Much Ado about Macbeth

by Randy McCharles

  There was a brief silence while the Weird Sisters waited to ensure they were really alone.

  “Well,” Agatha said. “That went smoother than I thought it would.”

  “I thought she’d boil us in oil,” Gertrude admitted. “I even wore my swimming suit beneath my knickers.”

  “She did ruin my fries,” said Netty.

  Then, just as suddenly as she had disappeared, Hecate was back. “One more thing. Since you three appear incapable of cursing the play, I’ll do it.” Then she was gone again.

  “Oh, booger,” Gertrude said.

  Scene 2: The Instruments of Darkness Tell Us Truths

  Not a single student mentioned Reverend Long’s visit on Friday. “Old news,” Susie had said. And that was on Friday evening.

  It was now Monday, and Paul was once again running the students through full rehearsal. They’d worked on weak spots last Thursday and Friday, and Paul had asked them to complete their costumes and props over the weekend.

  “This is it,” Paul said through his megaphone. “From now on, we have full-dress rehearsal, including costume changes. Sally will stop helping the stage technicians and will work the lights instead. So you are all going to have to work harder. Let’s see if we can’t improve on some of those problems we discussed last week.”

  When the bell rang, signalling the end of class, Paul had a shorter list of notes than previous weeks. But he did notice that some of the students seemed to be getting bored from the constant repetition. That was not unexpected. These were students, after all, not professional actors. He decided they’d take a break from rehearsal and spend the next two classes watching and discussing the Orson Welles film version of Macbeth.

  “Mr. Samson?” A student he didn’t recognize stood before him with a note.

  “Now what?” Paul opened the note, expecting two familiar words: Principal’s Office. What he found were two different words entirely: Weird Sisters.

  Paul wondered if he should call Riordan. Then he laughed, certain that Riordan had no inclination to meet with the witches again. Sylvia was busy with a showing and hadn’t been able to join him, so he couldn’t ask her, not that introducing anyone else to the witches seemed a good idea. Lenny? But the boy was already off to his next class. He also couldn’t imagine what help Lenny could possibly be.

  It seemed he was on his own.

  The witches were in their usual booth. Paul ordered a cola from the bored-looking woman running the cash register then joined them. “No pizza today?”

  The witches’ table was decorated with normal DQ fare, except for a Styrofoam plate that contained something that looked like creamed corn. Netty was waggling her fingers over it and frowning.

  “Time for a change,” said the tall witch named Agatha.

  “Besides,” Gertrude said. “Pizza gives me gas.”

  “I’m so glad you told us,” said Netty, still waggling her fingers. “It’s not like we haven’t noticed.”

  Paul spotted a school newspaper on the table. It appeared to have been shredded then glued back together. He did a double take when he saw today’s date. “Is that out already? They don’t usually put it out until lunchtime.”

  Agatha glanced at it. “Hecate must have acquired an advance copy.”

  “Hecate?” Paul stopped looking through the paper for his article. “The fourth witch from Macbeth?”

  Netty finally stopped waggling her fingers. The cream corn still looked like cream corn. “She used to be our boss.”

  “By ‘used to be,’ Netty means as recently as fifteen minutes ago,” Gertrude said.

  “We fired her,” Agatha said.

  Paul recalled a line from the play. “Beldams as you are, saucy and overbold?”

  The three witches cackled.

  “She called us much worse than that,” said Gertrude.

  “And did much worse,” Netty added. “Look what she did to my fries!”

  “I take it that Hecate didn’t take it well,” Paul said. “The firing, I mean.”

  “That’s why we sent the student with the note,” said Agatha.

  Gertrude let out a halfhearted cackle. “Hecate said something about cursing the play herself.”

  Paul swallowed. “Hecate is going to curse the play?”

  The three witches nodded.

  “That’s not a small problem,” Netty said. “As you can see from my fries, Hecate’s curses tend to be rather blunt.”

  “Can’t you stop her?” Paul demanded. “From cursing the play, I mean.”

