THE curse of “The Scottish Play” appears to have struck a Lancashire theatre when not one member of the theatre company turned up. Some 450 ticket-holders were turned away from the Guildhall Theatre in Preston on Thursday evening after the performers scheduled to perform Macbeth disappeared.
Managers at the Guildhall had spent the day attempting to reach the company, in vain. Alan Baker, general manager at the theatre, said that the disappearance was the strangest event in his 34-year career.
“Occasionally an actor may be ill and we can provide an explanation, but we can’t in this case,” he said. “It is a mystery.”
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The enigma was solved yesterday when The Times discovered that the company had broken up acrimoniously at the Edinburgh Fringe. Nathan Wilson, manager of the Twisted Elbow theatre company, said that the show had fallen apart midway through its run at the festival. Actors had been upset to discover that a rained-off performance earlier in the national tour meant that there was a hole in the finances, but pledged to complete the Edinburgh performances. Then three actors went on a heavy drinking binge, prompting Mr Wilson to sack them.
He attempted to recast the show in time for the next date on the tour at Hastings Castle, but did not have time. “That is when the decision was made to cancel the UK leg of the tour,” Mr Wilson said. “All the venues were contacted, or should have been contacted, by letters or e-mail.”
The Guildhall must have been accidentally ignored, he said. “I have been in hospital, so I left that in the hands of a [former business partner] of mine. It all went horribly Macbeth.”
Mr Wilson, who is now £23,000 in debt, is attempting to recover his losses by recasting the play for a run at the National Theatre of Luxembourg. “It is a bitter situation at the moment. There is a lot of resentment from certain members of the team. We have got to carry on in the hope that in the next five months we can recoup some of the money and pay people what they are owed.”
Twisted Elbow is one of a string of companies to be linked to the curse of Macbeth, a play believed in the acting community to bring bad luck, and to which many among them do not refer by name in a theatre, instead calling it “The Scottish Play”. In 1937 Laurence Olivier was playing the title role when he broke his sword, flinging it into the auditorium. The audience member who was struck later died of a heart attack.
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In a 1934 production, Malcolm Keen, a British actor, found himself unable to speak and his replacement developed a fever and had to be hospitalised. A 1971 staging in New York was beset by two fires and seven robberies.