Looking ahead . . .

Only two weeks till Macbeth goes up at the Westside Theater, so it's a good time to look at what makes a good production of Macbeth.  Ooops.  I said the M word.  You know, the one that is the title of the play.  I take it back.  I take it back.

We know, based on the plans revealed by Denise Hurd in the interview on this blog a few months ago (we'll re-post it hereafter), that this production is going to be fantastic, so we want to do nothing to tempt the fates. . . .

It seems like an interesting exercise to look at recent productions and examine whether the curse was in play, whether a spell made them fail.

We begin with Long Wharf Theatre (http://www.longwharf.org/), New Haven's prestigious (Tony Award-winning) scion of regional theater, whose Macbeth 1969 closed on 12 February.  The Hartford Courant hailed the coming of the production with a warning that seemed to portend disaster for Long Wharf. http://bit.ly/yHDtMn

The production played to under-subscribed houses and mixed reviews.  What caused the pairing of venerable play and venerable company to spawn a failure? The New York Times weighs in:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/nyregion/macbeth-1969-at-the-long-wharf-theater-review.html

But the spectre of the curse remains because all in all, the play was that rare happenstance at LWT -- a real, bona fide flop.  It hadda be the Curse.

So, when you call for tickets, talk about our production, hail the actors, etc., refer to The Scottish Play, and all will be well.

Stay tuned for more. . . .