Anne Allgood is one of the top actresses in the Seattle theater scene today. I saw her play a murder victim in Something's Afoot at the 5th Avenue Theatre this past spring, and I am super excited to witness her conjure a spirit in Blithe Spirit, the Noël Coward classic, now playing the Seattle Repertory Theater.
Allgood plays scatterbrained psychic Madame Arcati, who accidentally summons the spirit of Elvira, his late wife of Charles, the host of the séance... which infuriates his current wife, Ruth. Charles suddenly finds himself caught in a supernatural love triangle, and his attempts to fix the situation only make things worse.
Filled with sparkling wit and hysterical hauntings, Coward's irreverent classic comedy provides an otherworldly alternative to your usual holiday fare, and appeals to anyone who ever longed to see Downton Abbey go completely off the rails.
Below are highlights of a recent chat with Allgood:
On Madame Arcati
Madam Arcati has been a professional psychic since she was a child...The thing that I love about [her] is that she is... connected to the mystical world and super practical. She rides her bicycle everywhere. She loves good food, sandwiches, and martinis... She's super practical and grounded and also just─ connected to psychic, mystical eternity...
On the rehearsal process
I love this rehearsal process, because I love Allison Narver as a director... The rehearsal process is highly technical, very demanding. The language is very... musical and very specific. There's British dialect, and comedy in the rhythm of the lines...
At the same time, Allison has this wonderful, free improvisatory, "let's try this" or "maybe this will work" kind of energy in the room, so that we can just be goofy and spontaneous and try new things, right...
On the level of production
It is another Carrie Wong set... It's going to be such an elegant production. Kathy Hunt is doing the costumes, and they are just straight out of Hollywood glamour. Not me, because that's not my character. My character has adorable tweeds and Fair Isle vests and culottes. Culottes because I ride my bicycle, right? So, yeah, just cute as can be.
On if spirits exist
There's a school in Britain, a school of mediumship, that I looked up online...You can do like a spiritual reading over Zoom... and I thought maybe I should do that.
My big Southern family [is] obsessed with its own genealogy... A thing that we used to do for fun is walk around the graveyard and say hi to all the relatives. So I'm not afraid of ghosts. They're my family.
See Anne Allgood in Blithe Spirit at Seattle Rep's Bagley Wright Theater now through December 22. More information can be found at https://www.seattlerep.org/plays/202425-season/blithe-spirit or call the box office at 206-443-2222.
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