In my spare time, I used to do a lot of amateur theatre with my boyfriend, Andrew. Andrew was every girl’s dream. Not just attractive, and funny, and all the regular things a girl looks for in a man, he also had a voice that made me melt. Whenever he sang up there on the stage, I could barely remember that I, too, was supposed to be acting. I was so proud to be dating the leading man with the voice of an angel.
Of course, I was never the leading lady. I could sing alright, dance OK and my acting was up to scratch, but it wasn’t a package that got me anywhere above a chorus role. But I never minded; apart from being a lot of fun, it was something Andrew and I could do together. Or so I thought. Because, inevitably, it wasn’t that way at all.
With me in the chorus, and Andrew playing a leading role, we used to rehearse on different nights. Every Monday, I would stand around a piano with the other members of the chorus, and every Wednesday Andrew and the other leads did their bit. It wasn’t something that bothered me — even though we were supposed to be doing this together, I understood that it was the way things were — I’d done plays before. It was, in fact, how Andrew and I met.
So, every Thursday night, I’d catch up with Andrew and ask him how things were going with the leads — what was the leading lady like? What kinds of costumes were they going to wear? Was there any primadonna behaviour? And so on. I particularly liked to hear Andrew’s take on the leading lady, Eloise.
Andrew said she was awful: totally conceited and concerned with making the whole play about her. I’d seen her at the auditions, and remembered the supercilious way she tossed her red hair and sneered at everybody. I was glad to hear to she was so generally disliked.
As the play grew closer, I was more and more excited. The dress rehearsal was only a few days away, and we — the chorus and leads — were due to come together for the first time, in all our fancy trimmings. When the day arrived, Andrew said we’d need to take separate cars, in case he was needed afterwards.
I was disappointed — I’d thought we were finally going to get to the “together” part of the activity. But I couldn’t really say anything. Andrew actually seemed really stressed about the dress rehearsal, and was increasingly distant towards me and I didn’t want to rock the boat. I was soon to wish I’d sank it!
I arrived at the dress rehearsal to find Andrew and Eloise engaged in a passionate embrace. And they weren’t acting — they were in the car park! Ducking down behind my steering wheel, I waited until they’d gone inside with tears in my eyes. I started planning my revenge!
I could just have ruined the play — thrown a fit on opening night and marched on stage and revealed his treachery. But that would have ruined it for everyone. So I decided to do something far more underhanded. I rang a fairly prestigious theatre review magazine and asked — anonymously, of course — if they needed anyone to review our play. It just so happened that they did, and it just so happened that I was a fairly adept writer.
After opening night, I wrote a review that sang the praises of the play in general, and ripped the performances of the two leads to shreds! I was devastating in my criticism. Andrew in particular was renowned in some fairly well known theatre circles and I don’t think he’d ever had a bad review in his semi-professional life. Well, I didn’t just give him a bad one, I utterly humiliated him!
After the review came out, a devastated Eloise broke it off, but when Andrew tried to come crawling back, I wouldn’t have a bar of it. The play ended, and I wouldn’t speak to him again. I found out, through the course of local gossip, that Andrew had been seeing Eloise every Wednesday night for months. I never for a minute regretted what I’d done.
A few years have passed now, and I often go to the theatre — though I’m rarely in the plays myself anymore. Funnily enough, neither is Andrew. It seems my poor review did his career immeasurable harm, and I often wonder if he knows my flair with the pen ruined his run as the leading man!
*All names in this story have been changed.
Picture: Getty Images.*
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