Some eighty years after Noël Coward penned the final words to his Private Lives in a 1930s penthouse suite of Shanghai's Peace Hotel, the English playwright is back in town, and fittingly, on the stage most evocative of Shanghai's glitzy heyday: Gosney & Kallman's Chinatown.

Through selected dates in September (see here for performance dates), the Chinatown stage is transformed into the chintzy living room of the Condomines, lead characters in Coward's farcical wartime drama, Blithe Spirit.

Directed by Philip Knight of Shanghai Repertory Theatre, the cast is led by Chinatown's own Charles Mayer as Charles Condomine, and Jenevieve Chang as his somewhat priggish wife Ruth. Researching material for his next book, novelist and Coward-esque Charles invites the wonderfully eccentric but endearingly sincere Madame Arcati (Virginia Withers) and neighbors, the Bradmans, to join a séance.

Charles gets rather more than he bargains for, however, when Madame Arcati inadvertently summons the ghost of his first wife, the mischievous and flirtatious Elvira (Tamara O’Connell) who quickly settles back in to her former home, much to the annoyance of Ruth. What follows is a thoroughly enjoyable ride through comic misunderstandings as Ruth clashes with an invisible-to-her Elvira, all the time peppered with the part-eccentric auntie, part mother hen that is Madame Arcati -- an exuberant vision of bad jewelery, elaborate hats, and enormous scarves.

While Arcati’s humour comes from her larger-than-life persona, not to mention her cringe-worthy dancing, it is, in fact, Edith the Maid who wins most laughs from the audience. Laura Coughlin as the clumsy, clattering servant binds the performance together, and plays a small but pivotal role as the story unravels.

Coward's drama first graced London stages in 1941. In the grip of air-raids and threats from abroad, the play offered welcome escapism for British audiences, and went on to set box-office records. "There's no heart in the play," Coward once said. "If there was a heart, it would be a sad story." Sad it is most certainly not, and to early audiences, just as much as contemporary ones, it combines comforting domesticity, supernatural farce and crucially, no morals or social consciousness whatsoever: at times, it is deliciously wicked; frivolously flirtatious.

In the words of Madame Arcati, "It takes an artiste to make a dry martini that's dry enough", and this is another arena in which Chinatown excels. Tickets include one themed cocktail, which alongside this rollicking performance, guaranteed laughs and a dose of culture makes for plenty of reasons to catch Blithe Spirit at Chinatown this September.

"Blithe Spirit" is on at Chinatown for select dates in September. Tickets are 150rmb, including a cocktail. Starts 8pm.

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