"Now imagine her surrounded by ensemble members who are holding handlebars, dancing as if cycling, pedaling away in place while singing about how she loves to swoop, she loves to swerve, she loves each highway and byway and curve. She's also wearing a cloak and gesticulating wildly. First question: What could be more immediately funny? Second: Does this song have anything to do with the plot of High Spirits? Not really,"
"directed by Kimberly Akimbo's Jessica Stone, who has a knack for staging humor without over-egging it. New York City Center's concert stagings have, of late, often been a testing ground for clearly aiming-for-Broadway transfers of more recent and well-known pieces (productions of , Into the Woods, and all started out here), but this revival does the welcome, and in its own way valuable, work of giving a true oddity"
Jessica Stone directs Encores!'s short-run revival of High Spirits with an emphasis on nonsense and restrained comedic staging. Andrea Martin performs a deliberately hammy lead, including a bicycle sequence with an ensemble miming cycling and exaggerated physicality. The production prioritizes joyful spectacle and absurdity over plot-driven relevance. High Spirits is a 1964 musical adaptation of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, with music by Hugh Martin and Timothy Gray; Coward initially directed the adaptation. The original Broadway production earned eight Tony nominations and failed to win, and the revival offers a chance to enjoy its eccentricity in a limited run.
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