The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 29

"i1 Citizen Entertainment lively artsartbooksentertainment Ottawa, Saturday, December 24, 1977, Page 29 0 yt Soap the 1FF0F eware acbeth Illustrations by Alan Dunce Of all plays, Macbeth has the most curses. Many believe it's the witches If an actor looks in a mirror, he may see the devil. That's why it's soaped Taboos, curses and ghouls the theatre's full of them Grand Theatre in London, Ont. His presence was felt by many of the company at the closing performance of School for Hives last May, just before the theatre closed for extensive renovations. Even in a modern building like the Stratford Festival theatre, normally practical, no-nonsense people have been known to speak of an uneasy "presence" felt around the catwalks in the roof, when the theatre is dark and the actors have all gone home.

But one of the most interesting ghosts that has been seen over the last 200 years, by many different people, is the Man in Grey, who haunts the old Theatre Royal in the other London's Drury Lane. Vanishes through wall He's only seen in the morning and afternoon, appearing at one end of the upper circle (as the balcony is called in England), going through the bar at the back, and vanishing into the opposite wall. He wears a three-cornered hat, a long grey cloak and a sword, in the Regency manner, and is a friendly ghost, by all accounts. If he appears during rehearsals, as he often does, it's thought to be a good omen a reasonable assumption, since he was seen by many different people during the long and successful runs of Oklahoma, Carousel, The King and and My Fair Lady. But there's a slightly grisly footnote to the story of this pleasant ghost.

When the theatre was being renovated to make room for more seats, workmen found a tiny room in the wall of the upper circle. In it was a male skeleton with a dagger between its ribs, and scattered on the floor were golden guineas and some playing cards. The skeleton was taken out and buried not far from the theatre. A more up-to-date ghost is that of Dylan Thomas, whose rotund figure some claim to have seen at the little Bush Theatre, above the hotel where the poet used to go for a drink after his work at the nearby television studio. Then there's the story of the infamous John Wilkes Booth, who shot and killed Abraham Lincoln as he sat in his box at the Ford Theatre in Washington.

Matthew Brady, the renowned photographer, took a picture of the empty theatre shortly after the assassination. When developed, it showed a transparent figure standing inside the presidential box. There are, of course, endless anecdotes to lighten the gloom of such occult goings-on. One of them which pops up from time to time goes back to the ill-fated Macbeth and concerns the late Sir Donald Wol-fit, one of the last actor-managers in the grand tradition. Actor's exquisite revenge It seems one young actor in Sir Donald's Shakespearean company thought he deserved more than the single line, "My Lord the Queen is dead." He bugged Sir Donald unceasingly for a larger part, but Wolfit was adamant in his refusal, and finally the young man plotted an exquisite revenge.

One night he made his entrance and shouted in great excitement, "My lord, the Queen is much better and is even now at dinner." Unfortunately, history docs not record how Sir Donald reacted to this astonishing development in the action of the play. Nuns in the audience are bad luck but priests are good By Audrey M. Ashley Citizen music and drama editor As Hamlet said to Horatio, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Those strange, unnamable things have a very particular meaning to actors, who are a notoriously superstitious lot, and a darkened, empty theatre is a fertile breeding-ground for ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night. Tallulah Bankhead is reputed to have said, "You name it, honey, I believe it." And while most theatre people have their own personal beliefs, talismans and taboos, there are numerous others that are accepted throughout the theatrical fraternity. For instance, you must never, ever, whistle in a theatre dressing-room; that's one belief shared by pretty well everyone in the business.

Green is considered an unlucky color, despite the fact that the place where the actors gather offstage in a theatre is invariably known as the greenroom. (The theatre is full of contradictions like that in England it's considered very unlucky to perform on a Sunday, yet the sabbath is an ideal day, apparently, for signing contracts.) Mirrors always soaped Yellow, too, is unlucky a superstition that probably has its origins in the yellow worn by the devil in the mediaeval mystery plays. The devil figures largely in theatrical superstitions. He is the main reason real mirrors should never be used on stage unless they are smeared with soap. Because if you look into a mirror you may see the devil standing behind you.

That's another one whose origins go back a long way, probably to the Faustus legend. But some of the most fascinating of all theatre superstitions concern Shakespeare's Macbeth. It's well known that it's terribly bad luck to quote from the play inside a theatre, because that is simply inviting disaster from whatever gods or devils guard this particular play. Fortunately, there is an antidote. The culprit must leave the dressing-room, turn around three times, then spit, knock on the door three times and beg to be readmitted.