  Netty let out a howl that made Paul’s heart rise into his throat. “The play? We can’t even stop her from cursing my breakfast!”

  Paul slumped back against the bench seat. “I’ll have to cancel. I’ll go to Winston right now and tell him the play’s off.”

  The three witches cackled.

  Agatha snorted. “I’m not sure that will do any good. Hecate’s in a mood. She’s bound to cause trouble no matter what.”

  Paul threw his hands in the air. “I can’t think of anything else. I have to cancel. The kids will be disappointed. They’ve worked so hard. I’ll try to make it up to them.”

  “I’d be more concerned with just keeping them alive,” Gertrude said. “Hecate’s got a violent streak wider than China.”

  The other two witches looked at her.

  “What? China is rather wide.”

  Paul’s stomach churned. His kids could be killed? He thought about Scarlet. The witches sitting at the table with him had killed the young actress without a second thought, and they considered Hecate unnaturally violent?

  Thinking about Scarlet reminded him about his promise to her. “If you can’t stop Hecate, can you at least do something else?”

  Agatha cast him a look of interest. “Something else?”

  “Can you bring a ghost back to life?”

  The three witches cackled. Then Gertrude said, “No one can bring a ghost back from beyond.”

  “Once a ghost, always a ghost,” said Netty. Her expression turned curious. “Did you acquire a fondness for Banquo?”

  “Not Banquo,” Paul said. “Scarlet.”

  When the witches looked baffled, he said, “The actress you killed when you cursed Simon Riordan’s play?”

  “Oh, that Scarlet,” Agatha said. “Why would you want to bring her back?”

  “I don’t think Simon would appreciate the gesture,” Gertrude added.

  “She already is back,” Paul said. “She’s haunting one of the props in the play. I was hoping you could do something for her.”

  “A ghost is haunting the play?” asked Netty. “A ghost that we didn’t put there?”

  Paul explained everything he knew about Scarlet, and as he spoke, the witches grew more and more excited.

  “Yes,” said Agatha. The tall witch tapped her fingers together. “I think we can work with that.”

  “Don’t cancel the play,” Gertrude said. “We need to use it as bait.”

  “Bait?”

  Agatha hunched down over the table and lowered her voice. “Let me tell you about witches and the haunts of ghosts.”

  Scene 3: Double, Double Toil and Trouble

  Paul arrived at school Tuesday morning after a long, sleepless night. It had taken most of the previous evening to talk Sylvia out of taking Riordan’s advice and moving to Japan, or India, or anywhere but here. “You can’t outrun a curse,” Paul had argued. They then spent the remainder of the night discussing the witches’ plan and speculating on all the things that could go wrong.

  To be honest, Paul didn’t think much of the Weird Sisters’ plan. It relied on a number of assumptions, some of which baffled him. But the witches said they knew Hecate well enough to be able to guess how she might go about cursing the play. The first assumption was that she wouldn’t make a move until rehearsals resumed. The second assumption was that Hecate would strike during rehearsal, repeatedly if necessary. The witches were counting on repeatedly.

  Simon Riord
an met them in the school parking lot. The skeletal old man looked frightened but carried with him a nervous energy.

  Paul shook his mentor’s hand. “I’m glad you agreed to help, though I’m a little surprised.”

  Riordan nodded and greeted Sylvia.

  “When you said that this would help Scarlet, how could I refuse?”

  Paul had explained the witches’ plan over the phone. “You never met Hecate when the witches cursed you those many years ago?”

  Riordan shook his head. “I remember her from the play, of course. Some kind of senior witch. I seem to recall that while the Weird Sisters mostly just talked, it was Hecate who performed what appeared as actual magic. It was Hecate who summoned three apparitions from Hell while hiding offstage. That’s who we’re expecting this morning?”

  Paul nodded and pulled a printed photograph from his coat pocket.

  Riordan gawked at it. “Are you sure this is the right photo? This is that lingerie model you showed me.”

