FREE ESSAY ON BLITHE SPIRIT

BLITHE SPIRIT

Anthony J. Perrotta
October 3, 1999
Blithe Spirit
Frankly, I was amazed by the set of Blithe Spirit. I am not sure whether it was because I
had a hand in building it and all of the skills I acquired in doing so or just the fact
that it was a great set. Either way I was extremely impressed.
Seeing the set from the front, back, and even above gave me a wider scope of how it
worked and how it was put together. I paid special attention to two main aspects of the
set; the making and the small intricacies of it.
Everything was accounted for when it came to masking. Places to dress privately in the
wings, carpet on the stairs and tape on the doors, hard and soft tormentors and the
traveling blacks were all used together to mask both unwanted sound and light.
As far as the small stuff, I was amazed by how profoundly different the set looked from
different angles and distances. From the audience the stage looked laden with tile or
hardwood floors and the walls looked rich with texture and depth. From the stage though,
the wood floors looked obviously fake and so did the tile, the walls were rather flat and
the small trinkets looked cheap. What an art of deception.
The one thing that I wanted to do from the very start of the run of Blithe Spirit was to
see the last scene in which Ruth and Elvira begin tearing up the house. I didn't really
get a chance to see the set played upon or the costumes while the actors were on stage
but I was not as curious about those things as I was about the last scene, so, I went to
the sound booth.
When the first shoe dropped, actually a curtain rod, the audience gasped. I could tell
that they were not sure whether or not it was supposed to happen. In that one moment, the
set was more like an actor than I've ever seen. It took on a characteristic and made the
audience doubt themselves. 
I had no idea how much of an impact that small scene would have but soon found that it
was tremendous. From the curtains over the door falling to the lights flickering, it
really seemed as if invisible, super natural forces were at work. Each time something
happened, there was a purpose and every thing built up on one another. This made it seem
as though the characters were getting more and more irritated by Mr. Condomine's
disparaging comments. I could imagine the house being completely wrecked when Mr.
Condomine finally returned and at last I suddenly knew what haunted house's in horror
movies looked like before and how they got the way they were.
All in all it was a fascinating play with an exclamation point at the end of it. The
simplicity of rigging the set and props that produced such a splendid effect deserved a
curtain call of its' own.