Rising L.A. stage star Abigail Stewart and Daytime Emmy nominee Kevin Spirtas light up the stage in Doug Haverty and Adryan Russ’s entertainingly old-fashioned romantic musical comedy My Spirit Soars now playing at The Group Rep.

Very loosely based on Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost, Haverty’s book introduces us to 20-year-old American college student Virginia Otis (Stewart), about to spend her junior year at London’s Royal Academy Of Art as part of a work/study program that will have her residing at a castle called Canterville Chase, a stately residence that just happens to be precisely where her favorite painter, Lucinda Lillywhite, both lived and died.

Arriving at the castle just in time for the first-ever nighttime tour of its apparently haunted rooms, Virginia is greeted by butler Mr. Umney (Rob Schaumann) and his head-of-household wife Mrs. Umney (Catherine McClenahan), though not immediately by handsome castle heir Trevor Canterville (Casey Alcoser), whom she first assumes to be a plumber come to fix the leaky pipes, a meet-cute that leaves Trevor smitten at first sight and Virginia not so much.

 Also inhabiting the castle is Trevor’s ancestor Sir Simon Canterville (Spirtas), dead these past hundred years after having been imprisoned and starved to death by his wife’s brothers, who deemed him responsible for her fatal fall down a flight of stairs.

And they weren’t the only ones to blame the widower, Lucinda herself having believed, erroneously it would seem, that she had been pushed, upon which she laid a curse upon poor sad Simon, one that can only be reversed by whoever can unravel the clues held within “The Canterville Rhyme” before the 100th anniversary of her death, which just happens to be in ten days’ time.

Will Virginia be the one to correctly interpret the enigmatic rhyme? Will Sir Simon’s beloved Lucinda (Savannah Mortenson) finally exculpate him so that they can “live” happily after? Will Virginia and Trevor have their own fairytale ending?

The answers to these three questions may be entirely predictable, but as in romcoms past, the pleasure is in watching each get answered with a resounding yes.

As in its previous iteration as iGhost (a better title if you ask me since the new one it’s been given sounds like it could be about just about anything), the show’s biggest assets are its songs (music by Russ, lyrics by Russ and Haverty), more than a few of which are both tuneful and clever.

Haverty’s book can be quite amusing too, though the musical as a whole could stand a fifteen-to-twenty-minute trim by excising some dialog here and a song or two or three there.

On the plus side, director-choreographer Kathleen R. Delaney has been blessed by four fabulous lead players.

Stewart has never been more luminous than she is here, the Scenie-winning dramatic lead of Actors Co-op’s These Shining Lives proving herself equally adept at musical theater, while Spirtas steals just about every scene he’s in as the gleefully over-the-top Sir Simon, and his pipes are every bit as fabulous as his acting.

Alcoser makes for the most irresistibly aristocratic of British lords (think Timothy Dalton meets Ralph Fiennes) and female ghosts don’t get more gorgeous (or more gorgeously voiced) than Mortenson.

Schaumann makes for an appropriately stuffy Mr. Umney, though I’m less taken by My Spirits Soar’s reconceived Mrs. Ulney, no longer than gruff matron she was in iGhost but a statuesque bouffant blonde seemingly enamored either of the Swinging Sixties or Absolutely Fabulous’s Patsy.

I enjoyed Sarah Bruce, Océane Rose Laurent, Brian Paul “BP” Mendoza, Haley O’Brien, and Sean Michael Williams as assorted Canterville servants, but I could have done without them as dancing ghosts, and what’s up with these same spirits showing up in the show’s opening song before Virginia has even set foot in England?

Delaney and Haverty’s castle set leaves plenty of room for maneuvering about and Ellen Monocroussos’s lighting ups the spookiness factor throughout the show.

Shon LeBlanc’s costumes are mostly on point, but why on earth does Mrs. Unley show up sporting work shoes while outfitted for bed in, of all things, scanty black mini-bloomers? Your guess is as good as mine.

Nick Foran’s sound design was unfortunately plagued by glitches at the performance reviewed here, and though I get the need for miked voices in musical numbers, amplification could easily be switched off in dialog scenes as it is when the Group Rep stages non-musical plays.

Last but not least, though I appreciate having a live orchestra under keyboardist Leigh Anne Gillespie’s adept musical direction, a mere four musicians can’t provide the full orchestral backup My Spirit Soars’ songs deserve, which is why I for one would have preferred prerecorded track as in the Group Rep’s Promises, Promises, Avenue Q, and A Carol Christmas.

My Spirits Soar is produced for the Group Rep by Sam Logan and Helen O’Brien. Dani O’Brian is assistant to the director. Orchestrations are by Ned Paul Ginsburg. Properties are by Terri and Ken Grant and wigs by Krys Fehervari. Cathy Diane Tomlin is stage manager and sound mixer. John Ledley is board operator. Linda Brennan is dialect coach. Nora Feldman is publicist.

All things taken into consideration, there is quite a bit to recommend in My Spirits Soar, and though not everything works as well as it could, whenever the spotlight is on Stewart, Spirtas, Alcoser, and/or Mortenson, you too may find your own spirits taking flight.

The Group Rep Theatre, 10900 Burbank Boulevard, North Hollywood.
www.thegrouprep.com

–Steven Stanley
September 28, 2025
Photos: Caitlin Mae Smith

Tags: Adryan Russ, Doug Haverty, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Group Rep