Or, he can quote the line from The Merchant of Venice which goes, "Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you." However, not only is it forbidden to quote from the play its name must not even be mentioned backstage. It's referred to obliquely as "the Scottish play" or "the play about the Scottish king." The annals of the theatre are filled with illustrations of how unlucky a play Macbeth is. The alleged curse on the play goes right back to Shakespeare's own time, and one theory is that it was cursed because it dealt with witchcraft, a very real issue in the Bard's day. Even then, props and costumes used for Macbeth were kept separately from those used for other plays as an acting company moved from town to town. (Today, there are still actors who will refuse to wear a helmet or a cloak if they know it was previously worn in Macbeth.) 15 ft.

fall from rostrum All through the centuries there are numerous instances of tragedies of one kind or another associated with Macbeth, although the skeptics can always answer that they are pure coincidence. English actress Diana Wynyard might have fallen 15 feet from the rostrum during her sleepwalking scene even if she had believed in the curse. The unfortunate young actor in the London production of Oliver who fell off the bridge in the final scene, fracturing his skull and dying instantly, may have done so anyway, even if a temporary usher hadn't muttered 'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" while waiting for the show to end. Nor does it always take a Macbeth to make actors uneasy. Long ago and far away, an amateur theatre company I was connected with decided to stage Emlyn Williams's ghostly play Trespass.

Everyone flung themselves into it with wild enthusiasm, as amateurs are wont to do, but gradually the attitude changed. The play has to do with spiritualism and an attempt, by the occupants of a Welsh castle, to communicate with the spirit of a dead man. The fact that the leading man was, like the author, a Celt and very susceptible to the idea of the supernatural, may have had something to do with it, but the cast became more and more uneasy and discouraged. Never speak the last line Another Welsh member of the cast had the misfortune to fall off a ladder and cut himself. After that, a certain speech in the play took on a particular sign-ficance: "Pour water on floorboards, it leaves no trace; pour blood, it stains for years violent emotions can leave, as it were, a stain in the air." We laughed about it at first.

But the blood from that cut would not disappear from the floorboards no matter how hard we scrubbed. Another widespread theatrical superstition is that it's unlucky to speak the last line of a play at re- hearsal. That applies especially to English pantomimes, and it's said that the well-known producer Emile Littler wouldn't even let his principals know what the tag line was until they came to the last scene. Then an attendant would appear on stage and hand it to them in a sealed envelope. Nuns in the audience are bad luck, but by some strange chauvinistic quirk, priests in the audience bring good luck.

Black cats are lucky, unless they actually cross the stage, in which case all hell is likely to break loose. In the world of opera, mascots are the thing. Most singers have one, and Mario Bcrnardi of the National Arts Centre Orchestra confesses that in his younger days as an opera conductor he used to rely on various combinations of studs, or a baton he had used in a performance he thought had gone particularly well. "But this was very long ago when I was much less secure," he assured me. The composer Offenbach's mascot was also a baton, but one made from a croupier's rake given to him at Baden Baden after he had won a large amount of money in the casino there.

He was sure it brought him luck. Transferring responsibility "It's obvious that all these things are just crutches." says Bcrnardi. 'They are no help to you at all. I'm not sure about religion." he added. "One conductor (you'd better not print his name) was never near a church in his life as far as I know, but he always says a little prayer and makes a funny sign of the cross." Bernardi regards all this as a way of transferring the responsibility for the performance to somebody else's shoulders.

He also offered another fascinating bit of information. "I don't know if you could call it superstition," he smiled, "but tenors aren't supposed to have sex for three days before singing a big role." You never say "Good luck" to a singer. In Italy, you say "In bocca al lupo," which means "In the mouth of the wolf." The answer is "Crepi il lupo," which means "May the wolf die of it." In Germany they spit, or say "toi-toi-toi," which is intended to imitate a spitting sound, or the now widely used expression "Hals and hcinbruch" break a leg. In an area so rife with superstition and belief in the supernatural, it's not surprising to find that ghost stories flourish. We have our own oft-told one here in Canada, where Ambrose Small is believed to haunt the old 1 i NACO conductor Mario Bernardi warns you never say good luck to a singer.

In Italy you say 'In bocca al lupo' 'in the mouth of the wolf). The response: 'May the wolf die of ft' When the Man In Grey, a ghost who haunts Drury Lane Theatre, appears during rehearsal, it's considered a good omen.