From: eliz@world.std.com (Elizabeth Lear Newman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre
Subject: Re: Colm Wilkinson's "brutish" behavior
Date: 21 Jan 1993 12:53:02 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu



Here's the original article from the Toronto GLOBE AND MAIL.  This was
typed in by a friend, and is abbreviated once names appear.

						...eliz


Sat 12 Dec 92

Actors Colm Wilkinson and Rebecca Caine thrilled audiences in the
leading roles of the Toronto prod'n of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
from 1989 until Feb of this year -- but their onstage
relationship appears to have become as tense and violent as
anything in the musical itself.

The last year the two worked together was marked by increasing
accusations by Caine of "excessive roughness" on the part of
Wilkinson, and an arbitrator has concluded that Wilkinson's
attitude to his co-star during their stormy last performance was
"brutish" and "abusive in nature."

Details of the clashes between the two -- and the prolonged
attempts by agents, producers and sage management in Toronto,
London and New York to reconcile them while maintaining the
integrity of the prod'n -- are outlined in a 150-page arbitration
report obtained by The Globe and Mail.  The arbitration was
called for by Actors Equity to determine whether Live
Entertainment Corp. was justified in terminating the actress's
contract.  A lawyer for Equity, which represented Caine, said the
case was "highly unusual" in the theatrical world.

It describes the deterioration in the friendship btwn the two
performers, who had worked together in the London prod'n of LES
MISERABLES in which Wilkinson had played  Valjean and Caine
Valjean's daughter, Cosette.  By 1991, Caine said she was afraid
of Wilkinson's treatment of her on stage.  (He is still starring
in the show; Caine has recently been performing in the Canadian
Opera Company prod'n of COSI FAN TUTTE).

The musical -- which deals with the obsessive sexual love for the
young singer Christine Daae by the facially disfigured man known
as the phantom of the opera, involves some carefully
choreographed, onstage tussles bwn the two leads.

"It was [Caine's] evidence that illusion is an important part of
acting," noted the arbitration report.  "Actors are required to
create the illusion of roughness or violence without actually
committing such acts."  She testified that she had none of the
problems of roughness with the other nine actors who had
performed the role of the Phantom with her as she did with
Wilkinson.

The troubled stage rapport bwn W and C -- both of them were
locked into the show through long-term contracts -- appears to
have changed the dynamics and even the staging of some
performances before unsuspecting audiences.  Julie Wittaker Dus,
the assistant resident director, wrote in a May, 1991, memo
presented at the arbitration, "It's a cyclical battle, whereby if
either one of them deviates from the other's perceptions of the
correct blocking, they will demonstrate to each other their
displeasure with this -- on stage."

By the time, the performers were not speaking to each other
offstage.

The Toronto producers of the show, Live Entertainment Corp.,
maintained that C provoked W's reaction by not performing
director's notes (routinely given to performers to ensure they
perform a role as directed) correctly and to the full extent.

However, prod'n stage mgr Pat Thomas testified that "if Mr. W was
having a bad night on stage, he would use more aggression and
strength on the actress who played Christine."  He also
reportedly told her, "I don't understand why I dislike that girl
[Caine] so much."

Whatever the dynamics, the problems bwn the two reached a climax
in an evening performance on Feb. 21 -- the last time they
performed together.  During that performance, Edgar Dobie, then
sr vice-pres of entertainment, reportedly told one witness that
"Colm has gone out of control" due to what he saw as C's refusal
to perform certain movements for which she had received
correcting notes before the performance.

C said later that she didn't perform one because she was
"stubborn" and another because she had been frightened and
apprehensive about W.

The performance ended in a wrist burn for C due to W's handling
of the actress as the two left the stage, causing L.E. Corp. to
remove her from the cast, and resulted in a call for arbitration
launched by Actors Equity Assc'n on C's behalf over salary still
owed on her contract.

As a result of hearings which took place over 12 days between May
and August, arbitrator J.D. O'Shea ordered L. Ent. to pay C the
$110,000 it still owed her for several weeks of employment on two
different contracts.  A second arbitration hearing is scheduled
for next Thrus to determine how much L. Ent. still owes C for
such items as air fares between Toronto and London, costs and
damages.

In his summary, O'Shea said that he found no evidence to support
L.E's claim that it terminated C's contract because she had
missed 7 consecutive days of work.  (O'Shea pointed out that on
some of those days, she was neither required nor expected to
appear.)  He also said that C "cannot be held accountable for Mr.
W's brutish conduct towards her. . . . I find that as between the
two artists, Mr. W is the one who perpetuated the conflict and
who is responsible for the fact that Live was forced to take the
decision not to have them perform together."  He also noted that
Live maintained it was easier to find another artist to play the
role of Christine than it would be to replace W.

