By Noël Coward
Directed by Anthony Banks
Designed by Terry Parsons
Wiltshire Creative
Salisbury Playhouse
Saturday 25th October 2025, 14.15
CAST
Bridgette Amofan – Elvira Condamine
Michael Cusick- Dr Bradman
Gabrielle Foley- Edith
Adam Jackson-Smith- Charles Condamine
Jenny Rainsford- Ruth Condamine
Fiona Tang – Mrs Bradman
Susan Wooldridge – Madame Arcati
I hate reviewing a play on the last day of its run, but circumstances forced it. I hope the review will be of interest on the play, on the theatre and on Noël Coward more generally.
Blithe Spirit, like Private Lives and Present Laughter is a play so carefully constructed that it works on stage whatever you do with it, though the 2021 filmed version was a disaster. A little lecture first. Salisbury Playhouse seats were just over a third of the price of Bath Theatre Royal with Ralph Fiennes a couple of weeks ago. Are you getting a lesser production? Not at all. Lesser actors? Not at all. What you’re not getting is a big star bums-on-seats name. There is a ripple of theatrical grumbling about the need for a TV or film “name.” The two versions of this play we have seen since I started these reviews had Alison Steadman, and then Jennifer Saunders as Madame Arcati. They were both superb. Judi Dench played her in the film. But let’s start with Karen’s comment as we walked out: Susan Wooldridge is the best Madame Arcati I’ve seen.
What she added was that Susan Wooldridge played it perfectly as it is written with no gimmicks, updating, just as Coward must have imagined it. This goes for the play. It is a remarkably faithful interpretation. This is the 1941 set design in French’s Acting Edition of the play:
That is substantially what you get. The settee is more central, the piano slightly recessed, the radiogram is next to it, so the other side of the French windows. The pouffe is next to the armchair.
The set is beautiful. The costumes even more so. They even follow Coward’s stage note: There is a wood fire burning in scene one (which shows this is not a production photo!). Where they don’t follow him is on the number of ashtrays adorning the set. The Acting Edition lists five cigarette boxes. Noël who played Charles Condamine himself must have chain-smoked through most of his plays and needed cigarette boxes all over the set. Passing Clouds, I suspect (oval rather than round in a pink box), or gold tipped Balkan Sobranie. As an afterthought, I don’t recall anyone smoking in this production which for a Noël Coward play is a first, though Charles does ask Edith, the maid, to bring his cigarette case. Mind you they pop away the drinks. Charles is accused of drinking four stiff martinis, a lot of burgundy at dinner and finishing off with brandy.
I assume basic familiarity with the plot, but there are links to three other versions of the play at the end of the review.
So a reminder. Charles Condamine (Adam Jackson-Smith) is a crime novelist, living with his second wife, Ruth (Jenny Rainsford). His first wife, Elvira, died seven years ago (in this house), and he and Ruth have been married for five years. Charles wants to research the character of a fake medium for his next book, so has invited Madame Arcati (Susan Wooldridge ) to come for dinner and conduct a seance.
He has invited Dr and Mrs Bradman (Michael Cusick and Fiona Tong) to make up the necessary four. They’re there to provide a rational medical doctor, and a wife who is actually quite interested, having met Madame Arcati around the village. They have a comic maid, Edith (Gabriella Foley). Madame Arcati arrives on her bicycle for the dinner party.
After dinner, they emerge for the seance. The three women are in the drawing room, the men are having brandy and cigars elsewhere. An aside. I’ve only really done that a couple of times. Once was with my sister’s father-in-law, and once when our doctor (twenty-five years older) invited us to dinner, and the sexes separated. I assumed it would be port, cigars and dirty jokes for the men. But we didn’t do the dirty jokes.
Note Edith the maid. It is a classist role as written (later: Good ‘eavens! Where am I?) and Coward insists on trying to write in working class accents rather than leaving it to the actor. On the surface, you wonder why she has these constant comic entrances and exits. That’s because she later becomes a plot hinge, and Coward doesn’t want us to forget that she’s always around.
The seance is where Madame Arcati gets to have fun, dancing around the stage. It’s a great theatrical moment, executed beautifully here.
Arcati selects a record to play to give mood, and chooses Always, Charles is ruffled. It was Elvira’s favourite song. The seance ends.
Then Elvira (Bridgette Amofah) appears, but no one else can see her or hear her except Charles. She has been brought back, materialised in the seance. It is important that she is really there. That’s where the film went wrong by fading her in and out. We accept Coward’s “improbable farce” (the sub title) that she is walking around, and that she is invisible to all but Charles, and us, the audience.
This Elvira is tall and beautiful. More usually she seems cast as small and impish, jumping around.
This causes ructions as Charles is saying things to Elvira that Ruth interprets as said to her. Ruth goes off to bed, leaving Charles to talk to Elvira. The next morning she thinks he was hallucinating and needs medical help.
The Elvira scenes are Coward at his best. The running joke is that Ruth, and later Madame Arcati, are trying to address Elvira but don’t know where she is as she skips and glides to other areas. For Ruth it’s vital that even when she knows where Elvira is in a chair, she must not meet her eye line, however briefly. Ruth has to look just past her.
