Promotional Photo

From Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party

Everybody knows how Macbeth is an unlucky show. Utter the title aloud and great misfortune will befall you. There's a production Oct. 29-Nov. 1 in New London, a Halloween-attuned tradition from the puppet-friendly Flock Theater. (First Congregational Church, 66 Union St., New London; 860-443-3119, flocktheatre.org; 7 p.m., $10-$12).

A lesser known but equally accursed drama is Vinegar Tom by the mighty Caryl Churchill (Cloud Nine, Top Girls, A Number; her mythologic harpy update The Shriker will soon be done at Wesleyan). Like Macbeth (and like yet another famously fate-tempting play, Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus), Vinegar Tom busies itself with witchcraft — the 17th-century English countryside kind.

We took part in a harrowing production over 20 years ago that was marked by constant flare-ups, vanishings, accidents and just plain bad vibes. Research is scanty, but other productions we've heard of have had similar troubles. Has the current Quinnipiac University staging by Crystal Brian, in the Long Wharf Theatre's Stage II (222 Sargent Drive, 203-582-3500; Nov. 4-8, $5-$10) experienced any such foul luck? Frankly, we're scared to ask.

Plays about Abraham Lincoln don't bring bad luck; they're just about a guy who had it, watching a play when he got shot to death. Once upon a time, plays about the assassinated 16th prez were respectful biographical melodramas. Then came Hair, with its "Happy Birthday, Abie Baby." Then came Suzan-Lori Parks, whose America Play and Top Dog/Underdog redrew Lincoln as an icon of the black struggle. Then came Paula Vogel's revisionist American fantasia A Civil War Christmas at Long Wharf last winter.

Now comes Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party by Connecticut Repertory Theatre (802 Bolton Road, Unit 1127, University of Connecticut, Storrs; 860-486-1629, crt.uconn.edu; Oct. 29-Nov. 8, $11-$17). A crazed courtroom drama inspired by recent scholarship suggesting Lincoln was gay, Aaron Loeb's script also involves comedy sketches, baton twirling, audience participation, a fourth-grade Christmas pageant and, yes, dancing. This new production features UConn students. Kristin Wold directs.

Lousy theatrical luck also figures prominently in Craig Wright's Mistakes Were Made, about an ill-fated Broadway producer. The show runs Oct. 29-Nov. 22 at Hartford Stage (50 Church St., Hartford; 860-527-5151, hartfordstage.org; $28-$57), a real change of pace from the nine-play(!) Horton Foote family saga that just finished up there. Wright's been a writer for TV's "Dirty Sexy Money" (which he created), "Lost" and "Six Feet Under." His play The Pavilion played the Westport Country Playhouse in 2008, making him the most produced L.A.-based Puerto Rican playwright with a theology degree in Connecticut ever.

Lucky guy.