  “I’m sure. The witches guarantee she’ll be dressed differently, but her face will have the same general characteristics. Her hair is usually black. Oh, and she was last seen as a seventeen-year-old with a full set of facial piercings.”

  Riordan handed back the photo. “I don’t think this is going to help us identify her.”

  They reached the auditorium, and Paul took a cautious look inside: empty. Then he thought he saw three shadows reclining in the back row of the theatre seats. A hand waved.

  Scarlet appeared and Paul whispered just loud enough for her to hear. “The Weird Sisters are here.” Scarlet froze where she stood. The ghost’s eyes looked terrified.

  Paul had gone over the plan with Scarlet the previous afternoon after reciting some lines from The Bard’s Play to free her from the lamp, all the while hoping that the witches were right and that Hecate wasn’t eavesdropping. One of the witches’ assumptions was that Hecate didn’t know about Scarlet and would believe that the ghost was one of the Weird Sisters’ lame attempts at cursing the play. Not that the sisters had used the word lame.

  The students arrived, seeing nothing amiss. Paul and Sylvia were in their customary directors’ chairs. Riordan was hiding backstage. Some of the students noticed the small audience sitting in the far shadows and stared for a moment.

  Paul raised the megaphone to his lips. “Class, I noticed yesterday that some of you are looking bored running through the same scenes over and over. So today we’ll try something different. I have arranged for a series of distractions to occur during rehearsal. Your job is to ignore them or work around them to the best of your ability. Ad-lib, if necessary. What’s the actor’s creed?”

  Several students surprised Paul by shouting, “The show must go on!”

  Paul grinned. “That’s right. Places, everyone. The curtain rises on Act IV, Scene 1. Enter the three Witches.”

  The curtain rose and three witches stood centre stage. The witch stirring the cauldron spoke: “Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.”

  “Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined,” answered the second.

  Then the third witch, Gemma Henderson, stepped to one side and called to the audience, “Harpier cries ’Tis time, ’tis time!”

  The first witch continued stirring and gave her verse; then all three witches chorused the famous line, “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

  Paul thought he heard a muffled cackle from the back of the theatre seats. The three stage witches ignored it.

  Witches two and three gave their verses, with all three repeating the chorus each time, then witch two concluded with, “Cool it with a baboon’s blood, then the charm is firm and good.”

  Hecate then stepped onto the stage.

  Not the real Hecate. It was Val King, dressed as the oft-forgotten fourth witch of Shakespeare’s play. “O well done! I commend your pains,” Val chanted. “And every one shall share i’ the gains; and now about the cauldron sing, live elves and fairies in a ring, enchanting all that you put in.”

  Hecate then stepped back behind a stage curtain.

  Paul had been sure that the real Hecate would try something. Perhaps step on stage herself and proceed to raise Hell, literally, but so far, nothing. Perhaps the Weird Sisters were wrong and Hecate wouldn’t show up. Perhaps Hecate’s promise to curse the play herself was just an idle threat. He could hope.

  The second witch stepped forward and recited another well-remembered line. “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, whoever knocks!”

  That was Lenny’s cue. Macbeth walked onto the stage. “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! What is’t you do?”

  The three witches chorused: “A deed without a name.”

  The scene continued, and it occurred to Paul that the apparitions were another good opportunity to wreak havoc. But the student playing the first apparition appeared onstage and delivered her line without flaw. “Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff. Beware the thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.”

  The second apparition also went smoothly. “Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth.”

  Likewise the third apparition. “Be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are: Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.”

  Macbeth exchanged words with the witches, and the scene played out with still no sign of Hecate. Then the witches withdrew, and Macbeth pontificated to the audience. “Where are they? Gone? Let this pernicious hour stand aye accursed in the calendar! Come in, without there!”

  Lennox stepped onto the stage, but before Bruce Filman could deliver his line, the cauldron began spewing a volcano’s worth of smoke. Paul thought he could see flames as well. Lenny froze where he stood, staring at the cauldron, while Bruce turned and almost fell down backward. Then a skeletal old man rushed out from backstage and began blasting the cauldron with a fire extinguisher.

