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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