Fess up. Clearly someone uttered the name of the Scottish play in the Longacre Theatre, thereby cursing the production of that very same play with some very bad luck. Director Sam Gold’s production of Macbeth, starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga, is currently in previews on Broadway, with a scheduled opening night of April 28. All the ingredients for a successful show are there: You’ve got your immortal Bard, your sexy movie stars, your eye of newt and toe of frog, your wool of bat and tongue of dog. Tragically, you’ve also got the novel coronavirus.
The New York Times reports that the show had to cancel its April 1 performance minutes before curtain-up when a cast member tested positive. On April 2, Craig also tested positive and the show closed for 11 days. Then, on the Thursday, April 14, performance, its third after reopening, another member of the cast tested positive and all of the understudies were busy filling in. So Gold, who in recent years directed King Lear and Hamlet, stepped in as the character Lennox, who SparkNotes informs me is “a Scottish nobleman.â€
This is just one story of many about Broadway productions that have struggled under the coronavirus, and it’s pretty dedicated stuff. But Gold won a Tony in 2015 for directing Fun Home, so we won’t truly be impressed until we see him step in as Medium Alison.