As a playwright, I have been doing a lot of traveling lately and have experienced the magic of theater in a lot of different venues up and down the east coast, but on Friday night, I was delighted to discover a truly great venue right in my backyard in Frederick. The Other Voices Theater is located in the southern end of town in an old strip mall-turned-nightclub-turned theater and dance academy. The nondescript parking lot belies a wonder world of artistic enchantment, from its very hip decor and 114-seat theater to its friendly staff, from its cool and casual atmosphere to its professional-level stage craft.

All of this was on broad display in Friday’s scintillating performance of Noel Coward’s Blythe Spirit.

From the moment I entered the theater and saw the impeccably accurate set — a sitting room of a mansion, with classic paintings on the walls, carefully-selected knick-knacks, a gramophone (!), wing-backed chairs rugs on the hardwood floors — I knew I was in for something special. Once the play began, this beautiful set provided for complete immersion in the world of Charles Condomine and his wife and friends.

Before the play began, Susan Thornton of Other Voices Theater came on stage and sat one of the signature wing-backed chairs and gave a fine impression of Alistair Cooke from Masterpiece Theater. She advised the audience that the first act was a long 115 minutes and contained ‘a lot of talking’. She said in would go fast, however.

No truer words were ever spoken!

From the moment the bickering Condomines (Charles played perfectly by Matt Bannister, Ruth Condomine exquisitely portrayed by Melissa Powell), the audience including myself was rapt with fascination as the couple exchanged witty gibes and set up the following action involving a seance, discussing Charles’ motivations and bringing up the uncomfortable subject of Charles’ ex-wife. We do get the impression that he loved his deceased Elvira, although he is careful to express his love for Ruth as well. Charles is also a bit of a lush.

This first part sort of lulled the audience — we did expect to see a British farce of manners, and we were getting that, including a typically British class-conscious interaction with the goofy servant, Edith (LJ Teske) — but the dynamic changed dramatically when the medium who was hired for the seance showed up. Madame Arcati, superbly played by Amy Hobbs, lit up the place with an over-the-top comic masterpiece of a performance. Where we strained to listen to the bickering couple, Madame Arcati blared out her vision of the world with its spirits and its unfathomably bureaucratic rules of engagement, contrasting sharply with the reserved and passive-aggressive Condomines.

Character-development-wise it was a thing of beauty.

The Condomines are joined by dinner guests, Dr. and Mrs. Bradman, played by two steady and pitch-perfect supporting actors, Bruce Pope and Liz Weber, and then finally by the successfully-conjured up ghost wife Elvira, played with sublime mischievousness by Michelle Boizelle.

All of the actors were superb and that 115 minutes of Act I simply flew by. I have rarely wished for an intermission to be over quickly so that I could see what would happen next!

Act II did not disappoint, the complications of the plot leading to a pretty heady and an even somewhat dark self-inquiry about Charles’s choices, motivations and even what might be going on on the other side. The special effects [sorry no plot spoilers from me] were awesome and that combined with the excellent acting was so convincing that I began to wish that mediums and the like were really real, just so they could conjure up fine dramas such as these. 

Well done!

If you should catch this review sometime before the final shows at Other Voices Theater (October 26, 27, 28 2018) do yourself a favor and check out this amazing rendition of a classic show!!