way2go! 7. Practice Pack, Arbeitsheft

46 UNIT 08 | Culture vulture Unit 08 Culture vulture Read the article about Britain’s most haunted theatre. Answer the questions (1–6) using a maximum of four words. Write your answers in the spaces provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. READING 1 The ghosts of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane We’re sitting in the under-stage tunnel at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane here in London’s West End, taking part in the famous backstage tour. “What’s that noise?” asks Gerard, our tour guide, listening carefully. There’s a tapping at the top of the stairs. “Can anyone smell lavender?” says Gerard. He’s just been telling us about the ghost of Dan Leno, one of the first actors here, who is still supposed to haunt these corridors, tapping his walking stick on dressing room doors, dancing in his clogs and smelling of lavender oil, which he was fond of. Suddenly, the lights go out. There is a gust of wind and an almighty crash. We all gasp in fright. Then the door at the top of the stairs opens and through the light walks Nell Gwynne 1 , with her basket of oranges, known to us as Katherine, the other tour guide. “Afternoon, my darlings!” she says and we all laugh nervously in relief. Drury Lane is the oldest and most haunted theatre in London. In fact, some say it is the most haunted building in the world. Even some members of the cast and crew currently working at the theatre claim to have seen ghosts. So is this gorgeous old theatre really full of ghosts or is it merely the imaginations of a bunch of hysterical actors? What is it about theatres that makes them so particularly prone to ghosts? To the extent that some theatres still have a bare bulb, or ‘ghost light’ burning at all times to keep the spirits away? There’s something unsettling about an empty theatre; rows and rows of empty seats, vast spooky areas of darkness above your head, drafts that seem to come from nowhere. And the whole purpose of the building is to make people imagine that something is there which isn’t there. Actors are capable of making you believe in stuff that isn’t real, and the way they do it is to convince themselves first. Couple that with the history of murders, fires, burials and bombs associated with this theatre, and it’s not surprising, I suppose, that it has a ghostly tradition. The most well-known and often sighted of the Drury Lane ghosts is ‘The Man in Grey’. He wears an 18 th -century hat, wig and cloak and walks along the row of seats and through the wall. When refurbishment of the theatre was going on in the 1840s, a cavity was found behind that wall that contained a skeleton with a knife in its chest. Sightings of the Man in Grey began in the 20 th century, the biggest was in 1939 when the entire cast of a production saw him. The other most popular ghosts are the severed head of the clown, Joseph Grimaldi, seen floating in one of the boxes, the great but troubled actor Charles Macklin, who murdered a colleague in the theatre by putting his cane through his eye, and the mysterious ‘Helping Hand’ ghost – possibly Dan Leno again –, who nudges actors into better positions on the stage and pats them on the back when they get a laugh. 1 Nell Gwynne was a famous actress in the 1600s Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum d s Verlags öbv