Blithe Spirit February 26, 2011

Coward's 'improbable farce' of 1941, 'Blithe Spirit' concerns the haunting of one Charles Condomine (Mr. Everett), a suave Cowardesque novelist, by the ghost of his 'morally untidy' first wife, Elvira (Ms. Ebersole), who turns Charles's staid marriage to the priggish Ruth (Ms. Atkinson) into a prickly menage a trois. Like Coward's deeper-reaching 'Private Lives,' 'Blithe Spirit' considers a theme close to its writer's heart: the disruptive force of sexual passion, as it brings out the beast in the seemingly genteel.