TRYING TO COME BACK DIFFERENT

When I left musical theatre in 1999, I don’t think I ever truly believed I was leaving it forever.

I think I just stopped believing there was a way back.

There’s a difference.

At the time, after Beauty and the Beast, I convinced myself that I had failed inside that world somehow. Not talent-wise. Not vocally. Not professionally in terms of the work itself.

I thought I had failed at surviving inside the system around it.

The social side.
The pressure.
The politics.
The constant feeling that people were assessing you.
The feeling that if you didn’t fit in properly, the room would quietly move on without you.

At the time, I couldn’t separate my anxiety from reality properly.

I didn’t understand what was happening to me.

I just knew I felt exhausted all the time, emotionally overwhelmed, socially awkward, hyper-aware of how I was being perceived, and permanently frightened of getting things wrong.

So when I left, I retreated.

Not dramatically.

Not with some grand speech.

I just slowly drifted away from the audition room.

And once that happens, time moves quickly.

One year becomes two.

Two becomes four.

Then suddenly nearly ten years of your life have passed somewhere else entirely.

But those years weren’t wasted.

Far from it.

Going abroad probably saved me in many ways.

I needed distance from London and from the version of myself I had become there. I needed to feel useful again. I needed movement, sunlight, noise, change… something different.

And entertainment abroad gave me that.

I ended up working in Cyprus first, doing Broadway Dinner Theatre with a really talented international cast — English, Swedish, Norwegian performers. It was exciting. Different world completely.

I’d been promised that I’d move into Entertainment Management for the show, and because I carried my West End background into everything, I arrived with ideas immediately. New concepts. Improvements. Bigger vision.

But when the new season started, they brought in a Swedish director with his own show already planned and suddenly I realised my management role was mostly a title. I was still performing, still being paid more, but creatively I had very little influence.

And I remember thinking:

Why am I here?

That became a recurring question in my life for a long time.

Not because I didn’t work hard.

The opposite.

I worked too hard.

That was always my problem.

I carried West End standards, discipline and structure into lighter entertainment markets that didn’t really operate that way.

Most of the people I managed abroad were young. They wanted to entertain, yes — but they also wanted to live abroad, drink after work, enjoy themselves, fall in love, party, be carefree.

And I couldn’t understand why they didn’t take it more seriously.

I wanted everyone to be brilliant.

I wanted standards.

I wanted commitment.

I wanted people to care as much as I did.

And when they didn’t, I became frustrated.

Over time, I realised something difficult but important.

I wasn’t wrong.

But I also wasn’t right for that environment.

That’s a big distinction.

For years, I internalised everything and assumed:

the problem must be me.

But looking back now, I can see I was trying to apply one system to a completely different world.

Theatre discipline and holiday entertainment discipline are not the same thing.

In theatre, especially at a high level, structure matters. Precision matters. Reliability matters. You respect the system because if one part fails, everything suffers.

Abroad, things were looser. More relaxed. Sometimes too relaxed for me.

I became “the strict one.”

The difficult one.

The serious one.

The big bad wolf.

And nobody wants to feel like that person all the time.

Still, I don’t regret those years at all.

I learnt an enormous amount.

I worked in Cyprus, Majorca, Germany, cruise ships… all sorts of environments. I adapted constantly. Learnt quickly. Performed different material. Managed teams. Directed people. Built shows. Solved problems. Survived.

And underneath all of it, I was still performing.

That’s important.

Because I never truly left entertainment.

And I never stopped loving performance.

I just convinced myself that musical theatre no longer wanted me.

That’s the real truth.

And because I believed that, I stopped trying to go back.

Not consciously.

I just let life move.

Another contract.
Another country.
Another production team.
Another reinvention.

I became very good at reinventing myself.

But eventually you realise something uncomfortable.

You can change jobs.

You can change countries.

You can change titles.

But you still take yourself with you.

And the thing I hadn’t understood properly was myself.

For years I believed I was suffering mainly with depression.

That’s what I called it.

