Names changed to protect the innocent

Greetings Greg,

How are you? You are inquiring about my point of view on this matter regarding 'Woman in Mind'. Well, I think I do know something about what happened Greg because I was there. However, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Yep... I'm Tom or Cary Hudson who took over from Rob (Whyte?) to play Rick in 'Woman in Mind'.

I came to the conclusion about why you pulled out because, if memory serves me well you were walking around with a script in your hand right up until the around the time you left, two weeks before opening night. You seemed to miss cues and your performance generally wasn't up to scratch, but bearing in mind that I came in late on the scene I can't afford to be too critical about that.

However I do take issue with your view of the leading lady as being a 'Prima Donna' or 'Diva', was frankly a little bit harsh and a bit unfair. True she was a bit difficult, but most people are when they are under pressure, let's face it - but she really wasn't that bad. She was after all the main character and so much was at stake for her. To call her that in that way was not really justified. I've certainly worked with a lot worse.

However if you feel that your lines (or words) weren't the problem, who can really argue with you? If you had your lines down then I guess you had them down. I can't get inside your head. And of course we all knew that you didn't have a lot of experience and I guess Fred Lawson and Joan for that matter should have been a bit easy on you. The overall production suffered at the end of the day. It was certainly the weakest production of the year thus far. One of the weakest I've done and certainly the last play I'll ever do at Harbour Theatre that's for sure. I'm sure you feel vindicated about the rather dismal results.

However, that is not why I posted this email.

I sincerely and profoundly apologise for any offence you may have taken as far as the previous email was concerned. Whatever your reason was for pulling out, it was up to you and you alone. You had absolutely every right to quit that production or any production, regardless of the reasons you put forward. We aren't all professional actors so in the end we can pretty much do what we like. Your decision to do so was regretable, but understandable seeing how the production was progressing. However, you didn't need to make any excuses for doing so (or blaming anyone else for that matter as you did on this website) as no one is under contract.

We can all remember when Dr Geoff Gibbs pulled out of a professional production and nobody seemed to worry about that (although I seemed to recall you did). I wish I had the courage to do so myself, but I felt I should 'soldier on' for the sake of it, lost cause though it was.

Anyway Greg, I wish you the best of luck with your next production, and maybe you can let us know when that is.

kind regards,

Cary (Tom) Hudson