Ghost on Stage
Hauntings at the Huntington Theatre Company
By: Mark Favermann - Feb 26, 2008
As the sets and costumes for the Irish ghost story Shining City make their way from Chicago to Boston for a March 7-April 6 run at the Huntington's B.U. Theatre main stage, several staff members have considered there may not be enough room for the play's fictional spirit alongside the theatre's actual ghost.
Legend has it the ghost of Henry Jewett — who built the theatre in 1923 as a permanent home for his Jewett Players — haunts the facility. While newspaper accounts of his death don't spell it out, it was widely speculated he hung himself in the building. Indeed, his presence has been felt and in some cases seen, by theatre staff over the years. Based on sightings and other evidence over the years, we can surmise several things about the Huntington's resident ghost:
He's sneaky. A BU professor working alone in the theatre spotted a figure moving along the catwalk. He called out to him, but the figure did not answer and disappeared.
He's a traditionalist. When the Huntington brought the then-shockingly contemporary version of Trinity Rep's production of Terence McNally's "Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune" for a short summer run at the theatre in 1991, opening night was delayed because the house manager could not turn off the lights to begin the show. After an ensuing kerfuffle, the lights dimmed on their own. Jewett had made his point.
He checks in often. A week after "Frankie and Johnny" opened, the box office manager was in the lower lobby of the theatre, talking about ticket sales. She became flush because, as she later told her colleague, she felt a cold presence move right through her. Staff members now call the area "the willies spot."
He's self-centered. Staff members noticed that protective coverings of two photographs flanking Jewett's portrait that hangs high above the lobby staircase had been slid off the pictures, inward toward the portrait, in perfectly symmetrical fashion. Without a tall ladder or scaffolding, the pictures are inaccessible to humans. No work requiring a ladder had been done in the lobby that day.
He's not above little bouts of mischief. A mystery fifth phone line rang in the box office, back when we had analog phones and only 4 lines coming in. The manually operated freight elevator that requires human hands to make it work was found operating on its own one day. And an education department employee who was typing up notes on Henry Jewett and his mysterious death, reports her computer keyboard suddenly went crazy, as if someone were randomly holding down keys.
If the actual show is as good as the stories which Mr. Kennedy has passed along, the play should be a sellout.