I earned my undergraduate theater BA in an auditorium reputed, as so many are, to be haunted. Students reported inexplicable pennies falling from the "clouds" overhead. I heard women's voices arguing in the wings one night in an otherwise empty building, a phenomenon I was helpless to explain till a chance recurrence two decades later. A friend and I experienced a tablecloth appearing from nowhere in the middle of a performance. Night after night in a production of Neil Simon's Chapter Two, a phone rang onstage though it was hooked up to nothing.

Despite all this, I do not believe in ghosts. I do, however, believe, as I've seen it happen time and again, that unpredictable events occur in ill-maintained, voluminous buildings graced with outdated wiring, antiquated plumbing, exhausted actors and crew members, sky-high stress levels and a liberal attitude toward numerous chemical intoxicants. There are times when the process of making live theater invites glitches, or ghosties, or gremlins, or whatever you feel most comfortable calling the little buggers. On opening night for Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit at Olympia Little Theatre, I saw plenty in action.

All seemed hunky-dory as we entered the space, thanks in large part to Matthew Moeller's beautiful set design. Plain and simple, this guy's been hitting it out of the park on a very tight budget indeed. Diana Purvine's first round of costumes place the show firmly in the early 1940s. (It was written in 1941. Surprisingly for those of us who came of age in the blocky 1980s, shoulder pads were common in women's wartime fashion as well.) Meghan Goodman's proper English accent and, not to put too fine a point on it, performance as Ruth Condomine is everything it should be. But then ...

The lighting design, by Sion Heaney and director Kendra Malm, reintroduces the dreaded red flash to OLT's color transitions. When actors sit on the couch, their faces are scarcely brighter than those of audience members. Struggling mightily in OLT's challenging acoustical space (an issue that worsened when the company raised its ceiling), Roddy Matthew Lee hyper-articulates, yet neglects the softening of his R's when they mark the ends of sentences. Goodman's earring fell off, a mishap she covered ingeniously by blaming it on Elvira, a spectral character cast well here in the person of Sophie Parody. Line memorization was a frequent botheration, hardly surprising in a show lasting three full hours plus two intermissions. Oh, and let's not absolve the audience itself: between open conversations, five-minute ringtones, and multiple text alarms, it was all I could do to keep my focus on the stage.

Under such haunted circumstances, it's fairest to say there's much to enjoy here, with potential for more as the run progresses. On Friday, though, it was all this troupe could do to keep its specter at bay.

BLITHE SPIRIT, 7:55 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 1:55 p.m. Sunday, through Sept. 28, Olympia Little Theatre, 1925 Miller Ave. NE, Olympia, $10-$14, 800.838.3006