Blithe Spirit, Gielgud Theatre

What could possibly be more fabulous than Angela Lansbury in a classic Noël Coward play? Luckily, this is a question that no longer needs to be left to the imagination as the five-time Tony Award-winner returns to the West End in Coward’s Blithe Spirit, reprising her 2009 role as the spirit medium Madame Arcati at the Gielgud Theatre. The play sees Charles Condomine, a novelist, invite Madame Arcati to his house for a séance, all in the name of research. Unfortunately for Charles, the medium summons the ghost of his dead wife, much to the vexation of his current one. 

With an honorary Oscar - and now a damehood - to her name, Lansbury is a familiar face due to her role as novelist Jessica Fletcher in the daytime TV classic Murder She Wrote. She also has a voice known to all as Mrs Potts the teapot from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Lansbury is reunited for Blithe Spirit with director Michael Blakemore, who also took the reins of the Broadway production. She had said of the play that “Coward is the essence of a Britishness long gone.”

Five years on from the original production, people have questioned whether Lansbury is still up to the physical demands of the role of Madame Arcati. Her Broadway performance was a physical feast, with the New York Times applauding the way she threw herself around the stage with "the gait of a gazelle and a repertory of poses that bring to mind Egyptian hieroglyphs". However, the lady herself has stated that she is in “terrific shape” for the production, and if Angela thinks she’s up to it, we’ll take her beautifully spoken word for it.