Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Dan Stevens, Isla Fisher, Leslie Mann, Judi Dench, Emilia Fox, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Michele Dotrice, Simon Kunz, James Fleet, Adil Ray, Alfredo Tavares, Callie Cooke, Colin Stinton, Stella Stocker, Dave Johns, Georgina Rich, Tam Williams, Julian Ferro, Martyn Mayger, Delroy Atkinson, Issy van Randwyck, Jaymes Sygrove, Owun Birkett, Dean Winchester, Charlie Carter, Winchester, Zach Wyatt, Connor Jones, Theo Ip, Andrew Reed, Christine Callaghan, Alex Winchester, Peter A. Rogers.
In many ways the method and approach British society conducted itself between and during the two world wars has not changed at all from how we perceive in the third decade of 21st Century, and yet the manners and conversation is perhaps as alien to listen to as that of the time of the Tudors, or even listening to the language spoken by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Show a modern viewer the works of Laurel and Hardy, Will Hay, Googie Withers or George Formby and it is more than likely, unless the person being asked is schooled in old British comedy, that the meaning, the nuances, will all be lost, like fine dust blown into the wind, it becomes meaningless, forgotten, cynically disregarded as to its importance and relevance in the world today.
Not so much lost in translation, but not connecting with a different appreciation of comedy, such is the fate that drama avoids but to which humour, becomes the victim of its own success, the joke becomes old, stale, a ghost of its own making.
Under the direction of Edward Hall, such a sad downfall is avoided in his vision of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, adding to the conciseness of the playwright’s blend of mockery and tragedy, and whilst the difference of 80 years in terms of spirited performance has been adapted superbly well by the inclusion of Dan Stevens in the role of Charles Condomine, Leslie Mann as his dead wife Elvira, Judi Dench in particularly sublime form as the spiritualist/medium Madame Arcati and the welcome return to the screen for Michele Dotrice as the Condomine’s cook, Edna, all of who bring the memory of classic comedy to the foreground without having to feel the sometimes embarrassment to which contemporary films often revel in.
It is the complications of farce and tragedy in which the films excels, but it is also in the near microscopic view of detail of the lives of the middle-class artists during the interwar years which produces the finest caricature, consumed with relishing a sense of hedonism and want, the adaption of the self over community and the near embrace of fraudulent imitation, it is to this that farce relishes the contempt and sarcasm played perfectly under the table by all involved.
The dead have a way to bring justice to their names, the rituals of the paranormal should never be taken for granted, and comedy, even when out of fashion, ought to have the right to be explored. Blithe Spirit captures this with clarity and decently observed performances.
Ian D. Hall