As I stood outside the school, shivering from the cold with the fire alarm ringing in my ears, I was wondering, “When will the firefighters tell us what is going on?”

About 20 minutes earlier I, along with every other cast member of HHS’s fall production You Can’t Take It With You, was in the auditorium rehearsing. That is when junior Jon Aliberto said the word “Macbeth” while he was onstage.

According to legend, King James I had Shakespeare’s Macbeth performed for him. In the audience were practicers of witchcraft. They did not like the way their practice was portrayed. As payback the practicers put a curse on Macbeth and since then there have been records of catastrophes during performances of this play. For example, in 1937 Laurence Olivier’s sword flew off the stage after being hit by an anvil. It then hit a man in the audience who later that night suffered from a heart attack.

After Aliberto said “Macbeth,” Kimberly Griffin, co-director of You Can’t Take It With You, explained the legend of the curse to us. As soon as she finished explaining, the fire alarm started squealing. Coincidence? I don’t think so. You, along with the Hawthorne Fire Department, Hawthorne Police Department, and HHS administration, might say it was caused by the boiler in the basement. But, the cast of You Can’t Take It with You sees it differently. Just another incident to be blamed on “The Curse of Macbeth.”