The imperishable spirit of Margaret Rutherford still haunts the role of eccentric medium Madame Arcati in Thea sharrock's delightful revival of  Coward's comic fantasy. Indeed, there are times when Stephanie Cole, who has taken over the role from Penelope Keith during the show's successful West End run, appears to be channelling the shade of the great Dame. espite these spooky echoes, however, Cole emphatically puts her personal stamp on the character. She may resemble Rutherford when Arcati is at her dottiest but she also brings out the character's shrewdness and professional pride. She even reveals a note of brisk bossiness that recalls the late Barbara Woodhouse as she arranges guests at the seance.

Aden Gillett's Charles does not have the crisp, clipped delivery one expects in a Coward drawing room but he hits exactly the right note of pop-eyed bewilderment when Arcati unwittingly summons the ghost of Charles' first wife, Elvira. From her first appearance, Amanda Drew's Elvira oozes flirtatious mischief. Dreamily seductive, she could not be further removed from Joanna Riding's glacial, soignee Ruth. The contrast between the two tells us at a glance all we need to know about Charles' marriages - the first dominated by sex, the second by social decorum. Sharrock's production, meanwhile, is a good deal less decorous than most, pushing the play occasionally into the realm of farce. Gillett's Charles cowers under a coffee table, Drew's Elvira impishly squirts a soda siphon and Michelle Terry's jittery maid performs comic business with impossibly laden trays. It is all very well judged, though, and never obscures the brilliance of Coward's lines. But the anarchic spirit Sharrock finds in the play reaches its apotheosis at the climax, when the now invisible ghosts of Elvira and Ruth, who has joined her in the afterlife, express their fury at the departing Charles by reducing Simon Higlett's well-appointed set to ruins.