There are laughs aplenty in Noel Coward's overworked drawing room dabble in matters spectral.
And the dream-team cast rarely drops the ball, delivering the diatribes and the laughlines with practised aplomb.
The story sets up the jokes so no psychic is required to see them coming. Novelist Charles Condomine summons scatty ghost whisperer Madame Arcati to provide colour for his novel.
But matters go awry and suddenly Charles and second wife Ruth have a new house guest - the mischievous ghost of first wife Elvira. Two into one won't go and there's enough friction to ignite a drawing room of delights.
But this production frustratingly is not the sum of its parts. Somehow the insubstantiality of the spook infects a play which shows its age.
That is not to say the performances are not fine, even rousing. Each of the four main characters seizes their moments with relish, although consecutively rather than concurrently.
Alison Steadman as Arcati is the scenery chomping headliner and she's good value as she channels some of the grand dames and eccentrics of old (think Margaret Rutherford on crack) to create a bustling bohemian soothsayer, her voluminous carpet bag full of devices and her vast lungs aching to deliver chants, calls and hoots that she delivers with the equipoise of an unexpected birth on the Bakerloo line.
Hermione Norris is the cut-glass, put-out nag monster perferctly suited to Constance's froideur.
Ruthie Henshall relishes the mercurial tease of the ghostly first wife, turning from flirt to frump as the thrill of her return evaporates.
And reliable Robert Bathurst goes through the gears till he hits the right level of short-tempered arrogance.
Nothing is wrong here. Everything's present and correct. But perversely it feels like there's something missing too.
– From March 2011