"I find that management was either unable or unwilling to deal
effectively with Mr. W's roughness," O'Shea wrote.  "Indeed, it
was readily apparent that Mr. W, who had the good will of Hal
Prince ..., was able to effectively deflect any intervention by
management with respect to his treatment of Ms. C."

Garth Drabinsky, chairman of L. E., yesterday said, "I don't want
to make any comment on the report..."

C has also declined comment ... Anneli Legault, the lawyer for
Actor's Equity and C on the issue, said the actress "grieved it
very reluctantly.  In the end, I encouraged her, because I felt
her case was so strong."

Legault said the case was "very unusual," in that most theatrical
disputes are settled privately.... She also said that it was
"very unusual that a theatre would stop paying someone and then
come up with their reasons later."



Testimony reveals deteriorating relationship

(no byline, just "Globe and Mail")

According to Rebecca C and others during the hearings, the
rel'nship bwn her and Colm W began to deteriorate at the time of
the filming of the video and the recording of the cast album for
P OF THE O in the fall of 1990.  At that time, a witness
testified that W -- who did not testify at the hearings -- was
upset that his solo, "The Music of the Night", would not be used
in the video, and was not pleased that C was so prominently
featured in the video.

Neither performer was eager to sign another six-month contract,
but both did so.  However, one witness said C felt W had been
given longer to make up his mind, and that she should receive
equal billing, since she is on stage more often than the
Phantom.

Over the next year, C said she complained repeatedly about W's
stage roughness to resident director Anne Allan, but that, while
Allan said she spoke to W about it, nothing changed.  C said
Allan told her in July of 1991, "Darling, I am telling you this
as a friend.  If this gets back to Hal Prince, you'll be fired."
Two witnesses testified that director Harold Prince took the
position that "Colm had made the show his own."

On Sept. 21, C told arbitrator O'Shea that W accidentally injured
her right wrist when his grip slipped from her hand to her wrist,
and testified that "for some period of time, she had been pulled
around the stage by her right wrist with excessive force."  On
Jan 14, 1992, she said he bent her right hand down during a
performance, and her chiropractor said her wrist was severely
sprained as a result.  To help its recovery, he placed it in a
10-inch brace.

In a note she wrote to Edgar Dobie, then sr v-p of entertainment,
and Garth D.... Allan expressed concern that the audience would
be distracted by the sight of C's brace, and that "one deformity
on stage was enough."  She said it would prevent the mobility
needed to perform the movements of the show, and that asking W to
learn new staging to accommodate it would "cause him anxiety."
[!!!}

On Jan 23, Caine received her termination notice, which she said
Dobie had told her was necessitated by hard economic times.  But
on Jan 24, confident that she could perform the role with
adjustments, she attended a rehearsal, at which she first was
told W was prepared to rehearse in his dressing room, and then,
after lively discussion on the matter, said that he did not want
to rehearse with C at all.  (Dobie testified that at one point W
tried to avoid a rehearsal with him by saying that he was "a rock
and roller" and just wanted to go out and do it.")

The performance that evening went well, C testified, until the
point in Act I when the two leave stage together, when W told C,
according to one witness, "You are on you own out there, you are
doing this show at your risk."  In Act II, C said W, "lost it" at
a crucial moment in the play involving a complicated hand clasp.
This is the point at which the audience sees the Phantom's
deformity after Christine has removed his mask and wig, and Anne
Allan said the actor "dried"....

C maintained that W backed away and pulled off his own mask and
threw it on the floor, while she then pulled off his wig.  As the
two left the stage, she said he pushed her, causing her to cry
out.  One witness said W then said of that reaction, "That is the
best fucking acting you have ever done."

C was not allowed to perform the next night, or at all, until she
signed a new contract on Feb 11.

She began performing again, but, from then on, she said she was
so frightened of W that she did all that was required through the
correcting notes she was getting from him through Wittaker Dus
and Allan, who said they passed the notes on to C when they
agreed with the actor.  (C testified, however, that it was
unusual for one performer to receive notes from another.)

But the Feb 21 performance proved to be the end of the uneasy
truce.  At one point in Act I, Caine testified that W grabbed her
by her left wrist and hurled her off stage with such force that C
said she almost fell.  C pointed out the wrist burn and members
of stage management rushed to the actor's dressing to tell him
that he was being excessive in his treatment of the actress.  C
said that when Anne Allan went to visit W in his dressing room,
she could hear the actor screaming.

The producers and stage management agreed that, despite C's
desire to keep working with modified staging until her injury was
healed, the two performers should not work together again.  Live
paid C's contractual fee up to March 1, but not to its end date
of March 29.