SMITHFIELD – In an unusual move, the artistic team behind the upcoming production of Blithe Spirit at Sky View High School here are advising audience members to secure tickets for the Noël Coward comedy quickly.
Accustomed to performing in the cavernous high school auditorium, the Four Seasons Theatre Company are now warning their loyal audiences that seating for Blithe Spirit performances on Aug. 1 to 9 will be deliberately limited.
“If you came to The 39 Steps last year, you know how hard it was to get tickets,” the community theater troupe explained in a Facebook post on July 21.
The summer 2024 production of The 39 Steps was something of a departure for the Four Seasons Company, as it was their first ever non-musical show. Moreover, given the spy parody’s need for an intimate setting, director Jonathan Rash packed the apron of the stage and its wings with 164 folding chairs to put the audience at arms-length to the actors.
With that reduced seating arrangement, the Smithfield performing arts company sold out almost every show.
“This year,” according to the Facebook post, “we have added additional seating for Blithe Spirit, but don’t wait to get your tickets as seating is still very limited!”
Written by English playwright Noël Coward in 1941, Blithe Spirit is an amusing romp where a séance goes delightfully wrong, ending a cynical novelist’s writer’s block but also allowing the ghost of his late wife to haunt his English county home and bedevil his new wife.
The cast list of the Four Seasons show reads like a who’s who of local theatrical talent.
Stanton Allen will play the haunted novelist Charles Condomine. Allen has appeared in numerous shows throughout Cache Valley, including the Music Theatre West production of Newsies and the Four Seasons production of The Wizard of Oz.
Another veteran of The Wizard of Oz, Lauren Kian will portray Condomine’s bewildered wife, Ruth.
Melinda Richards will trade her director’s hat in recent productions for that of a performer to play Elvira, the ghost of Condomine’s deceased but still willful former wife.
Audience favorite Celeste Baillio will fill the role of the zany medium Madame Arcati. That promises to be another over-the-top performance by Ms. Baillio, who has previously appeared as the drunken Miss Hannigan in the MTW production of Annie and in other comedic roles in local productions of Freaky Friday, Singin’ in the Rain, School of Rock, Guys and Dolls, Mamma Mia! and Something Rotten!
Rounding out the Four Seasons cast will be Kyle Cottam, Anna Redden and Morgan Nadauld.
Tickets for Blithe Spirit can be purchased by going online to https://www.fourseasonstheatre.org
Sky View High School is located at 520 South, 250 East in Smithfield.