Notes From Beyond.(auditions for the play Blithe Spirit and the paranormal activity of its writer Noel Coward)

"We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we?" Noel Coward wrote in his 1941 comedy "Blithe Spirit." The play will soon be revived at the Shubert, with Angela Lansbury starring as a medium who accidentally conjures an Englishman's deceased first wife, much to the consternation of his second. A few weeks ago, the producers put out a call for an official psychic consultant, someone who could work with the cast "to guarantee that each performance is every bit as genuine as possible." As proof of their abilities, applicants were invited to summon Coward, who died in 1973, and who one imagines was thoroughly exasperated by the attention.

Auditions were held on a Thursday at noon, on the second floor of Sardi's. Twenty-odd mediums, dressed to varying degrees of witchiness, flooded the bar; each would have two minutes to make an impression. The judges were Christine Ebersole, who plays the conjured spirit and herself believes in the occult (she saw a ghost when she was five); Jeffrey Richards, one of the show's producers, who described his position on the paranormal as "curious"; and Michael Blakemore, the director, who wouldn't say, lest he "curse the production." A casting director took attendance and asked the auditioners to "stay where we can find you," which presumably meant in the corporeal realm.

First up was Jackie Barrett, a severe-looking woman with a sharp black bob and a pentagram necklace. "I'm the real deal," she told the judges, and explained that she had helped homicide detectives solve approximately three hundred cold cases by contacting deceased victims. Richards asked if she had been in touch with Coward. She hadn't, but said that she had channelled other celebrities, including Alfred Hitchcock, Harry Houdini, Andy Warhol ("who I've had my own past with"), and George Washington. Barrett was not the only medium with V.I.P. connections; others claimed to have contacted Janis Joplin, Fanny Brice, a member of the British Royal Family ("but I'm not name-dropping"), and Elaine Stritch (admittedly still "on the earth plane").

Paula Roberts, who was born in Yorkshire and hosts a public-access show called "The English Psychic," said that she had "quite unexpectedly" channelled Marilyn Monroe while evaluating a fourposter bed thought to have come from Monroe and Joe ...