‘High Spirits’ Brings a Forgotten Musical Back From the Dead

“High Spirits” is all about bringing things back from the dead. First, there’s the plot, an “improbable farce,” as its creator, Noël Coward, described it, about a man being harassed and essentially seduced by the ghost of his late first wife. Then there’s the show itself, which in 1964 brought back “Blithe Spirit,” a classic Coward play from 20 years earlier. Now Encores is retrieving “High Spirits” back from the netherworld of forgotten-but-fun shows that are worthy, if not for a full scale Broadway revival, at least for another look. “High Spirits” also revived at least two worthy professional lives in its original incarnation: By 1964, Sir Noël himself hadn’t had a hit musical show in years, neither in Britain nor America, despite a flourishing intercontinental career as an entertainer in his own one man act. Likewise, Hugh Martin, who started as a vocal arranger before going on to major success as a composer — his biggest successes were the 1941 Broadway show “Best Foot Forward” and the classic Judy Garland-Vincente Minnelli MGM “Meet Me in St. Louis” — hadn’t done a show since 1951. “High Spirits” brought Coward and Martin together as a de facto team, and vindicated both careers.It’s also possible to look at “Blithe Spirits” and “High Spirits” as farcical paeans to an alternative lifestyle. In 1932, one of Coward’s most successful plays was “Design for Living,” about a woman living with two men. “Blithe Spirit” and “High Spirits” might also be viewed as a variation on the classic 1940 screwball comedy movie “My Favorite Wife,” in which Irene Dunne, having been lost at sea and pronounced deceased, somehow returns home to find that her husband has remarried; fortunately, if any man can handle two wives simultaneously, it’s Cary Grant. “High Spirits” could be titled “Design for Dying.” All three stories are essentially love triangles. However, it’s hard to imagine that if some contemporary author were working with this basic premise — a three-way love affair — that they couldn’t resist the idea of having the threesome engage in, as they say on “Seinfeld,” “I believe it’s called a menage-a-trois.”The 1964 musical is a sheer delight, thanks largely to Jessica Stone’s direction, as well as Martin and collaborator Timothy Grey adaptation of Coward’s 1941 play — and now, how Bill Rosenfield has re-adapted that adaptation for this Encores! production. Even multiple generations away from the original source material, the warm and the wit of the Coward’s original shines through. To that end, Mr. Rosenfield added the notion of having an on-stage narrator, played by Campbell Scott, representing the original author himself, doubling as a supporting character.Martin and Grey not only did a superlative job on the book, but their score is a triumph. “You’d Better Love Me,was widely recorded at the time, and was heard by millions as the flip side of Petula Clark’s blockbuster hit “Downtown.” It has since gone on to become an all-time jazz standard, with recordings by everyone from Jack Jones and Mel Tormé to Ella Fitzgerald and even “Star Trek”’s Nichelle Nichols—a very different kind of otherworldly personality. “Forever and a Day” sounds like Martin and Grey’s attempt to write a traditional folk-flavored Noël Coward love song a la “London Pride” or “Matelot.” And there’s a comedy waltz—the three principals in ¾ time — with a Lerner & Loewe flavor, “What In The World Did You Want?” The big 11th hour number in Act II is “Home Sweet Heaven,” rousingly delivered by Katrina Lenk. Herein, the afterlife becomes a swinging soiree of pan-historical hipness, with literary and political figures from over the last two millennia intermingling in a Heavenly happening. The songwriters spice the text with a few topical references that somehow make it seem more timeless: “Emily Bronte doing the twist with Kipling,” and Elvira chanting, “It’s a gas! It’s a gas! It’s a gas!” Sir Noël paid his collaborators the ultimate compliment when he recorded “Home Sweet Heaven” and sang it with all the gusto and wit of one of his own iconic patter songs.Andrea Martin and chorus in ‘High Spirits.’ Photograph by Joan MarcusThe cast is adorable: Katrina Lenk is the “crazy and mixed up ghost,” joining the previous two 1964 Elviras, Tammy Grimes in New York and Marti Stevens in London, as an American actress with international appeal. Andrea Martin is “the happy medium” Madame Arcati, taking her place alongside Bea Lillie and Cicely Courtneidge (the latter the inspiration for a classic “Monty Python” sketch). Steven Pasquale is a sympathetic male lead and straight man with ties as much to Bertie Wooster and P. G. Wodehouse as to Coward, with Phillipa Soo, from “Hamilton”, as his mortal wife. Rachel Dratch, as the maid Edith, is so funny that she can deliver big laughs merely by walking across the stage.It’s essentially an intimate and modest seven role show, with occasional intervals of big chorus production numbers, with the dancers usually playing beatniks surrounding Madame Arcati. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but they are fun, and “Faster Than Sound” is a fairly spectacular climax for Act I. It’s a treat to hear the original 1964 orchestrations by Harry Zimmerman and Luther Henderson played by Mary-Mitchell Campbell and the 30-piece Encores Orchestra. The production is eminently worthy of a transfer to an open run on Broadway or Off-Broadway, but for now, you’d better love it while you may.

‘High Spirits’ Brings a Forgotten Musical Back From the Dead

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