Angela Lansbury returns to the West End to star in Blithe Spirit

Angela Lansbury is returning to the West End, as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit for a limited 5-week run which will begin on 1st March 2014.

She will reprise her Tony-winning role (from 2009) at the Gielgud Theatre, with the remainder of the cast yet to be announced.

Angela Lansbury has enjoyed a seven-decade career, as a screen star and as an award-winning stage actor in New York and London. Her Broadway debut was in 1957 as Bert Lahr’s wife in Hotel Paradiso. Other Broadway credits include A Taste of Honey (1960), Anyone Can Whistle (1961),Mame (1966, Tony Award), Dear World (1968, Tony Award), Gypsy (1974 revival, Tony Award), Sweeney Todd (1979, Tony Award), Blithe Spirit (2009 revival, Tony Award), A Little Night Music (2009 revival), and The Best Man (2012).

She recently appeared alongside James Earl Jones and Boyd Gaines in the 2013 Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy. From 1984-1996 she starred as Jessica Fletcher on “Murder She Wrote,” the longest running detective drama series in the history of television. Named a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth in 1994, she received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2000. In addition to her 5 Tony Awards, she is also the winner of 6 Golden Globe Awards and has been nominated for 3 Oscars and 18 Emmys.

Blithe Spirit, it’s about a novelist, Charles who invites the rather eccentric clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to carry out a séance. She unwittingly summons Charles’ first wife, Elvira, who died seven years earlier. The Madame leaves after the séance has finished, not knowking that she has summoned Elvira. It is only Charles who can see or hear Elvira, and his second wife, Ruth, does not believe that Elvira exists. The ghostly Elvira makes continued, and progressively desperate, efforts to disrupt Charles’ current marriage. She ultimately sabotages his car in the hope of killing him so that he will join her in the spirit world, but it is Ruth rather than Charles who is killed, now Charles has two playful spirits on his hands.

Friday 29th November 2013