Blithe Spirit

It's been awhile since we've seen Lon Bumgarner directing an utterly carefree comedy -- so long, you may have forgotten how good he is at it. When he was dominating the Loaf's directing awards from 1987-90, Bumgarner certainly garnered accolades for his Hamlet, Macbeth, and Three Sisters with Charlotte Shakespeare Company. Yet his work was sometimes even more revelatory in frothier fare such as Scapino!, House of Blue Leaves, You Can't Take It With You and What the Butler Saw.

Now he's back at Theater Charlotte, directing his first comedy at the Queens Road barn in over a decade. You don't want to miss Bumgarner's irreverent take on Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit--or the fine ensemble he has recruited to the cause. Homing in on the ghoulish spirit of Halloween, Bumgarner has taken the genteel Kent estate of Charles Condomine and turned it into a vision out of Edward Gorey—one that still serves cucumber sandwiches. Brian Ruggaber's set tilts toward us at a dangerous angle, thick-grained, decrepit, and entirely black and white. There's enough white pancake makeup on Charles to gain him admission into a leper colony. Green olives have been banned from his dry martinis, replaced with black.

Clinching the turnaround, Charles' deceased wife Elvira whisks in from the spirit world dressed in a fiery red negligee, devilishly seductive and nothing like the gray vision decreed by Coward. Her summoner, neighborhood medium Madame Arcati, no longer confines her eccentricities to bright gladrags, beads and tweeds. Now she's a flamboyant Russian gypsy, draped entirely in black by costume designer Annie-Laurie Wheat, with amulets and peasant stylings inspired by Maria Ouspenskaya. (A far cry from Margaret Rutherford, Coward's original choice.)

Commanding the stage every time she appears as Madame Arcati, Laura Depta is more of a large than a medium. Inspired by an outrageously curly jet-black wig, Depta's stagey Russian accent achieves maximum density, and she flirts with Charles as intently as Elvira herself. She believes that our world is engirdled by spirits, and there's a warm touch of maternal protectiveness when she establishes contact.

Paige Johnston counterbalances the mystic Arcati perfectly as Elvira—sexy, sarcastic, rapacious and skeptical to the bone. Coward probably conceived Charles's first wife as a goddess hovering far above morality. Slinking across the stage and draping herself suggestively over every plush chair and settee, Johnston's Elvira is a calculating sociopath.

Rounding out the triumvirate of women who flutter and cackle around Charles, Chandler McIntyre is the essence of petulant possessiveness as his current wife Ruth. Charming, poised and resolutely obtuse, McIntyre's Ruth is decorously fond of Charles—but never to excess.

At the center of it all, Carl McIntyre is absolutely brilliant as Charles. He has the looks and urbanity to justify all the women's incessant flutterings, plus the exact measure of how an English gentleman becomes upset. Confidence radiates from McIntyre's performance, particularly in his off-handed manner of delivering Charles's most devastating jibes and witticisms. The excellence of the cast nearly extends through the minor roles. Alan Nelson is adequate as Dr. Bradman even if he hasn't grown a real beard for the role, but as Mrs. Bradman, Kathryn Burns is clearly outclassed in this ensemble. No such problem with Nicia Carla as the hyper housemaid, Edith. Whether clopping insanely across stage with glassware or drifting dopily into a mystic trance, CL's reigning Actress of the Year is a hoot.

With alert lighting from Biff Edge abetted by cunning set construction from Ruggaber, the supernatural technical effects of Blithe Spirit are executed with the same brio as the comedy. This is Noel Coward as you've never seen him -- and each of Bumgarner's radical changes works like a charm.