At last Ruth is persuaded Elvira exists when Elvira moves a pot of flowers around. Elvira won’t go, and has Charles drive her to Folkestone for fun.
Ruth summons Madame Arcati, who is thrilled that her seance worked. However, she doesn’t know how to get rid of Elvira. Edith has an accident on the stairs, and Charles sprains his arm. Dr Bradman is called. Is Elvira trying to kill him so that she can have him in the afterlife with her?
Ruth goes off in the car, and Elvira is distraught. It was meant to be Charles in the car! It crashes, and Ruth is killed. Now Charles has two ghosts to deal with.
They don’t get on with each other either. Madame Arcati is invited back.
Madame Arcati realises that Edith the maid was the channel for all this. Edith, injured in Elvira’s previous attempt to kill Charles is summoned. Edith has lost memory when she comes round from hypnotism by Arcati. A line they played so well is when Charles offers her a pound (well here £5, it was a blue note) for her trouble. Edith replies ‘Oh, sir!’ in horror at what she has assumed has taken place and runs off. Here she throws the note down which improves it.
They think Arcati has sent Elvira and Ruth away but … the SFX ending was brilliantly done.
Adam Jackson-Smith is Charles Condamine. He has been playing Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers in the West End, and brings something of Basil to the part, even his appearance. It really works too. He even did a Basil backwards steps sequence. it’s not the smooth, cool Charles of Coward, but the added irascibility improves the role. He does not do a full Basil at all. Just a touch.
I couldn’t fault any performance. Ruth is wonderfully curt with him (and avoids falling into a Sibyl role!). The Bradmans make the most of the support role, both excellent. Dr Bradman is ‘realler’ here avoiding the temptation to play him as a pompous oaf. Elvira is stately. Edith is really dumb.
Madame Arcati is a triumph. Here dancing in the seance, then making her notes when she realises Elvira has manifested.
The theatre had a decent sized audience but wasn’t full on a matinee. I was surprised. Blithe Spirit is perfect afternoon entertainment, especially for an older audience. I’ve seen the play done very well indeed, but I haven’t seen it done ‘better’ than this. The theatre also added a ukulele and singing group, The Salisbury Pluckers for pre-show entertainment in the lobby, which enriches the day out. Salisbury does things like that. The applause was very good at the end, lots of calling. Salisbury isn’t a place where people stand at matinees, though the rows are wide enough to access seats without people getting up, and so vastly more comfortable than Bath or the West End.
A great classic play. A great production. A comfortable four star.
****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
Mainly they said ‘I can’t be arsed to travel to a large popular theatre in the provinces when I can review something round the corner in a tiny 150 seater in London that sells out to “Friends” immediately.’
4 star
Charlotte, Theatre & Tonic ****
3 stars
Chris Abbott, West End Best Friend ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG:
PLAYS BY NÖEL COWARD
- Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2010 (Alison Steadman)
- Blithe Spirit, by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2019 (Jennifer Saunders)
- Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward, Salisbury Playhouse 2025 (Susan Wooldridge)
- Blithe Spirit FILM 2021 (Judi Dench)
- Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, by Emma Rice, Salisbury Playhouse, 2023
- Design for Living, by Noël Coward, BBC Play Of The Month, 1979
- Fallen Angels, by Noël Coward, Salisbury Playhouse
- Hay Fever by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2016
Hay Fever, by Noël Coward, BBC TV Play 1984 - Present Laughter, by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal, 2003 Rik Mayall (retrospective)
- Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2106, Samuel West
- Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Chichester 2018, Rufus Hound
- Present Laughter by Noël Coward, Old Vic 2019, Andrew Scott
- Private Lives by Noël Coward, BBC TV 1976
- Private Lives by Noël Coward, Nigel Havers Theatre Company, 2021, Chichester
- Private Lives, by Noël Coward, Donmar Warehouse, London 2023
Relative Values by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal
This Happy Breed by Noël Coward, Bath Theatre Royal - The Vortex, by Noël Coward, Chichester Festival Theatre 2023
ANTHONY BANKS (DIRECTOR)
Mrs Warren’s Profession, George Bernard Shaw, Bath Theatre Royal 2023
Hogarth’s Progress, by Nick Dear, Rose Theatre, Kingston 2018
(The Art of Success / The Taste of The Town)
MICHAEL CUSICK
Edward II, by Marlowe, RSC 2025
A View From The Bridge, Bath & London 2024
SUSAN WOOLDRIDGE
Hay Fever, by Noël Coward, BBC TV Play 1984
ADAM JACKSON-SMITH
The Dresser, Chichester 2017
JENNY RAINSFORD
The Tempest, RSC 2016 (Miranda)
Love for Love, by Congreve – RSC 2015
Queen Anne by Helen Edmundson, RSC 2015
The Seagull, Headlong, Southampton, 2013
FIONA TONG
Summer 1954: Separate Tables, Bath 2024
Peter Viney's Blog 
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