  Paul was about to use his megaphone when Bruce shook himself and, doing his best to ignore Simon Riordan’s attack on the cauldron, gave Lennox’s line. “What’s your grace’s will?”

  Lenny turned away from the cauldron and, after a moment, found his place. “Saw you the weird sisters?”

  “No, my lord,” said Lennox.

  “Came they not by you?”

  “No, indeed, my lord.”

  By now the cauldron was extinguished and Riordan ducked back between the backstage curtains. Paul risked looking around the auditorium for signs of Hecate but saw no one.

  “Infected be the air whereon they ride,” said Macbeth. “And damn’d all those that trust them! I did hear the galloping of horse: who was’t came by?”

  “’Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word. Macduff is fled to England.”

  Macbeth was in the middle of ordering Macduff’s family executed when Riordan suddenly dashed from behind the curtains and tackled Lennox, pushing him out of the way of a falling stage light. The bulb burst with a cannon-sized pop as the light hit the stage, the metal casing gashing a shallow wound in the hardwood floor.

  “Sorry!” came Sally’s strangled voice from the lighting booth at the back of the auditorium. “I don’t know how that happened. I wasn’t even touching the controls.”

  “The show must go on!” Paul shouted through the megaphone, his own voice sounding just as strangled.

  With the scene more or less ended, Anna and Jennifer rushed out to replace the cauldron with two chairs. They also carried the broken light offstage. Meanwhile, several of the actors carried off the scenery flats depicting the Scottish heath, revealing the castle walls that covered the flats just behind them. Paul was not surprised that Sigrid forgot to lower and raise the curtain during the set change. Given the witches’ plan, that was all for the best.

  Without fanfare, Lady Macduff and her eldest son entered stage left and s
at in the chairs. Thane Ross then stepped out and stood before them.

  “What had he done,” asked Lady Macduff, “to make him fly the land?”

  “You must have patience, madam,” Ross said politely.

  Lady Macduff cast Ross a look of disdain. “He had none: His flight was madness: when our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.”

  While Lady Macduff complained about her husband’s less attractive traits, Paul detected the scent of ozone in the air. He sniffed and turned around to see thunderclouds forming above the theatre seats. To her credit, Julia Asher continued with Lady Macduff’s lines, showing almost no hesitation.

  The ozone grew suddenly sharper, and what Paul could only describe as a bolt of slow-motion lightning appeared and flew toward the stage.

  Julia, losing her Lady Macduff persona, shrieked and knocked over her chair in an attempt to flee. Billy Tiptree, playing the son, just sat there, mouth agape. Showing all the quick action expected of a Scottish lord, Thane Ross dived off the stage into where an orchestra pit would have been had the auditorium been larger. Riordan rushed onto the stage and flailed his hands. What could he possibly do about lightning?

  Then Scarlet appeared, standing in the centre of the stage, dressed as Lady Macbeth. She looked at the approaching lightning with large, round eyes, and quickly shut them and ducked her head slightly.

  The lightning veered away from Julia and Billy and headed straight for the ghost.

  There was a rattling sound, and Paul watched as Riordan’s lamp flew off the castle wall and into the path of the lightning. There was a bright flash, and when the spots cleared from Paul’s vision, he saw the lightning was gone, as was the lamp, nothing left but a few scraps of burned metal littering the stage.

  Scarlet, still standing, hesitantly opened her eyes.

  A seventeen-year-old goth girl appeared in the air where the storm clouds had been. She floated in place but expanded out until she was perhaps five times the size of a normal person. “Who dares to interrupt my curses?” she roared.

  That was more than the students were prepared to handle. With a few frightened shouts and one hasty, “I’m outta here!” Paul heard them scuffle out the stage doors and into the supposed safety of the larger school. Paul would have given anything to be able to run with them. But this was his mess to clean up, one way or another.