“Blithe Spirit” Haunts Theatre 98 as Capote Readings Return and Mobile Artist Goes Global

FAIRHOPE, Ala. — A ghost with a grudge is headed for the Eastern Shore. Theatre 98 will stage Noël Coward’s supernatural comedy “Blithe Spirit” from Oct. 16 through Nov. 1, while across the bay in downtown Mobile a group of readers is bringing Truman Capote back to life for an encore performance of a well-received readers’ theater evening. Meanwhile, a Mobile painter who has devoted more than four decades to Japanese ink wash art is showing her work on an international stage in Brazil.

Here is a look at what is happening in local theater and the visual arts this month, and what is coming later in the season.

“Blithe Spirit” Comes to Theatre 98

The setup of “Blithe Spirit” is simple and devilish. Novelist Charles Condomine, gathering material for a new thriller, invites an eccentric psychic to his home for a séance. The medium puts on quite a show for Condomine and his friends, but she also leaves something behind: the spirit of Condomine’s late first wife, Elvira, whom she has accidentally summoned from the beyond.

Elvira’s return is complicated enough on its own. It becomes far more complicated because Condomine has remarried, and his current wife, Ruth, is very much alive and very much present. Before long, plots are being hatched on both sides of the veil between the living and the dead, and every scheme seems to lead to another mishap and another laugh.

Theatre 98, located at 350 Morphy Ave. in Fairhope, will present the comedy Oct. 16 through Nov. 1. Performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday begin at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday matinees start at 2:30 p.m.

The cast features Maddie George, Jennifer Walker, Byron Ammons, Richard Foster, Cynthia McClendon, Anita Hoffman and Abigail Macaro. Heather Delker directs the production.

A Comedy With a Long Afterlife

Coward debuted “Blithe Spirit” in 1941, billing it as “an improbable farce in three acts.” Audiences in wartime London embraced it. The play ran for 1,997 performances in the West End, then crossed the Atlantic for a Broadway run of another 657 shows. A film version followed in 1945, and the story was adapted for the screen again as recently as 2020.

The title borrows a phrase from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “To a Skylark,” and Coward’s dialogue is known for the same quick wit and sharp social observation that marked his other comedies, such as “Private Lives” and “Hay Fever.” Part of the play’s enduring appeal is that it treats death, marriage and jealousy with a light touch, letting audiences laugh at situations that would be anything but funny in real life. The role of the medium, Madame Arcati, has long been a favorite showcase for character actresses, and the play remains a regular choice for community and regional theaters.

Coward himself was one of the most versatile figures in 20th-century British entertainment — a playwright, composer, lyricist, director and actor whose career stretched from the 1920s into the 1970s. He was knighted in 1970, and his plays continue to be revived on both sides of the Atlantic.

Theatre 98 is one of the Eastern Shore’s long-running community theaters, staging a season of comedies, dramas and musicals with local performers and volunteer crews. A fall run of a ghost story also fits neatly into the weeks leading up to Halloween.

“A Capote Compote” Returns to Sophiella Gallery

On Aug. 29, the Public Works Project presented a readers’ theater production called “A Capote Compote” in the upstairs space at Sophiella Gallery, 111 Dauphin St. in downtown Mobile. Four actors guided a small audience through three pieces drawn from the work of Truman Capote, the celebrated author with deep roots in Southwest Alabama.

The scenes were built from three pieces in Capote’s “Music for Chameleons,” a collection that blends narration and dialogue. In the first scene, Charlie Kelly read as Capote and Ravyn Otis read as the Martinique-native Madam. In “A Beautiful Child,” Faust read as Capote while Katie Anderson Jeansonne read as Marilyn Monroe. The final scene, “Nocturnal Musings,” featured both Kelly and Faust reading as Capote.

The evening went over so well that organizer Jim Faust is bringing it back. The encore of “A Capote Compote” is set for Saturday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. at Sophiella. The performance runs about 90 minutes, and admission is free.

Capote, born in New Orleans in 1924, spent much of his early childhood with relatives in Monroeville, where his friendship with neighbor Harper Lee became one of the most famous literary bonds of the 20th century. He went on to write “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and the nonfiction landmark “In Cold Blood.” “Music for Chameleons,” published in 1980, was one of his last books and showcased the conversational, reportorial style he had refined over his career — a style that lends itself naturally to being read aloud.

