, champagne bubbles of witty conversation that should trip along effortlessly.
-Michael Kuchwara, AP
• 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.
-Ben Brantley, New York Times
• This exuberant production soars as high as Shelley’s skylark, and is a whole lot funnier. Though Coward, in a rare gesture of understatement, claimed for himself only a talent to amuse, that was no talent. That was genius.
-John Simon, Bloomberg
• But overall this is a wispy ectoplasm of the 1941 Noel Coward ghost comedy rather than a full-bodied materialization.
-David Rooney, Variety
• There are no slouches either among the other actors populating the high-ceiled country drawing-room that Peter J. Davison has designed with the casual elegance that was so often Coward’s stock-in-trade.
-David Finkle, Theatermania
• Together cast and director strike the perfect tone of archness and silliness, debonair wit and impish glee.
-David Cote, NY1
