Robert DuSold

I just read the latest of the current avalanche of blogs and articles that throw a jolt of scandalous theater espresso on the woke crowd to further woke them up.

Another shot of outrage please.

I will say, again… I was never asleep. I’ve been wide awake. In fact, I know very few people in theater who were napping for the last nearly 40 years during my professional career at least. You know, before the glory of being instructed what’s diverse and inclusive. And equitable. Before the bandwagon of whose show to destroy. Or who to destroy. Before the demands and the manifestos and the open letters and that sort of stuff. And culturally appropriating the culturally appropriated.

Anyway, this one was about Garth Drabinsky and his being a mean, nasty abusive tyrant who ruined people’s lives, while being mean. A big mean white man. Who was mean. There’s a content warning preceding the blog about meanness, in case I suppose your finger has to look away.

OK, click if you must… but rest assured I did the click dive and would like to save you the trigger. Or trouble. Trigger trouble.

https://www.onstageblog.com/editorials/2021/10/28/the-tyrannical-and-abusive-garth-drabinsky-and-his-attempted-return-to-broadway-with-paradise-square-part-2

It goes on to throw a few more mean white men under the bus, an “enabling” white woman, and various other collateral mean white men, not at all involved with Livent, Garth’s theater corporation that ultimately led to his downfall…and a prison term… when the stock went public.

This pseudo news comes to the conclusion that Garth was a racist and an anti-Semite, on top of being … say it with me.. mean.

Since the dude who wrote this blog about Garth and the Abusers..hmm, I may name a band that… was probably a zygote during Garth’s reign of hindsight terror, I decided to write my own blog, yes my very own blog, about my experience over several years with G and the A.

Because I was there.

OK, trigger warning.. this will be my honest experience.

Kidding! Maybe that was a trigger though. Nonetheless, this is the truth.

Everyone in the biz who knew of Garth in the States knew that he spent a lot of money, and he paid a lot of money…at least in the 90’s. Actors would get the golden plane ticket to Toronto for callbacks and costume fittings and maybe plane tickets for just being you. It was a badge of honor to tout your plane ride to Canada to your friends. Very Willy Wonka.

I had done the initial workshops of “Showboat” .. a massive show with a very large cast. It was a thrill and theater cache to be asked to do a workshop for Hal. I remember one chorus dude showing up late a lot.. like hours late sometimes for rehearsals. I was always mortified when he did that. He’s famous now. I will always think of him more late than famous.

Anyway, the show was running in Canada pre-Broadway, and they were basically keeping that company going and replacing the principals who were moving on to the Big Broadway.

I was offered the role of Pete… a mean white guy who says that word … you know the one…fairly often. It was a pretty small role, but a non singing one. I was desperate to prove myself as an actor at the time and not a singer after years of singing roles.

But I really didn’t want to go out of the country for a year.. I had just finished doing the First National of “Phantom” and was in an 8 year relationship and just wanted to be home.

I tried to price myself out of the gig… knowingly asking for more money than I thought I would get for that role and a slew of other things that I knew they would say no to. My agent was getting pissed at me because I kept asking for more shit… drawing the line at puppies in the dressing room, and a bowl full of M and M’s.

They said yes to everything. From the beginning, my partner pushed me to take the job. We’d just moved into the apartment of my dreams on the Upper West Side with a terrace and stained glass. My brother flew in to renovate and fix it up. It was dreamy especially after years of living in a building on 96th and Broadway with a legless crack dealer in the lobby every day, complete with children as his drug runners.

Well, I took the job.

And so begins my tenure in Garth Drabinsky’s circus of horrors.

“Showboat” was the biggest show I’ve ever done in terms of cast size and scale and ridiculously lavish costumes and sets and yada yada. Most of us, at the time, openly wondered how Garth could pay for all of it… including the down pillows that Elaine Stritch swiped from the Four Seasons when she went back to New York.

Some of the principals got a hefty budget for redoing and redesigning their dressing rooms …thousands of dollars for wallpaper and couches and M and M’s.

There were 4 or 5 stage managers on contract, in addition to production supervisors. Anne Allan was the main supervisor, but for some reason they just kept adding supervisors during the run. They were mostly really beautiful dancers. They kept multiplying. Like Gremlins.

I dubbed them the “Clipboard Babes”. They would come around and ask me for my blocking fairly often, I’m assuming to write on their clipboards for future companies.

I would smile when they asked and say no.

Rehearsals were fascinating.. the gigunda cast was a combo of star stars and musical theater stalwarts and some inexperienced people. And obviously ethnically diverse. I would watch Hal negotiate all of it with such expertise and empathy, and for the most part patience. Sometimes, though, he turned red as a beet. I’d done a few shows that he’d directed by then and knew him pretty well.

Hal’s “Showboat” was a glorious, definitive production that he often said was his dream show to direct. He wanted his legacy defined by it. It was unbelievable for me to be a part of.

I know the burning question that maybe one of you who’s reading this has at this point in our story… Was Garth an abusive person?

I would say yes he was. He fancied himself Florence Ziegfeld on steroids with an edge. And a bigger ego. He was intimidating. I don’t doubt the stories recounted by an actress in “Phantom” in the hitblog pasted above. I’ve heard him scream. I’ve heard friends recall incidents with him… as recently as a couple of years ago… that are truly horrific. He was abusive for sure.

What he wasn’t, in my estimation, was a racist. That moniker seems to be mandatory now for clubbing powerful white men in theater in the kneecap. In his case, the shorter one.

