Rebecca Caine speaks out on abuse she suffered during Toronto's 'The Phantom of the Opera'
In a series of videos posted to her Instagram, actress Rebecca Caine is speaking out about the abuse she suffered during the 1989 Toronto production of The Phantom of the Opera at the hands of her co-star, Colm Wilkinson.
She is also calling into question why the Broadway community exiled producer Scott Rudin over his bullish behavior but is welcoming back producer Garth Drabinsky (whose Paradise Square is set to open in NYC in March 2022) who apparently stood idly by while she was being abused.
The videos are a follow-up to social media postings Caine had posted earlier this past summer, which included articles written in The Globe and Mail detailing the abuse and the legal case that followed. Caine has also posted pages from the arbitrary report as well.
Some of what’s described in the article are how Wilkinson’s treatment of Caine resulted in him becoming unexpectedly rough with her during scenes. She reported the abuse to the resident director at the time, Anne Allan, but was apparently told that if word got back to Hal Prince, she would be fired. “Colm had made the show his own,” was said according to Caine.
The abuse got so bad that it resulted in an injury to Caine’s arm. According to the article the production company, Live Entertainment Corp, refused to let her perform the show and stopped paying her. They then announced she left due to “artistic differences”. This dispute led Actors’ Equity to call for an arbitration hearing which ruled in Caine’s favor and ordered Live Entertainment Corp to pay monies owed to her.
In one noteworthy section of the article, the arbitrator is quoted as saying that Caine “cannot be held accountable for Mr. Wilkinson’s brutish conduct towards her…I find that as between two artists, Mr. Wilkinson is the one who perpetuated the conflict and who is responsible for the fact that Live was was forced to take the decision not to have them perform together.”
So why is Caine bringing up this 30-year old situation back up? Well, for a couple of very important reasons. The first is to raise awareness of abuse in this industry, abuse that very much still exists today. The second is because one of the men who ignored her complaints and seemingly allowed the abuse to continue is making his way back to Broadway.
And I completely agree with where Caine is coming from. While the industry has just started to root out its perpetrators and exile them appropriately, not nearly enough has been done. And blindly welcoming Drabinsky, who has many issues, without bringing up these questions would be contradictory to those efforts.
Caine adds in a comment on her Instagram, “Drabinsky was fully aware of what was happening and now, after serving time in jail and never admitting culpability for the pain he caused others, he’s returning to Broadway. How is this acceptable?”
Drabinsky Caine and Wilkinson
What makes this entire situation complicated is that stuck in the middle is a show featuring a story that needs very much to be shown on Broadway. Paradise Square is set in the Five Points neighborhood of New York City circa 1863 and is about a community of poor Irish immigrants and free Blacks who survive the war years and Draft Riots with raucous dance contests in neighborhood bars and dance halls.
Given the amount of diverse talent both in the cast and on the creative team, I very much want this production to come to the Great White Way. But with Drabinsky attached to it? That’s deserving of a real conversation. So why haven’t we had one yet? Why hasn’t there been an industry-wide discussion of the abuses that still occur on a daily basis on these productions, yet aren’t handled the right way due to the perpetrator’s star power or any other ridiculous reason?
I honestly don’t know why and it infuriates me. But we absolutely need to. I am hoping that organizations like Actors’ Equity, IATSE, The Broadway League are rethinking how they handle the reporting of abuses and the resulting investigations. I hope going forward that there are real substantial punishments for those who inflict such abuse that goes beyond simply removing them from the cast.
Why does Caine want? “I want an apology,” she says in one of the videos. “Because the culture has changed and I believe that women should no longer, anybody, have to suffer in silence.”