Sunday, October 5, 2008

Blithe Spirit

This afternoon I returned to the University of Portland campus not for the soccer game, but to see a production of Noel Coward's play Blithe Spirit.  While I have heard of Coward, I was not familiar with his work, so I jumped at the chance to see this play.  

The play is about a socialite and his wife who invite a local clairvoyant to a dinner party for a seance.  Believing the her to be hoax, he hopes to get material for a novel that he plans on writing.  He gets more than he bargains for when the ghost of his first wife appears, which he loved greatly.  What follows is comical miscommunication, a love triangle, and attempts to rid the house of the ghosts of the past and present.

Apparently Coward decided to write a superficial comedy about a ghost after his apartment was destroyed by a German bombing run.  It is always tempting for me to try to squeeze the meaning of what I experience.  Is this a play about having an open mind?  Or is about the the deeply intrenched feelings of love?  Then again, I could look at this simply as a light hearted way to spend a drizzly afternoon.  

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