ABOUT THE PLAY

The following synopsis was provided by an article published in LIFE magazine, March 1952.

WHAT A WITCH CAN DO

The moral behind Mrs. McThing, a comic fantasy, is that small boys shouldn’t always scrub their ears, and that perfection is a terrible thing. The dispenser of this wisdom is Mary Chase, who wrote before about imperfect mortals in her play, Harvey.

The Hero of Mrs. McThing is Howay Larue. A normally mischievous youngster, Howay is spirited away from his mansion by vengeful Witch McThing because she feels Howay’s mother has snubbed her urchin like daughter. Gleefully Howay finds himself in a pool-hall lunchroom, where he joins a gang of comic mobsters. Meanwhile, a substitute Howay, a hateful prig, is created by the witch out of an old stick and palmed off on Mrs. Larue. Unaware of the replacement, she is glad at first to see how Howay has reformed. But soon she grows uneasy over Howay the Good, and is deeply mystified when Howay the Bad phones her from the lunchroom. Before the witch gets through, Mrs. Larue herself is changed into a scrubwoman, helps rob her own home, adopts the witch’s daughter as a playmate for Howay, and returns to her unbewitched state with a firm conviction that it is best to let kids be kids.

SUSANNA RITTI 

DIRECTOR