Oh hi friends.
This one is a bit late in coming because.. well, you know life happens.
What with having a bunch of religious whackos camped out in front of the church down the road for 40 days, to you know.. drinking and passing out in the backseat of a Pontiac. Stuff gets complicated.
Anywho. Back in October, prior to our annual Halloween shenanigrams, the DIAG squad rolled out to the THEATRE like proper contributing members of society to check out the Western Canada Theater’s showing of “Blithe Spirit”.
Now. We don’t do a lot of Pissed Up Plays reviews around here… The last one was I’ll Be Back Before Midnight, and the reason being is simply that a lot of theatre that we get around here doesn’t kinda suit the spoopy ooky stuff that we like to get down with, which is unfortunate because both Scotty F and myself are great fans of theatre. I’m not a fan of paying $9 for a watered down cup of white wine, but I’ll accept it if it gets us out of the house and me in a pair of high heeled Fluevogs to go rub the appearance of bad taste into the faces of WASPs aplenty.
Blithe Spirit is a famous play by Noel Coward and was first performed in 1941. As such, it’s a bit of a period piece.
Western Canada Theatre did a wonderful job of bringing together this play and group of actors.
The basic story is that Charles is researching a book of paranormal phenomenon and hires an eccentric psychic known as Madame Arcati to come and do a seance for the amusement/research of him and his rich friends as well as his wife Ruth. Charles’s previous wife Elvira has passed away.
The seance materializes Elvira and she starts haunting Charles. He is the only one of the home who can see Elvira. Once Ruth eventually comes to understand that Elvira has bigger intentions in returning from the dead than to simply visit, the two wives engage in hilarious shouting matches from beyond the grave. Elvira plots to kill Charles so he can join her in the after life, and much to her dismay, it is Ruth who ends up dying.
When Madame Arcati comes to attempt to exorcise Elvira, she ends up materializing Ruth and both wives take to haunting Charles.
Hilarity and seances ensue, and the appearance of the ghosts was done in a clever manner in that they both appear as humans but in greyscale. Ruth wore bright dresses before her untimely death and afterwards, those same dresses were rendered into drab greys.
The actor who played Charles was definitely a DILF, and the ghosts were hilarious and beautiful.
Edith, the maid was a touch of slapstick comedy to add to the whole thing and overall I really appreciated this showing. It was funny and made for an entertaining night out.
This play is obviously not exclusive to our town so I recommend that you check it out if you can get a chance and go be a part of “high” society.
Yes, we smoked weed in the parking lot before we saw this play.
Yes that joke was terrible.
Yes you can go now.
Photos courtesy of WCT Theatre.