31 Plays in 31 Days: #10 - "The Late Mrs. Chadwick"

This is very clearly inspired by Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. One thing I found to be a slight missed opportunity in that piece is that only Charles Condomine is able to see the ghost Elvira, I think there would have been lots of funny things to do with a slightly different scenario. I also wrote it imaging two of the very talented gentlemen I worked with in Sherlock Holmes, Chris who played Sherlock and John who played my husband Larabee, as Chadwick and Shrewsbury. It made things much funnier for me.

Another inspiration was one of the one-acts Jared and I saw at the festival of them thrown by the Hovey Players. The piece on its own was fairly whatever-- it was about a man who went into the hospital for an appendectomy and came out with a sex change and was trying to very politely bring it up with his doctor. The jokes were pretty obvious and not that remarkable on their own, but they made it work by giving the characters English accents, and making the joke out of how completely polite and stiff-upper-lippy they were. I thought I'd borrow that for my own piece here.

Also, for some perverse reason I really like writing dialogue for characters who hate Catholics. I love using the term "papists."

( Day #10 - "The Late Mrs. Chadwick" )