BEHIND THE CURTAIN

THE SHOW THAT BROKE ME

I remember walking into the theatre for the first time.
I’d had about six months out of work before that. Long enough to start thinking it might be over. That maybe I’d had my run, and that was it.
Then the audition came.
I went in, and I got it.
Ensemble, with Beast and Gaston cover in Beauty and the Beast.
I was ecstatic.
Not just because it was a West End show, but because I’d auditioned for it when it first came to London and didn’t get it. So this felt like a second chance. I loved the piece. The story, the effects, the prosthetics — it was exactly the kind of show I wanted to be in.
Walking into that building, I knew what I’d got.
From the outside, it looked like I’d landed a great job. And that part is true. The show was phenomenal. Big, polished, respected. The kind of production people expect you to be proud of.
And I was.
But that’s only half of it.
Because at the same time, I was walking into that show in a very different place mentally.
Everything felt already in motion.Connections were there, dynamics were set, people were comfortable in it.
I was the one trying to find where I fitted.
And I wasn’t starting from a stable place. I kept thinking time would sort it out, that I’d grow into it.
That never happened.
Very quickly, I could feel how I was being read.
Grumpy.Moody.Unhappy.A loner.Not friendly.Not part of it.Not someone worth investing time in.
None of that was said directly.
But you don’t need it said.
You feel it in how people look at you, how they don’t look at you, how conversations stop before you get there, how they don’t start at all.
And the truth is, from the outside, I probably did look like that.
I wasn’t sleeping. I was exhausted all the time, running on nothing. I had palpitations. I constantly felt like I wasn’t worthy to be there.
Mentally, I was frazzled. Making myself ill. My throat, my chest — always something. I had no energy. Everything felt like effort.
Socially, there was nothing.
No invites. No “come out with us.” No sense that I was part of anything. So I stopped trying. I would leave as quickly as I could, or stay out of the way entirely. It felt easier than trying to break into something that didn’t feel open to me in the first place.
And once that starts, it feeds itself.
They had already decided who I was, and I didn’t even know who I was at that point.
At home, it wasn’t much better.
I was living with my partner in a house share. Not a great one, but we were together. He was trying to support me, telling me it would get better, trying to keep things steady.
But I was always unhappy. Emotional. Trying to explain what I was feeling inside the show, and not really being able to.
It was eating everything.
At one point, I decided I needed something completely different. He was cabin crew for BA, so I thought I’d go down that route too. Get out of the environment, see more of each other, try to rebuild something normal.
Looking back, it was just me trying to deflect away from what was actually going on.
Inside the show, there was a constant voice in my head.
“Think how many other actors would love to be here.”
Over and over again.
And it didn’t motivate me.
It made me feel worse.
Like I didn’t deserve it. Like I was failing at something I should be thriving in. I knew I was giving everything I had just to stay afloat, and still feeling like I was sinking.
I did have a close friend in the company.
And I could have told him.
But I didn’t.
Because it felt too risky.
If I opened up, what would happen? Would it stay between us? Would it get passed on? Would I suddenly become “the one who’s struggling”?
I made a decision without really saying it out loud.
Better to be seen as grumpy… than seen as unstable.
So I said nothing.
And that silence just confirmed everything people already thought.
The turning point came when I was covering Gaston.
In that production, there was an alternate Beast and Gaston, so even though I was first cover, it was less likely I’d actually go on. But the expectation was still there. The work was still there.
Gaston is very choreographed. Very precise. Disney style. You hit your marks or it doesn’t work.
There’s a section called the “Mug Dance.”
And I couldn’t get it.
Not at all.
We had understudy calls, and I just couldn’t land it. My head went. My body went. Everything shut down.
I had a panic attack.
I left. I went straight to the dance captain and said I was calling my agent. I told my agent I couldn’t do it. That I’d taken on too much.
Looking back, I cringe at how I handled it.
But at the time, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was in a bad state.
The next day, I had a meeting with the company manager and the resident director.
They asked me if I wanted to keep the understudy.
That moment was one of the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been in.
You would think, at that point, someone might have asked what was actually going on.
No one did.
They asked the question, I said I couldn’t do it, and that was that.
I felt ashamed. Embarrassed. Like I’d let the show down, let myself down. I knew people would find out. I knew there would be chatter.
To this day, I don’t think they knew what was wrong with me.
Or if they did, they didn’t act on it.
It was about protecting the show.
Not the person.
And day to day, it just kept reinforcing itself.
Walking through the building to get to my dressing room at the top, passing floor after floor — you see it all.
You try to catch someone’s eye and smile, even when it feels forced.
They don’t engage.
Or someone else arrives and you get that look — like, why are you here?
You try to stand near a dressing room door, see if you can drift into a conversation.
You’re not part of it.
If someone does speak, it feels like they’re trying to work something out about you, not connect with you.
You learn very quickly where you’re not wanted.
And eventually, that does something to you.
I am not a weak person in essence.
I tried with all my might.
It wasn’t talent that was missing.
It was understanding and support.
But at the time, it didn’t feel like that.
At the time, it felt like I was the problem.
That I didn’t belong there.
That I’d somehow got it wrong.
And when you sit in that long enough, it becomes the only version you can see.
This was the show that broke me.
The one that took my self-belief, took the fight out of me, and left me exhausted, confused, and completely alone in a room full of people.
My contract wasn’t renewed.
No one pulled me aside to ask if I was alright.
No one tried to understand what had been happening.
A decision had been made.
And by that point, it didn’t matter anyway.
I was already gone.
That was 1999.
I didn’t stop working. I went into other areas of the industry and kept building a career. I just stepped away from that level of musical theatre at that time—because I had to.
This needs talking about. Not just for me, but for younger actors going through the same thing now.
I’m in a very different place today. I understand myself, I manage my mental health properly, and I know what I need to stay well.
This wasn’t the end. It was a break. And I’m not finished with musical theatre yet.
If this spoke to you, feel free to share it and leave a thought.

