“Blithe” Playhouse Show Worth Seeing

Noel Coward’s hilarious “Blithe Spirit,” directed by Yvonne Robertson for the Long Beach Playhouse’s Studio Theatre, is one of those ether/or stories: Charles (Kevin Deegan) can stay in love with your first wife — Elvira (Stepahnie Schulz), who R.I.P. lives in the ether — or he can stay focused on Ruth (Katherine Prenovost), the presently embodied one.

It’s like the scene in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” when Hugh Grant (his name’s also Charles) finds himself trapped at a wedding table surrounded by the nightmares of Girlfriends and Fiancées of Courtship Past.

Here, Charles (Kevin Deegan) finds himself revisited by the spectre of his first wife. A novelist, he wanted to research the hows and whys of mediums, so he enlists the services of one Madame Arcati (The exquisite Diane Benedict, of whom more later).

Because Ruth had just prior queried (Read: tested. Note to Charles: you should have known it was a trap) her husband as to whether she is more lovely than wife number one, because Arcati’s results weren’t necessarily guaranteed, and because Irving Berlin’s haunting (and prescient) song “Always” had just played on the phonograph, Elvira found herself, visible to no one but Charles, a spook in the drawing room.

Her invisibility caused no end to madcap comic moments, especially when her first iteration caused Charles to inadvertently insult clueless Ruth, who was already suspicious at her husband’s lingering interest in his prior wife. And watch when flowers and chairs levitate across the room.

The story was exceptionally well cast. These two women are as different as can be. Schulz’s Elvira is an ashen Mae West, a diaphanous diva, mediumistically called an ectoplasmic manifestation. She is pouty, she is moody, she flirts and teases. She never stands still. She categorizes her husband’s past transgressions. In short, she hopelessly, delightfully complicates the life of Charles. Mostly, theirs was a passionate marriage.

Ruth, on the other hand, was to the manor born. She is elegant and stately, fashionably prim. She doesn’t move much. Clothes (fantastic period gowns; nice job, Donna Fritsche) drape on her: she looks like a droll flapper. She might be slow to arouse (et cetera), but she is also slow to anger. The anger comes soon enough, and we do laugh at it.

Moments after Ruth had suddenly died (Elvira’s desire to have Charles join her in the ether knew no bounds), Charles speculates on the prospect of an ethereal menage-a-trois. No sun is ever going to set on this Englishman.

Garbed in strident red, bike-riding, martini-swilling Benedict nailed the madcap medium. She was a splash of color in that otherwise unaccessorized proper English drawing room. Her hands fluttered like Marcel Marceau doing a butterfly. When she refused service of China tea because it “upset her vibrations,” you realized before you stood the embodiment of that only-in-England species of “eccentric.” We just call them loonies.

Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, with 2 p.m. matinees Sundays. The show runs until Aug. 23. Tickets are $15-$18.

The Playhouse is at 5021 E. Anaheim St. For more information, call 494-1014 or visit www.lbph.com.