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Blithe Spirit
by Noël Coward
Directed by Gil Berry
Mesa Encore Theatre
Nesbitt/Elliot Playhouse Theatre at the Mesa Arts Center, Mesa
(480) 641-7039
June 30th - July 9th, 2006
$15.00 - $17.00
Discount tickets may be available at

Noël Coward is not an easy proposition. His witty plays are drier than a well-shaken martini and an acquired taste like Stilton cheese. Many strong companies have foundered on the white cliffs of his humor and morés. While his plays are ostensibly set in the early- to mid-20th century, they are so stylized that it’s less a matter of history than breeding that can keep a show like Blithe Spirit funny and still accessible to Mesa audiences. Needed are a director and performers who can bring us into Coward’s drawing room and guide us to the funny. Fortunately for Mesa Encore Theatre, they’ve secured veteran director Gil Berry, who as an actor can pull off Coward with the best of the locals. He’s tapped perennial ne’er-do-well Jack Pauly, stylishly and slinkily sexy Christina Rae Stewart, and primly presentational Tami Bailly to fill the roles of Coward-substitute Charles, his titled blithe spirit deceased first wife Elvira, and stodgy current wife Ruth accordingly. Throw in the requisite over-the-top performance of perennially pigeonholed madwoman Teri Krawitz as the audacious mystic Madame Arcati, and MET offers a parlor comedy to equally please the gin-soaked and tea-cozied.

Berry personally offers a slightly twisted stiff upper lip with his regal bearing and droll sense of humor, so asking him to helm should be a given. He guides his actors through many of Coward’s crucial half-second takes and one-upman banter. By the first Sunday matinee, there were still some pacing issues, mostly due to hesitations of remembering Coward’s loquacious text, but Pauly and especially Stewart give a lovely accounting of the syncopated timings of delivery and reaction. Where Berry is less successful is justified blocking, another difficult set of choices in the stylized and naturally static setting. He keeps the stage picture a bit too active, more often depending on the frenetic visual when the subtlety of economic movement and gestures might have been the more effective choice. However, a rapidly moving but superbly timed and expressed Coward is still an impressive feat.

I have often chided Pauly about his Britishisms in print, but here he has found a lilting and slightly fey voice for Charles that makes us love this clever rogue. His deportment is rigid, his arms forever crooked, and his hands slipped into pockets or elegantly gesturing with ever-present martini and highball glasses. Watching him flirt with Stewart or spar with Bailly makes this comedy so fun. Stewart’s tinkling and suggestive laugh and her naturally ethereal presence makes Elvira an irresistible siren. With a strong voice, an arsenal of lip pouts, and a glimmeringly sly series of glances, she is the sexiest a shade can be. In Bailly’s best work thusfar, she is an unbending, controlling Ruth but does a good job of switching through the emotions of her character’s growing confusion, fear, and rage. Poor Krawitz is doomed for roles such as these because she is so good at being the ostentatious gypsy and nutcase, and here the audience enjoys yet another incarnation of her oddity in the flamboyant Madame Arcati. Krawitz will go anywhere and do anything to get a laugh while still balancing on the edge of inanity, so you know that when Arcati begins one of her séances, you are in danger of snort-laughing.

Scot McElser’s simple box set suggests a grand Kent farmhouse parlor, but the final poltergeist activities are a bit of a letdown. Darrel Fall’s lighting design is a strong plot with many moods and interesting choices. Lisa Suico’s costumes are strong considering MET’s resources, and she does an especially good job with those of Arcati and Elvira. Jesse Berger’s sound design is effective and well-run.