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.
 
If this spoke to you, feel free to share it and leave a thought.

THE PERSON THEY THOUGHT I WAS

The hardest part of musical theatre for me was never the stage.
It was everything around it.
For years, I genuinely believed there was something fundamentally wrong with me because I didn’t behave like most actors.
Most people who know me now can’t believe I was ever in major West End productions.
Because I’m quiet.
Not shy exactly.Not socially incapable.Just quiet.
I’m not the person organising huge nights out. I’m not naturally loud or constantly performing socially for attention. I don’t walk into a dressing room and immediately become the centre of it.
And in theatre companies, especially large long-running ones, that can become a problem very quickly.
Because theatre doesn’t just reward performers.
It often rewards personalities.
There’s an unspoken hierarchy in companies. The funny ones. The loud ones. The quick-witted ones. The naturally theatrical extroverts who can walk into a room and instantly create energy around themselves.
And then there are people like me.
People who observe first.
People who listen before they speak.
People who take time to trust.
That was me.
Whenever I joined a company, I absolutely made an effort. I would go out, mingle, try to let people get to know me.
But in bigger groups I naturally became more reserved. More observant.
And once people notice that in theatre, they start attaching meanings to it very quickly.
If you’re quiet, you’re moody.
If you don’t instantly join in, you’re unfriendly.
If you’re not socially “on” all the time, people think there must be something wrong with you.
And what nobody really talks about is how quickly theatre companies can quietly decide who you are without ever actually knowing you.
I think part of the reason I became guarded was because I learnt very early on that some people in theatre are not trying to know you when they first meet you.
They’re assessing you.
Working out where you fit.
Whether you belong in the clique.
Whether you’re socially useful to them.
And if you open up too quickly to the wrong person, suddenly deeply personal things about yourself start travelling around a company through whispers and half-jokes before you’ve even realised you trusted the wrong person.
So over time I became more careful.
More reserved.
I could be sarcastic sometimes, hopefully funny. I’ve always had a good sense of humour, but if people decide early on that you’re “not fun,” they never really give you the chance to show another side of yourself.
Eventually you just stop trying.
What I found exhausting was the fakery of some of it.
Not everyone. There were lovely people too.
But there’s a type of theatrical behaviour that always made me deeply uncomfortable.
You’d come back after a day off and someone would ask:
“How was your weekend?”
And you knew they didn’t really want the truth.
Because nobody was going to say:
“Honestly? It was awful. I barely slept, argued with my partner and spent most of Sunday convinced people at work hated me.”
You were expected to say:
“Yeah, lovely thanks.”
Then listen to twenty minutes about somebody else’s fabulous weekend while feeling completely disconnected from the room.
Or the corridor smile.
That fake theatrical smile.
“Hiya… you alright?”
Then gone.
No warmth behind it. No sincerity. Just social theatre.
And the thing is — you know when somebody genuinely likes you.
You feel it.
And you also know when they don’t.
Nobody has to openly bully you for you to feel isolated.
Sometimes the silence does all the work.
I remember walking into stage door in one particular show and instantly feeling something was off.
The stage door keeper clearly didn’t like me. I can’t explain it properly. Just the look. The coldness. Like I was an inconvenience before I’d even spoken.
What I didn’t know at the time was that the actor I was replacing had died.
Nobody told me.
Not management.Not the company.Not my agent.
Nothing.
So I walked into that theatre genuinely excited to be joining another West End production, completely unaware that emotionally I was stepping into a company that was grieving somebody they loved.
And honestly, I think I was doomed from the start there.
Not because I wasn’t capable of doing the job.
But because emotionally, nobody wanted another person standing where he had stood yet.
And instead of preparing me for that, I was just sent in blind.
So every day became psychologically exhausting.
You’d walk through the building, up winding staircases to the dressing rooms, passing people on different floors.
