As much as a Noël Coward play can ever be about big issues, Blithe Spirit is about the past coming to live with you. Charles, a novelist toying with a book about spiritualism, finds himself in the uncomfortable position of being an "astral bigamist" when his long-dead first wife, Elvira, one night joins him and his second wife, Ruth.
The same issue - how to handle the past - troubles this production of the play, first performed in 1941. Philip Prowse's design and direction pull Coward into the present with a sleek black and red set with splashes of animal hide - very this season. A television flickers; they play CDs; there is even a reference to Paul Daniels, presumably replacing a more obscure, aged allusion.
Coward doesn't need all this, nor does the strong cast, including Ellen Sheean as a splendid, eccentric Madam Arcati and Sophie Ward as a suitably spectral Elvira. The comic situation and the writing are hardly impenetrable to a modern audience; the mannered upper-class civility he does so well is far from a puzzle.
Still, this is a charming enough production, light and funny, turning darker when the spirits possess the house. By this point, Ruth has also gone to the other side and love has turned to spirited loathing. "No one but a monumental bore would have thought of having a honeymoon in Budleigh Salterton," she yells, before confessing to an affair with one Mungo Gracegirdle.
This is what you want from Coward: put-down one-liners, ludicrous comic situations, chaps with names like Gracegirdle. To tamper with this is to water him down, whether it's by adding references to television or inserting another interval. The second feels unnecessary, breaking up the comedic tension and leaving the last act underwhelming. In fashion, the 1940s are also very much this season, and it's a pity to have squandered this. Worth seeing, however, for the performances and the play's humour, and for pondering, on the way home, how Coward might have described Paul Daniels.
Until October 14. Box office: 0141-429 0022.