We opened, and I was getting used to the commute to the theater from the gay ghetto I was housed in. My partnerlover flew up shortly after, walked in to my little gay gulag, and said …”I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” He was dumping me. After 8 years together and a year left on my contract in another country. He then just walked out and flew back to New York an hour later…to our delicious new apartment, containing at least one of the people he was having an affair with I later found out.

I was shocked. Our friends were as shocked as I was. We were a sorta ‘it’ couple back then. I remember he said after he closed the door that he heard my angel pup Westie, Bugsy, crying and whimpering from the hallway.

That was me.

I spent the next few months digging..at very expensive long distance rates…through what turned out to be a long relationship that was built on lies. A friend who helped me get through one of the most devastating times in my life said..”the liar holds all the cards.” How true. I sorta stopped trying to drag the truth out of him because it was exhausting. I had to sift through a lifetime with another person and was left trying to figure out what was true and what wasn’t.

My life in New York was being erased. I was out of the country for another year. By the time I got back everyone had moved on.. David got a few years of a head start… that’s the best I could figure out.

I hear he’s written a book about his life. I’m in a much better position to not be erased this time. I’m very happy to be out of his orbit… I have many fond memories of our time together. But, to this day, I’m not sure which ones are real.

Anyway, back to Garth and the Abusers!

I would sum up the management of “Showboat” during my tenure there as pretty inept, and not as much abusive.. although I think they cross pollinate at times. It was just an enormous undertaking with an enormous cast.

I remember the stage managers would put the sign-in sheet for the next performance on the call board the night before, and you guessed it, some of the cast would sign in then and either be late for the next performance or not show up. That happened frequently. I think they finally got wise and stopped doing that.

I shared a dressing room with the actor who played the Sheriff.. a pivotal role in the first act that sets up one of the main conflicts of the story. His towel and mic were on his dressing table… I kept saying to one of the many stage managers he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t. He had called in sick and they didn’t listen to the answering machine. The show went up without him in it. Patti Cohenour, who was playing Magnolia, was employing improv magic while an entire scene went by without him… complete with ominous underscoring.

Another time… and this was fairly normal…they would rehearse the cast during intermission. There were rehearsal rooms galore in the theater. Anyway, the second act went up with half the ensemble still rehearsing upstairs. They forgot to turn the “tannoy” on and didn’t hear the places call. There was a real car being driven onstage..of course there was… but the driver and at least ten of the ensemble members weren’t there. So Hugh Panero drove it himself, and put the prop baby that Cloris sang to on the back seat. Delightful.

No actor could walk out of the theater without being cornered by Anne Allan on pretty much a nightly basis. I would say she wasn’t as much an enabler as her own brand of … I don’t know what to call it… cross pollination maybe.

You’d either get “ wonderful show darlin’” in her thick Scottish brogue.. or “ your performance was shit tonight!” …I never knew how to tell the difference.

She cornered me one night and said I was doing a physical bit too hard with Peter .. the actor playing Frank. He was completely in control of it. He was leading it. I wasn’t… it was pretty obvious.

She went on to give me the note. I replied with “I’m glad you enjoyed my acting”.

Then something very serious happened, and this is where inept and abuse collide.

At the top of Act 2 I heard screams.. blood curdling screams. We had a real pup in the show who was letting out wails. A stagehand had been pinned by the hydraulics and was crushed. We didn’t know if he was dead. The police came and taped off the set, while the cast huddled in a rehearsal room. For hours.

We were admonished to continue the show. I said no. Nope. “You’d better check that set and we have no idea if it was safe to return” I said repeatedly. I was the only one, joined by one other cast member later.

After hours of me wrangling with the stage managers and the company manager, the cast agreed to go on with the performance. Garth had personally guaranteed our safety the company manager said… he had just talked to him.

I knew then, and now, that was bullshit. And reckless and dangerous and just fucking immoral.

I have been in several abusive situations in my career.. what I’ve just described is my experience with “Showboat” and Garth and Co. A dear friend has told me about her blatant sexual harassment from her “Showboat” days…. but that’s not my story to tell.

I learned to address abuse and harassment head on, and in some instances I quit the show. And yes, I needed the money. And no, that has nothing to do with privilege. I knew in my heart I was better than that, and it wasn’t going to be forever. I always risked my career, but I got to the point where that was a better option than living with myself if I didn’t do anything to advocate for me. Cuz ain’t nobody else gonna do it for you. Not the union. Not your agent or manager. It all comes down to you.

I have spoken up about abuse in theater and been quoted in the Times. I’ve been very public in my advocacy. And these sassy blogs. I’ve come to learn I risk less and less as I get to know myself better.

When my contract came up for renewal in “Showboat” I politely said I wasn’t interested. Of course, Garth came looking for me to tell me my career was over and strong arm me into staying. We had a bit of a wrestle and that was it. I said I needed to go home.

I was offered “Spiderwoman” on Broadway the next day.

My last memory of “Showboat” is packing my year’s worth of belongings, and my Bugsy into a rented van to drive from Toronto back to New York. In a horrible blizzard in January. Scary as fuck. It’s a long drive, and the whiteout got so bad I had to pull over and get a hotel room for the night.

They didn’t take dogs, so I rented a room on the first floor and as gingerly as I could shoved him through the window in the storm.

The next day, my trusted companion and I got up and climbed in the van and drove to an apartment I had never seen to start rehearsals that day.

A new life.

My advice, take it or leave it, to the phalanx of social media warriors supposedly looking to build a better theater industry is this:

Get to know yourself better.