Some would give half a smile.
Some would say hello.
Others would look straight through you.
Nothing openly cruel was ever said.
That’s the important part.
Nothing.
But the silence was the killer.
Because thirty seconds later you’d hear those same people laughing and joking with someone else further down the staircase.
And because I didn’t understand anxiety properly back then, my brain obsessed over everything.
Every look.
Every silence.
Every tiny shift in somebody’s tone.
Every half-smile.
I was constantly analysing whether people liked me, tolerated me or wanted me gone.
The irony is that once I stepped onto the stage, most of it disappeared.
Focused.Confident.Reliable.
That’s what people find hard to understand about performers like me.
The stage was the easy part.
The dressing room was harder.
Especially because I knew I didn’t fit the expected mould.
Most companies were filled with naturally theatrical extroverts in one way or another. Some genuinely lovely. Some hilarious. Some completely real underneath all the noise.
But many had learnt how to socially perform in company life too.
I never could.
I’m very much:
take me as you find me.
I can be professional. Polite. Friendly.
But I cannot do the fake luvvy-darling act. It makes my skin crawl.
And because I didn’t perform socially in the same way, I think some people genuinely couldn’t understand how I’d ended up there at all.
“How did he get the job?”
I got the job because I was talented.
Because I could act.
Because I had a very good baritone voice.
Because when it came to the actual work, I delivered.
But offstage, I was just… normal.
Quiet.
Thoughtful.
And apparently for some people, that was disappointing.
Over time I became “the grumpy one.”
Partly because I do naturally have what people call a resting grumpy face. Heavy forehead lines, deep lines between my eyebrows… when I relax, I look serious.
I can’t help my face.
But gradually people started attaching personality traits to an expression.
Moody.
Boring.
Not fun.
Unfriendly.
And eventually those ideas solidify into a company version of you.
The person they think you are.
Not the person you actually are.
And the worst moment of all came during a Secret Santa.
One of the principals hosted it in his dressing room between shows on a two-show day. The whole cast packed in there. People on sofas, people on the floor, everyone opening presents one by one while the room watched.
Most gifts were thoughtful.
Funny in a warm way.
Then my name got called.
And I opened a cheap chrome cake slice because I played a cake slice in the show.
And a Mr Grumpy badge.
That was it.
And in that moment, I honestly felt humiliated.
Not because the gifts were cheap.
Because it confirmed every fear I already carried about how I was viewed.
It felt like the whole room had just been handed a public definition of me.
“This is who Richard is.”
And the horrible thing was I had to sit there smiling while feeling myself collapsing internally.
Because there was absolutely no way I was giving anyone the satisfaction of seeing me break in that room.
So I smiled.
Laughed weakly.
Took it on the chin.
Then went home devastated.
Crying my eyes out thinking:
“Why do they hate me so much? I’ve never done anything to them.”
And years later, I still think about that moment.
Not because of the badge.
Not because of the cake slice.
But because it represented something much bigger.
The person they thought I was never truly existed.
It was a version built from assumptions, silence, awkwardness, anxiety and shallow conclusions made by people who never genuinely tried to understand me.
And if I had understood anxiety back then the way I do now, I genuinely believe things would have been different.
Not perfect.
Not magically fixed.
But different.
I would have understood why certain social situations overwhelmed me so deeply.
Why silence affected me the way it did.
Why I withdrew when I felt emotionally unsafe.
Why my brain spiralled after tiny moments most people would probably forget within minutes.
And I probably would have communicated better too.
Because I accept something now that I couldn’t see at the time:
People could sense something wasn’t right with me.
They just completely misunderstood what it was.
And because I didn’t understand it either, I wasn’t able to help them understand me.
That doesn’t excuse the cruelty.
It doesn’t excuse people quietly ostracising someone they barely knew.
But it does explain why I spent so many years trapped inside a version of myself that was never really me at all.
 
If this spoke to you, feel free to share it and leave a thought.