Editing Blithe Spirit (play) (section)

{{short description|Play written by Noël Coward}}
{{italic title|Blithe Spirit}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2014}}
{{Use British English|date=March 2014}}
[[File:Blithe Spirit.jpg|right|thumb|upright=1.25|[[Margaret Rutherford]] (Madame Arcati), [[Kay Hammond]] (Elvira) and [[Fay Compton]] (Ruth), 1941]]
'''''Blithe Spirit''''' is a comic play by [[Noël Coward]], described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts".<ref>Mander and Mitchenson, p. 366</ref> The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric [[Mediumship|medium]] and [[clairvoyant]] Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a [[séance]], hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost.

The play was first seen in the [[West End theatre|West End]] in 1941 and ran for 1,997 performances, a new record for a non-musical play in London. It also did well on [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] later that year, running for 657 performances. The play was [[Blithe Spirit (1945 film)|adapted for the cinema]] in 1945; a [[Blithe Spirit (2020 film)|second film version]] followed in 2020. Coward directed a [[musical theatre|musical]] adaptation, ''[[High Spirits (musical)|High Spirits]]'', seen on Broadway and in the West End in 1964. Radio and television presentations of the play have been broadcast in Britain and the US from 1944 onwards. It continues to be revived in the West End, on Broadway and elsewhere.
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