Angela Lansbury To Reprise ‘Blithe Spirit’ Role On Tour
There are some juggernauts you just can’t stop and Angela Lansbury is definitely one of them.
The Star has confirmed the 88-year-old actress has agreed to reprise her role of Madame Arcati in the Noel Coward play Blithe Spirit, directed by Michael Blakemore. Lansbury originally took the role back in 2009 and won her fifth Tony award for her performance. She continued the role through the beginning of this year in London.
She had previously scored Tonys for Mame, Dear World, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd.
In the Noel Coward comedy, Lansbury plays the irrepressible spiritualist Arcati, who, at the behest of an English novelist in the name of research, asks the Madame to conjure a spirit. The seance, attended by Madame Arcati, the novelist, his second wife, and another couple, becomes a kind of romantic hell when the guide conjures the spirit of the novelist’s mischievous deceased first wife, according to Deadline.
The tour begins in Los Angeles at the Ahmanon Theatre’s Center Theatre Group on December 9 and runs through January 18, 2015. Then it on to San Francisco at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre from January 20 to February 1, Toronto at the Prince Of Wales Theatre from February 10 to March 15 and Washington, D.C., at the National Theatre from March 17-29. Variety has confirmed that Blakemore (Noises Off) is returning to direct the touring show, along with actors Charles Edwards, Jemima Rooper and Charlotte Parry. The play will also co-star Susan Louise O’Conner and Sandra Shipley.
These days it’s rare for a big-name Tony winner to go out on the road. But beloved theater veteran Lansbury is known as a trooper, and the high profile she enjoys seems likely to attract audience interest around the country.
“During the course of my career, I’ve had the good fortune to play many, many unique and wonderful roles in the movies, on stage and television,” said Lansbury in a statement. “And it is a joy to once again step into the role of Madame Arcati, and bring Noel Coward’s classic comedy Blithe Spirit to wonderful audiences here in North America who have supported me for over seven decades,” said Ms. Lansbury to the Hollywood Reporter.
Ms. Lansbury, who will be 89 on October 16, is best know to many television watchers as mystery novel writer and crime solver J.B. (or Jessica) Fletcher in the CBS television series Murder, She Wrote. Ms. Lansbury has starred in countless Broadway productions, movies and television shows, winning numerous awards and fans along the way.
[Image courtesy of Gold Derby]
