The afterlife comedy has plenty of laughs as well as some thoughts on making marriage work

Call it a rom-com focused more on existing relationships than budding ones. Oh, and add ghosts.

In Spirit Level, now up at Evergreen’s Central Stage Theatre in a production by the Evergreen Players, a couple who drown together in an English lake end up haunting their former home. As in Beetlejuice, their aim is to keep undesirable tenants from renting the place, but the script is flipped when a young couple moves in that they actually like.

Directed by Paul Newman, Spirit Level is a light comedy with a good many laughs and some truly silly elements (there is, in fact, a guardian angel). But it’s all in good fun and Pam Valentine’s script manages to make a few pointed remarks about marriage and the short time we have on this earth. After all, who better than a deceased couple to reflect on how they might have used their time together more wisely?

David Speechley and Tess Greenhaw as Simon and Flic in ‘Spirit Level’ | Photo: Tracy Holt Doty

Limbo

Our dead pair are Jack and Susie (Dan Sares and Linda Swanson Brown). He was a successful novelist before the accident, and we learn they’d gotten all the way to the Pearly Gates when they’re turned back because Jack won’t renounce his atheism. (Susie, of course, stuck with him even though she could’ve gotten in.)

Stuck in limbo at the Hampshire cottage where Jack wrote his novels, the two are still bickering about the circumstances surrounding their deaths when wannabe writer Simon and his wife Flic rent the place.

There’s always a decision to be made in these types of stories regarding how much the ghosts can actually do. Here, we start off with Jack and Susie invisible (of course) but able to move objects. They use this at first to have fun with Mark, the creaky estate agent in charge of renting the place — played with musty brio by Gary Leigh-Webster.

Newman has a pretty great cast to work with here, starting with Sares playing Jack as a bit of an ass who’s more annoyed than sad that he’s dead. He moves and speaks with the practiced ease of a rich, successful Brit able to look down his nose at others — but he’s got a heart.

Brown is a delight as a ghost who gets very excited about the new life presented by the pregnant Flic. While Susie and Jack spar, it’s clear that they still love each other even in death.

I recall being impressed with David Speechley in the Evergreen Players’ production of Fireflies last spring, and it’s nice to see him back in a larger role. Simon is a new husband trying to earn money writing a novel (don’t laugh), and Speechley is convincing as an earnest young man whose financial anxiety causes him to frequently speak unkindly to Flic.

Tess Greenhaw, in their first stage role since graduating from Colorado College, is adorable yet sharp as the young wife who learns she’s pregnant. As this is a comedy, we must have an annoying mother-in-law to torment Simon, and she’s played here with obnoxious gusto by Julie Williamson (also a standout in Fireflies).

But while Marcia stirs the pot, the real wild card is the aforementioned guardian angel. This is a brilliantly batty Kathleen Davis, who breezes in with a wild hat, a flip phone and a wealth of information about the afterlife. With a heavy workload, she tells Jack and Susie, she doesn’t have much time, but she gives them some tips about the other powers they have. The main one is the ability to put one’s hand on a living person’s head and have them say and do whatever you want.

Handy!

Linda Swanson Brown, left, and Kathleen Davis in ‘Spirit Level’ | PHoto: Tracy Holt Doty

Overlapping agendas

Newman is a seasoned director who taught theatre at Adams State for 24 years and who’s been a fixture with the Colorado Community Theatre Coalition. Here, he displays his skill developing the characters to be three-dimensional while also existing on multiple levels physically on stage. As Jack and Susie continue to flaunt their invisibility powers, several scenes demand highly choreographed action as the two couples speak over and in parallel with each other.

This is where the script really takes off in the second act. They find Susie has the most skill with ghostly guidance, and they determine to help Simon and Flic by taking Jack’s last, unfinished plot and injecting it into Simon’s head. This leads to all kinds of goofy fun where Jack and Susie’s sniping at one another bleeds through to the other side and a very confused Flic is trying to figure out what’s going on with her husband.

A lot of this magic is accompanied by what I thought were unnecessary and ultimately distracting sound effects — like a bell tinkling every time supernatural stuff is going on. It’s a minor quibble in a solid play that reaches its comedic climax when Susie mischievously gooses Marcia with a blast of hormones that results in a very funny scene with her and Mark.

Biz Schaugaard’s set is highly functional and perfectly cottage-y and the costumes by Nealy Drew were bang-on. I particularly liked the sack thing the pregnant Flic is wearing in Act Two as well as Jack’s successful-novelist easy-wear and Susie’s no-nonsense dress — both of which they’re consigned to wear for eternity.

Spirit Level is no doubt very silly, but it does do a nice job hammering home what one might argue is the greatest piece of advice for any marriage: stop wasting time arguing about stupid shit. It’s touching to see both couples learn this lesson at very different points in their relationship, and it helps ground the story as it races toward a highly satisfying ending.