Letter to the Editor: Anonymous REBECCA Cast Member Sounds Off

As previously reported, the Broadway production of REBECCA, which was to open this fall, has been delayed indefinitely and is now at the center of an investigation to determine if any criminal wrongdoing occured in the show's long road to Broadway.

Yesterday, Karen Mason, who was to play "Mrs. Danvers" in the show, released an open letter detailing her thoughts on the situation; this morning, BroadwayWorld received the following letter from an individual asserting to be another member of the troubled production's cast:

"Hello,
One of the cast of Rebecca and fugitives from Manderley here. I’ve read all of the stories about the intrigue regarding the fall of Manderley and all the commentary on said stories with sadness, eventually snowballing to anger. Finally, I find that I can no longer keep silent about the lack of fact-based journalism and the general tone of glee and hatchetry in the proceedings.

"First let me say this: I don’t know what the truth really is. Having said that, neither does anyone else. Not the Times, not the Post, not Broadway World or Playbill nor, in fact, the Department of Justice who is investigating the situation. That is precisely WHY they are investigating the situation. However, reading the articles posted in both the Times and the Post, one would think that there are mountains of evidence pointing to Ben Sprecher as some sort of a modern day Max Bialystock, out to rob his investors and abscond to an island nation. Ultimately, as no one in either paper points out, this makes no sense. What would be the point of sinking one’s own ship? What would be the point of inventing a fake investor to ‘rope in other investors’ and then stop pursuing other investors because you believed your capitalization was complete? Patrick Healy said in his interview on NPR “I don’t want to point the finger..” and “There is no evidence of that” but then goes on to theorize that Ben is defrauding people. What sort of cowardly slanderous journalism is that? If a journalist says “there is no evidence but….” the conversation should end right there. There IS no evidence, only speculation.

"This is not to say this isn’t a newsworthy story. Obviously, it is. But the initial stories were so laden with innuendo, and so willing to paint Ben as a villain, that one has to ask what fueled this point of view. I have heard many articles mention that while Ben was, perhaps, not the best liked landlord during his Off-Broadway tenure, I have not heard one account of him being painted as a dishonest man. It is only now, as more facts are revealed, that these papers have even deigned to distinguish that the investigation is not of Ben personally, but of the entire situation. Several producers got up in the midst of our first and last official company meeting and stated that they had known and worked with Ben for 35 years or more and trusted him implicitly. This is no small testimonial from people who are in danger of being completely ruined by this debacle. The sensationalist tone of these initial articles may well have damaged Ben’s chances of finding replacement capital, and thus, helped me, and countless others right out of a job.

"This brings me to my next point: the tone of vicious glee. Rebecca’s folding, whatever one thinks of this musical, is not something to chuckle over, it’s an event worthy of great sadness. We are talking about the livelihoods of nearly a hundred people; not to mention their families, and the great economic benefits that come of having a potentially successful show that could run for several years. Over a million dollars in pre-sales suggest that New York was ready to give Rebecca a go. Now we are all completely out of work. Many of us gave up several career opportunities to make ourselves available to do Rebecca; opportunities that can be very few and far between for actors.

"References to the human cost of this major show falling through have been a sparse line here and there. And the reason is obvious: the journalists involved don’t seem to care. In the midst of our first and only official company meeting, we all received emails from Mr. Healy asking us to contact him regarding the show and whether we had been paid etc. This is in the middle of a very tearful, very sad event for all involved. First of all, few, if any, of us had given Mr. Healy our personal email addresses. For him to decide that contacting us at such a time was appropriate is roughly equivalent to emailing someone at their Grandmother’s funeral and asking if the mortician did a good job, and how much they were getting in the will. I can’t emphasize this enough, because I know it’s hard for the general public to comprehend: Broadway, and especially the original cast of a new piece, represents the very pinnacle of being a stage actor. Imagine you were to have been told that you were to be promoted to Vice President of your company, a position you had worked decades towards, only to be told the day before that it wasn’t going to happen. Adding insult to injury, there were reporters asking you to please give them a call and tell them how you feel about it. A couple of days to let the smoke clear would have been nice, journalists. Contacting us via personal emails, that you have no right to, instead of contacting us through our managers or agents, is just an added bonus.

"Finally, I’ll say again, I don’t know what the truth is. But what I do know is that it looks as if Ben Sprecher was genuinely trying, in good faith, to put up a show that he believed in. It seems to me the only thing the evidence has uncovered so far is that he may have been guilty of being incredibly naïve. I don’t know the man well, and I look forward to hearing the conclusions of the investigation. However, in terms of wrongdoing, I’ll use Mr. Healy’s own logic: I have no evidence to suggest this, BUT the Times and the Post have both had information about this story that was the most inside of inside information. Information, at times, that was only had by three or four people, and headlines were launched before meetings even happened. This information was had far before it could have been come by in any logical, ethical way. Ben was definitely victimized by hackers stealing information, and the entire casts’ email list seems to have been given to Mr. Healy. Again, I have no evidence, and I’m pointing no fingers, but it seems to me that there is plenty of wrongdoing, and ethically questionable behavior to go around. And a whole lot of it has been from the press.

"I hope that all of this information was come by from a leak, or some other 'honest' means. Even if everything the press generated was on the up and up, it doesn’t make me feel less violated. It doesn’t make me feel less sad that the tone online about this show failing has been gleeful and vicious. And I must say, this wave of negativity has been in such stark contrast to that of the actors and creatives. Despite sadness and great personal loss, we have somehow remained unendingly positive, supportive and sympathetic. Ultimately, there truly are no people like show people. I wish all of the people writing coldly about this from the outside could have been in that rehearsal room on Monday to see the hugs and the laughter and the tears. I wish all of the people shredding the show before it ever happened had been able to walk around the room and see the absolutely stunning set designs, and amazing costume drawings that had been put up for our first rehearsal. It was a room full of a family waiting to be. And I feel sad for New York that they will not soon get to see this fantastic group of people perform for them. I simply wish that those that cover theatre, presumably because they love it, would show some empathy, and some neutrality. Theatre is a delicate magic. A magic that is harder and harder to successfully put on in these economic times. I hope as a community, and as a city, we can work to cultivate that magic rather than culling it."

The cast of REBECCA was to feature Jill Paice as “I”, Ryan Silverman as Maxim DeWinter, Mason as Mrs. Danvers, James Barbour as Jack Favell, Howard McGillin as Frank Crawley, Donna English as Beatrice de Winter, Henry Stram as Ben and Nick Wyman as Giles.

REBECCA is a new musical drawn from the classic Daphne Du Maurier novel about love and obsession reaching from beyond the grave. In this romantic thriller, Maxim de Winter brings his new wife (“I”) home to his estate of Manderley. There she meets the intimidating housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, who had a very special relationship with Maxim’s first wife, the beautiful Rebecca, who died a year earlier in a boating accident. The young woman discovers Manderley is a house of devastating secrets, and the mystery of Rebecca may be the greatest of them all as she finds the strength to challenge Mrs. Danvers and save her marriage.

REBECCA had its world premiere in 2006 at Vereinigte Buhnen Wien in Vienna, where it played to sold-out houses for more than three years. Vastly successful productions of REBECCA have also played Budapest, Hungary; Bucharest, Romania; Helsinki, Finland; Stuttgart, Germany; St. Gallen, Switzerland and at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo.