Blithe Sprit with Angela Lansbury

I've been busy with so many posts that I forgot to mention that I saw this a couple weeks ago.

It was an absolute delight to see. The cast was very good and Angela Lansbury was just fantastic. This is the third time I've seen her. I saw her in A Little Night Music and The Best Man on Broadway. Now Blithe Spirit here in Washington. She is one of those actors that is just fantastic in everything she does.

Here's how an article in the Post put it:

It takes a star of Lansbury’s magnitude to make it so, but the history she carries with her packs the National and gives the evening a kind of throwback energy. Nostalgia? Partly, and it’s well-earned: Her spectacular career stretches back to 1944 and the film “Gaslight.” But Lansbury has always been an intuitive and conscientious performer, and in “Blithe Spirit” she is utterly on point. She inventively gets inside the character, playing Arcati with cutting looks and dry replies lobbed at the sophisticates who cynically think she’s a dotty fraud.

Go back and see Gaslight and she is not the warm and fuzzy persona that we associate with her today. Better yet watch The Manchurian Candidate and you won't recognize her at all. And that just shows what a great actress she truly is.

The article goes on to say:

But talk about an ace in the hole: Without ruffling a feather, Lansbury commands things every time she appears. The role takes substantial energy, and you marvel at how she summons it — and how, when an actor comes through as Lansbury does, it lifts everyone. That’s the mystical power of this kind of performance: we can all have what she’s having.

Here's a great slide show of her many roles.

All I can say is how great it was to see this legend on the stage again. I'm looking forward to her next role!