Jennifer Saunders to Star in Blithe Spirit West End Revival

Emmy-winning comedic actress Jennifer Saunders is getting ready to haunt London in the upcoming West End return of Noël Coward’s classic comedy Blithe Spirit. Saunders will revive her role as the preposterous clairvoyant Madame Arca in the production that will run at the Harold Pinter Theatre beginning September 16. Sir Richard Eyre will direct.

Saunders is well known as one half of the comedy duo French and Saunders, for which she and Dawn French received a BAFTA fellowship in 2009, and for the hit comedy series and subsequent film, Absolutely Fabulous, which she also wrote and starred in. She has received numerous awards including two Emmys, five BAFTAs and four British Comedy Awards.

In Blithe Spirit, follow novelist Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth as they are literally haunted by a past relationship when an eccentric medium inadvertently conjures up the ghost of his first wife, Elvira, at a séance. When she appears, visible only to Charles, and determined to sabotage his current marriage, life–and the afterlife–get complicated.

Saunders will be joined on stage by Geoffrey Streatfeild as Charles Condomine, Lisa Dillon as Ruth Condomine, Simon Coates as Dr. Bradman, Lucy Robinson as Mrs. Bradman and Rose Wardlaw as Edith.

The creative team also includes designs by Anthony Ward, lighting by Howard Harrison, sound by John Leonard and illusions by Paul Kieve.

Previously, this staging of Blithe Spirit enjoyed a sold-out run at Theatre Royal Bath in 2019, a UK tour and a short run in London of just 12 performances before the country’s first lockdown curtailed its six-week run at the Duke of York’s Theatre in March 2020. The play has had several revivals and international productions since it premiered at the West End's Piccadilly Theatre on July 2, 1941.