Judi Dench declared that we could all do with some ‘levity’ and ‘cheering up’. The great dame enters that spirit with a deliciously comic masterclass as clairvoyant Madame Arcati in a new film version of Noel Coward’s 1941 dark comedy Blithe Spirit.
It features Charles Condomine, a playboy novelist who invites the eccentric medium to conduct a seance which inadvertently conjures up Elvira, the writer’s first wife. The marvellous conceit is that the husband is the only person who can see the ghost.
‘The secret is,’ Judi told me, ‘that Madame Arcati certainly believes in herself and her powers, though she exaggerates one thing.’
Pictured: Dame Judi Dench in in new film adaption of Noel Coward’s classic Blithe Spirit
That would be an ability to fly.
‘She tries to fool an audience in the theatre. She’s supposed to be levitating. I was whisked around on pulleys in Richmond Theatre. I felt like a Marvel superhero.’
Then she laughed: ‘Actually, I am a Marvel superhero – but you knew that.’
As an aside, she said: ‘Who wouldn’t like flying?’ – then lamented that she missed out ever playing Peter Pan. She said that Richard Eyre, director of the current play revival starring Jennifer Saunders in the Arcati role, wrote to Judi.
‘He said, “We’re doing the same play” and I said, “Well, almost” because they’re very different.’
The picture, on release from May 1, is a beautifully crafted confection directed by Edward Hall, who is making his feature film directing debut, with Dan Stevens as the errant author, Hollywood actress Leslie Mann as the malevolent spectre Elvira, and Isla Fisher as the second Mrs Condomine.
Pictured: Dame Judi Dench in in new film adaption of Noel Coward’s classic Blithe Spirit
Hall and writing and producing team Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft updated the female voices, giving them a 21st-century attitude but retaining the tone of the world of the play. ‘In a ménage à trois we wanted them all to give as good as they got here,’ said Ms Leonard.
In the stage version, argued Leonard, the two wives accepted Charles’s behaviour without too many questions. ‘I don’t think any of us would do that now. They have to be grounded in their own strength,’ she explained.
She observed, though, that the only one grounded in an emotional truth is Judi’s spiritualist. Madame Arcati is seeking to see Donald, her true love again, who was killed in the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War. The moments when she’s seeking to be reunited with her beau are very poignant. The part’s more expanded and much deeper than it is usually played on the stage.
Judi has played Coward’s roles before, but the film marks her first stab at Madame Arcati. She met the great wit when she was an ingénue at the Old Vic.
She said: ‘Coward kind of adopted me and took me to so many first nights. To this day I have never forgotten his aftershave.’ She also felt the two wives are the stronger characters in the film. ‘They’re in the way all the time. They are wicked.’
Hall revealed he had been working on the screen project for several years.
‘It was like trying to get an octopus into a string bag after drinking vodka; there are so many moving pieces to put together,’ he said, laughing as he remembered Coward wrote it in six days.
He said that he looked closely at the David Lean film, released 75 years ago, and used it as a blueprint. It helped him understand his movie.
‘It should have the shape and feel and appearance of a tight-lipped period, British comedy, but the action of the story sort of throws a wrecking ball at it, so people find themselves doing the most ridiculous things and behaving in the most ridiculous way,’ he told me.
It is ridiculous. Gloriously so.
Terry Gilliam is to direct a production of the musical Into The Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine
Director and Monty Python member Terry Gilliam is to direct a production of the musical Into The Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine.
It will run at the Old Vic for several weeks over the holiday season in December and January.
It’s a brilliantly inspired choice for a show about the flip side of fairy tales.
Composer and lyricist Sondheim described the 1987 show as being a ‘picaresque adventure peopled with fantastic creatures’, which seems perfect for Gilliam, who made the surrealistic gems Brazil and Time Bandits.
Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, James Corden and Emily Blunt featured in the big-screen version of Into The Woods in 2014.
Neither the Old Vic nor its external spokesperson would divulge any aspect of the show, saying I would have to wait for an official announcement.
Watch out for…
Jasper Britton, who will play Arthur Wicksteed the randy doctor (a part created by Alec Guinness) in a revival of Alan Bennett’s 1973 farcical comedy Habeas Corpus, which runs at the Menier Chocolate Factory from May 15.
Pictured: Jasper Britton in Alan Bennett’s 1973 farcical comedy Habeas Corpus
The production, to be directed by Patrick Marber (he who staged Tom Stoppard’s heartbreaking masterwork Leopoldstadt at Wyndham’s Theatre), will also feature Matthew Cottle as Canon Throbbing – get the saucy picture?! – Jonathan Cullen, Catherine Russell, Kirsty Besterman and Abdul Salis.
Isobel McArthur, who perfectly understood that Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest novels ever written – but wondered what it would look like if all the roles, including the chaps, were performed by a cast of six women.
McArthur, who also plays Mrs Bennet and Mr Darcy, introduced a few words which I suspect Ms Austen hadn’t heard of back in polite Georgian England.
It has pop songs, too. The show, left, is sheer delight. The company also includes Tori Burgess, Felixe Forde, Christina Gordon, Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Meghan Tyler.
I caught it at the Oxford Playhouse on Wednesday, where it’s running until tomorrow.
It plays the NST City Theatre, Southampton, from next Tuesday.
Pictured: Pride and Prejudice at The Oxford Playhouse. It will run in Southampton next week