That’s what doctors called it when tablets were prescribed.

But I never once properly connected myself to anxiety.

Even though, looking back, the signs were everywhere.

The overthinking.

The panic.

The catastrophising.

The physical symptoms.

The spiralling after conflict.

The fear of judgement.

The need to retreat socially when overwhelmed.

It was all there.

I just didn’t fully understand what I was looking at.

And then came 2023.

By this point, I’d already spent years caring for my best friend as her health declined. We’d been friends for over forty years. I had become a full-time live-in carer for her for about a year.

It was exhausting emotionally.

Not because we didn’t love each other — we did — but because watching somebody disappear slowly while trying to keep them alive, safe, calm and dignified changes you.

We argued.

We apologised.

We got frightened.

We got angry.

We got emotional.

Then we’d laugh five minutes later because neither of us wanted the reality we were facing.

It was incredibly intense.

At the same time, I was due to do panto again, which had become a kind of escape for me over the years. A reset. Somewhere I could still perform and feel useful.

But this time was different.

I didn’t want to leave her.

I felt guilty going away.

I tried to organise everything perfectly before I left. People calling in. Daily routines simplified. Plans in place.

But mentally, I was already overloaded.

I just didn’t admit it to myself.

Rehearsals started.

I knew something wasn’t right almost immediately.

I was struggling to come in on cues.

I suddenly felt like I didn’t know lines I absolutely knew.

Everything felt foggy and frightening.

And then during the dress rehearsal, it happened.

I broke down completely.

Out of nowhere.

Sobbing uncontrollably.

Unable to continue.

People tried to help. They suggested ways around it. Prompting. Script support. Adjustments.

But I knew.

If I couldn’t do the job properly, then I couldn’t do it at all.

So I left.

I drove home from London to Swansea that night against everybody’s advice because I just needed to get out.

And for the first time in my life, the lightbulb finally came on properly.

This wasn’t depression.

It was anxiety.

Years and years of anxiety.

Anxiety that had attached itself to work, identity, relationships, pressure, fear, performance, judgement and responsibility until eventually my system simply overloaded.

And once I understood that, something changed.

Not overnight.

Not magically.

But enough.

Enough for me to finally start understanding myself instead of just blaming myself.

That has been the biggest shift of the last few years.

Understanding.

Understanding where I struggle.

Understanding my triggers.

Understanding why certain environments affected me the way they did.

Understanding that I am actually quite quiet in real life despite having performed in major productions.

Most people who know me personally now can’t believe I was in West End musicals because I’m not naturally loud or attention-seeking at all.

And understanding something else too.

The stage was never really the problem.

In fact, the strange thing is… as soon as I’m on stage, most of it disappears.

That’s why I know I need to return.

Not because I need applause.

Not because I need validation from strangers.

But because something in me still aligns with that world in a way nothing else fully has.

And now, for the first time in decades, I actually believe returning might be possible.

Recently I auditioned professionally for musical theatre again for the first time in twenty-eight years.

Twenty-eight years.

And it went well.

Really well.

Great feedback.

I didn’t get the job because the actor stayed on longer than expected, but that almost doesn’t matter.

Because the important thing was this:

I walked back into the room.

And I was good enough to be there.

That changes everything.

Now I’m rebuilding properly.

New headshots.

Vocal training.

Focusing on my health.

Sorting my teeth.

Preparing myself seriously.

Because this is not fantasy for me.

This is real.

I know I still have work to do.

I know the industry has changed.

I know I’m not twenty-five anymore.

At fifty-seven, nobody owes me anything.

I still have to fight for my place.

I still have to earn it.

But I’m coming back differently now.

Not needing everyone to like me.

Not needing to prove my worth every second.

Not carrying confusion I didn’t understand.

Not mistaking anxiety for personal failure.

I know who I am now.

And if this works, wonderful.

If it doesn’t, I’ll survive that too.

But at least this time, whatever happens next, it will be me walking towards it clearly instead of hiding from it.

 

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