"Blithe Spirit" illuminates memory

By KATHERINE PARKER - Staff Writer for the Greenwood Commonwealth

Memory took center stage at Wednesday evening’s dress rehearsal for Greenwood Little Theatre’s humorous production of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit.”

Coward summarized his writing experience in 1941, when “Blithe Spirit” premiered on the London’s West End. “I knew it would be a success, and so it was,” he said. And so it was for the Greenwood Little Theatre.

Upon entering Davis Auditorium, guests were greeted with the site of Elvira Condomine’s casket, illuminated and casting a shadow on closed curtains.

Pallbearers proceeded to lift the casket from the stage, accompanied by Ed Morse on the euphonium, and the play opened for its more-than-two-hour performance.

“I remember her vividly,” says Charles Condomine, played by Paul Brown. Condomine, an English novelist skeptical of the afterlife, is the play’s main character. His comment about remembering Elvira understates the rest of the play, in which his remembrances are seen only through the words and actions of others.

The play incorporates aspects of humor and farce to make this evident, setting the characters mainly in the before and after of one evening’s dinner party. Charles Condomine and his wife, Ruth, have friends — Dr. and Mrs. Bradman — over to attend a seance held by Madame Arcati, a visiting medium.

Condomine expects the dinner party to serve as fodder for his next novel and is surprised when Arcati conjures the ghost of his first wife, Elvira, played by Alison Dinkins.

Condomine’s first wife, Ruth, played by Katie Mills, can’t see Elvira’s ghost. The back-and-forth between Condommine and Elvira is subsequently taken by Ruth as comments from Charles about her rather than Elvira.

His comments, witty but often harsh, illuminate the relationship he had with Elvira as well as his current marriage to Ruth. At the beginning of the play, he remembers his marriage to Elvira as a good one, but as the play progresses, the audience can see this isn’t true.

Dinkins’ Elvira meshes flirtatious attitude with caustic assessment of Condomine’s character, which Brown justifies with fiery and sincerely delivered response.

Mills works between the two, walking the line between somewhat jilted and mostly loving wife. Her performance helps illuminate the relationship between Condomine and Elvira by showing just how much Condomine hasn’t changed since the death of his first wife.

Dr. and Mrs. Bradman, played by Bob Draper and Kimberly Gnemi, offer a glimpse of the beginning dregs of Condomine’s marriages.

Gnemi’s deliberately dry delivery of her lines couples with Draper’s with Draper’s aloof affect to balance the ridiculousness of Condomine’s situation with his two wives. However, the Bradmans also serve as earlier versions of the Condomines. Draper delivers his lines to Gnemi with condescension, just as Brown speaks to Dinkins and Mills with hasty scorn and frustration.

The Condomine's’ maid, Edith — represented onstage by Elecia Elmore — witnesses some of these interactions. Her character, an ex-maid for the navy, garners laughs throughout the play. For Elmore’s theatrical debut, she brings a necessary relief to the tension that builds up to the final scene.

The true nature of Condomine and his marriages is revealed, and he says good riddance, pleased that he “will no longer be ruled by hags.” Arcati’s line, that “time is the reef upon which all our mystic ships are wrecked,” seems to apply to the marriages in this play. Time does them no favors, as the audience can see in this last insult delivered by Condomine to his wives. Mills even gives a line referring to the lost ardour between he character and Brown’s.

Arcati’s line, delivered by Michele Hale in a standout performance both amusing and compelling, cements the play as a reflection on memory and character.

Condomine’s last line in the play, taken from Richard Lovelace’s “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars,” furthers this idea. “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” Brown tells the audience.

This line, traditionally delivered as a justification for leaving a lover, is delivered sarcastically, and the audience is left with the impression that the events of the play have not changed Condomine at all.

“Blithe Spirit” opened Thursday evening in Davis Elementary Auditorium and will be performed Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. as well as 2 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets may be purchased as the door, via phone at 662-219-3822, via email at ticking@greenwoodlittletheatre.com or online at greenwoodlittletheatre.com.