Review – Blithe Spirit starring Dame Angela Lansbury, Gielgud Theatre

Perhaps that should be Dame-elect.

As far as we know Angela Lansbury‘s still waiting to pick up her gong. But it’s well-timed. Charity gigs aside (Phil once saw her perform ‘Bosom Buddies’ with Bea Arthur), she’s not appeared on the London stage for almost 40 years. How canny of Palace officials to catch her while they can.

And gosh, we hadn’t seen post-show crowds outside a stage door like these for years. Presumably most are familiar with her from constant reruns of Murder, She Wrote rather than Gaslight, The Manchurian Candidate or her record number of Tony Award acting wins.

We watched it in mild amazement from the safety of The White Horse upstairs bar as a Mark Shenton look-alike tried to corral the throng seeping out from behind the crash barriers, to allow access for her car. Which, when it came, she entered, wound down the window and threw cheery waves on departing.

Let’s hope when she goes to the Palace she gets HMQ and not one of the second-stringers. They can have a wave-off.

Now, unless you’re connected to someone in the show or Biggins and get invited to the opening, there’s two ways for ordinary members of the public to get tickets for Blithe Spirit. You can either forgo a few luxuries and fork out up to £92.25, or you can do as we did and enjoy a morning sojourn playing Scrabble on the pavement outside the Gielgud Theatre and get one of the day seats for £10*.

Review – Blithe Spirit, Apollo Theatre

There’s nothing the Whingers like more than having the willies put up them.

With Ghost Stories under their belts and Ghost The Musical coming up in the outside lane the Whingers found themselves again taking stock of their relationship with the supernatural in the form of Noël Coward‘s Blithe Spirit.

And despite a cynical take on all things ectoplasmic Phil had a peculiar, nay spooky, experience at the Apollo Theatre. Only a few hours earlier he’d be musing not only about the last time he saw the play on stage (with “sock it to me!” Judy Carne as Elvira) but also about an old friend he’d lost touch with and hadn’t seen for many years. A dry, deeply cynical but solid fellow, definitely not prone to flights of fantasy, he had once told Phil a pretty convincing tale, witnessed by many others at the same moment, of seeing a ghost (a floating head if you please) in a Spanish monastery many years ago.* And there he was (the teller of the tale, not the ghost) standing in the bar at the interval of Monday’s preview, imbibing his own choice of spirits!

All very peculiar and unsettling. Call for Derek Acorah. Even better, call Shirley Ghostman!