Teatro: Never mind Godot ... Patrick Stewart spooked by ghostly goings-on in theatre

The actor isn't the first to announce an encounter with a spectre while performing on stage. And he won't be the last ...

Posted by Michael Simkins

Wednesday 26 August 2009 16.50 BST

guardian.co.uk

Patrick Stewart's claim that he witnessed an apparition while performing in Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket will come as no surprise to the acting fraternity. We are used to seeing deathly-white individuals wringing their hands in ghastly torment – even if it's just accountants scanning our tax returns.

The surprise is that it's taken Stewart so long: there's hardly a venue in the country that doesn't have a resident ghost. Many of them are happy to appear twice nightly and provide their own costume into the bargain.

At the Theatre Royal York, where I spent a year, the wardrobe assistants regularly refused to work late in their attic eyrie after several sightings of the infamous grey lady who haunted the building. And as recently as 2001, an actor I was working with in Mamma Mia! at the Prince Edward theatre swore she saw a venomous-looking figure staring at her from the wings. She was certain of the ghoul's barely-concealed malice while she was singing The Winner Takes It All during a Saturday matinee. She remained adamant it wasn't her understudy she'd glimpsed.

London theatres are bursting at the seams with spectres. The Lyceum reputedly boasts a severed head, occasionally glimpsed in one of the boxes. The Theatre Royal Drury Lane has some of the hardest working ghosts in Equity: not only the mysterious man in grey who strolls about between 6pm and 9pm, but also the ghosts of Dan Leno, Joseph Grimaldi and King Charles complete with attendants. I've played to smaller audiences than that.

Sceptics might scoff at our gullibility, but actors are a superstitious lot: how could we be otherwise in a profession infamous for its fickleness and lack of rational judgement?

Thus the daily life of an actor is a metaphysical minefield. Any mention of Shakespeare's Scottish play for instance (you see – I can't even bring myself to write the title even now in case it leads to seven years of rotten reviews) will often bring wails of distress from credulous colleagues. And as one of the country's most inveterate whistlers, I've also been banished from more rehearsal rooms than I care to recall for breaking this ultimate theatrical taboo.

The celestial antidote for an unthinking purse of the lips is to leave the room, turn around three times, spit on the floor and ask to be readmitted. But there's logic to some of these ancient rites: before the introduction of technology, whistling was the means by which stage hands communicated scenery changes with the flymen perched high above in the roof. Thus, an ill-judged rendering of Come Into the Garden, Maud could result in you being buried underneath half a brick wall.

The best way to avoid paranormal interruption at work is still considered to be carrying a rabbit's foot with you at all times. But as RE Shay once famously observed: "Remember – it didn't work for the rabbit."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/aug/26/godot-patrick-stewart-ghost-theatre