Chewing the Scenery

Legendary leading lady Judith Gold is at loggerheads with avant-garde theatre director Alexander Columbus on a West End production of the ghostly comedy Blithe Spirit. Judith considers he is ruining an excellent play, an opinion shared by fellow cast members movie star Rupert Blake and his possessive real-life wife Miranda Flynn. If Alexander doesn't ruin the play, his casting of a vacuous American ex-beauty queen with virtually no theatre experience and even less talent may. For producer Wesley Bartlett, the perfect project has turned into a theatrical nightmare, complete with unexploded bombs and air raid sirens in a 1930s drawing room comedy.