What Is Readers’ Theater?

Readers’ theater strips a performance down to its essentials. Instead of full sets, costumes and memorized blocking, actors typically read from scripts, relying on voice, timing and expression to bring characters to life. The form puts the emphasis squarely on the writing itself, which makes it especially well suited to literary material such as short stories, essays and poems.

It is also an accessible form for audiences. Performances tend to be shorter and more intimate than a fully staged play, and many, like the Public Works Project events, are offered free of charge.

Coming in December: “Foster”

Faust also plans to revive another earlier Public Works Project offering, “Foster” by Claire Keegan, on Saturday, Dec. 5, at 7 p.m. at Sophiella.

Keegan’s story was first published in a literary magazine in 2010 and was selected for a 2011 anthology of the year’s best American short stories. It was later adapted into the 2022 film “The Quiet Girl,” which was nominated in 2023 for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Keegan, an Irish writer, is known for spare, emotionally precise fiction, and “Foster” follows a young girl sent to spend a summer with an older couple in rural Ireland, a quiet story whose emotional power builds through small details — exactly the kind of writing that rewards being heard aloud.

The readers currently scheduled for “Foster” are:

• E.A. Keeble
• John Campbell
• Lesley Anne Roberts
• Lisa Costa
• Charlie Kelly
• Alisha Britnell

Bigger Plans for 2027

The Public Works Project has ambitions beyond this year. In 2027, the group hopes to present a program titled “Chapter and Verse,” featuring selected single chapters by some of modern literature’s greatest authors and poets. Faust said the program will include enough T.S. Eliot poetry to justify the title. No date has been set.

Also on the horizon is a spring “Read-A-Thon,” in which readers will take turns at a lectern over a weekend afternoon to read an entire book aloud. The selection will be Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” one of the best-known mysteries by the bestselling crime writer and a novel famous for its twist ending. The readers will be local actors who specialize in Christie, including Steve Alsip, John Campbell and E.A. Keeble.

Because the reading will last about six hours, refreshments will be available in the building, and audience members will be free to come and go, stretch their legs and return as they please. At a time when national surveys continue to show declining reading habits among American adults, an afternoon spent listening to a classic read aloud is an ambitious and worthwhile idea.

Mobile Artist Maria Papp Featured in International Exhibition

The Mobile Arts Council reports that Mobilian Maria Papp has been chosen as one of 21 international artists taking part in Art Beyond Boundaries 2026, an international SumiE exhibition. The show opened Sept. 30 at the Federal Senate of Brazil in Brasília, with Yasushi Noguchi, Japan’s ambassador to Brazil, in attendance.

SumiE is a traditional Japanese method of ink wash painting. Artists work with black ink, usually ground from an ink stick on a stone, and brushes on absorbent paper or silk, using variations in tone and brushstroke rather than color to suggest landscapes, plants, animals and other subjects. The form, which has roots in Chinese brush painting, prizes economy and spontaneity: each stroke is meant to be made with confidence, and mistakes cannot easily be corrected.

Papp has studied SumiE for more than 40 years. She began in 1975 under Mobile’s Mary Rodning and through the Shibui Chapter of the SumiE Society of America.

Her work has been connected to exhibitions and collections in Argentina, Hungary, Japan, China, Spain, Taiwan and the United States. In 2005, she took part in the International Asian Artists of SumiE exhibition, which was shown in Japan, Taiwan and the U.S. In 2016, she was invited to serve as a judge for the First International Virtual Chinese Brush Strokes/SumiE Competition, hosted by Hmay SumiE in Xuancheng, China.

Her selection for the Brasília exhibition is another milestone in a long career and a point of pride for Mobile’s arts community.

If You Go

• “Blithe Spirit”: Theatre 98, 350 Morphy Ave., Fairhope. Oct. 16 through Nov. 1. Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
• “A Capote Compote”: Sophiella Gallery, 111 Dauphin St., Mobile. Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. About 90 minutes. Free.
• “Foster”: Sophiella Gallery. Dec. 5 at 7 p.m.