Dame Judi’s very spirited star role in Coward classic
JUDI DENCH declared that we could all do with some ‘levity’ and ‘cheering up’. The great dame enters that spirit with a deliciously comic masterclass as clairvoyant Madame Arcati in a new film version of Noel Coward’s 1941 dark comedy Blithe Spirit.
It features Charles Condomine, a playboy novelist who invites the eccentric medium to conduct a seance which inadvertently conjures up Elvira, the writer’s first wife. The marvellous conceit is that the husband is the only person who can see the ghost.
‘The secret is,’ Judi told me, ‘that Madame Arcati certainly believes in herself and her powers, though she exaggerates one thing.’ That would be an ability to fly. ‘She tries to fool an audience in the theatre. She’s supposed to be levitating. I was whisked around on pulleys in Richmond Theatre. I felt like a Marvel superhero.’
Then she laughed: ‘Actually, I am a Marvel superhero — but you knew that.’
As an aside, she said: ‘Who wouldn’t like flying?’ — then lamented that she missed out ever playing Peter Pan. She said that Richard Eyre, director of the current play revival starring Jennifer Saunders in the Arcati role, wrote to Judi. ‘He said, “We’re doing the same play” and I said, “Well, almost” because they’re very different.’
The picture, on release from May 1, is a beautifully crafted confection directed by Edward Hall, who is making his feature film directing debut, with Dan Stevens as the errant author, Hollywood actress Leslie Mann as the malevolent spectre Elvira, and Isla Fisher as the second Mrs Condomine.
Hall and writing and producing team Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft updated the female voices, giving them a 21st-century attitude but retaining the tone of the world of the play. ‘In a ménage à trois we wanted them all to give as good as they got here,’ said Ms Leonard.
In the stage version, argued Leonard, the two wives accepted Charles’s behaviour without too many questions. ‘I don’t think any of us would do that now. They have to be grounded in their own strength,’ she explained.
She observed, though, that the only one grounded in an emotional truth is Judi’s spiritualist. Madame Arcati is seeking to see Donald, her true love again, who was killed in the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War. The moments when she’s seeking to be reunited with her beau are very poignant. The part’s more expanded and much deeper than it is usually played on the stage.
Judi has played Coward’s roles before, but the film marks her first stab at Madame Arcati. She met the great wit when she was an ingénue at the Old Vic.
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HE said: ‘Coward kind of adopted me and took me to so many first nights. To this day I have never forgotten his aftershave.’ She also felt the two wives are the stronger characters in the film. ‘They’re in the way all the time. They are wicked.’
Hall revealed he had been working on the screen project for several years. ‘It was like trying to get an octopus into a string bag after drinking vodka; there are so many moving pieces to put together,’ he said, laughing as he remembered Coward wrote it in six days.
He said that he looked closely at the David Lean film, released 75 years ago, and used it as a blueprint. It helped him understand his movie. ‘It should have the shape and feel and appearance of a tight-lipped period, British comedy, but the action of the story sort of throws a wrecking ball at it, so people find themselves doing the most ridiculous things and behaving in the most ridiculous way,’ he told me.
It is ridiculous. Gloriously so.