People will tell you Richard Bento, considered a pillar of New England community theater, is a good actor, on and off the stage. But lately, he's been at the center of some real life dramas swirling behind the scenes. 🆕 from LastSeenPodcast:
Quincy: That was Richard Bento, a guy whose story I’ve been following for so long that my mom won’t let me bring his name up anymore.Quincy: Because for the last year and a half anybody who knows me has gotten an earful about Richard Bento.Quincy: So, Richard is well-known in the New England regional community theater scene.Quincy: Yeah. It’s a tight knit group of people united by their love of theater. Some have professional training, many don’t.
A local public access tv channel covered a lot of his productions and they’d get behind the scenes footage and interview the actors.Host: So, how about yourself? How did you first get involved with South Shore Theatre Works. Quincy: Richard made sure his theater was a place where aspiring kid and adult actors could get coaching and stage time. Nurturing that kind of growth meant a lot to him.Host: So you said that's the best part of this of my job, but really, this is a non paid job. it is a labor of love that you do.
Quincy: The community theatre world, even moreso. Because it doesn’t quite matter what you look like or even if you’re a star performer. As long as you’re passionate and are compassionate, you’ll have a place in community theatre, it seems. Tony light was a theatre tech for South Shore Theatre Works, which at the time was trying to put on two youth productions — Newsies and Legally Blonde.
This didn’t surprise Tony, because South Shore Theatre Works had gotten in trouble with other licensing companies. A spokeswoman for one told us Richard's on their red flag list, and he's"a bad actor". This story fit a pattern of behavior I discovered corroborated by court documents, numerous interviews, and emails that streamed into my inbox from the summer of 2020 into 2021. Some of them from people who were afraid of Richard and what he might do. People who didn’t know each other but ended up confirming what someone else had experienced.[PUBLIC ACCESS TV MUSIC]
Sue: He was very mean. He had a very mean streak, and he treated people rudely and very unkindly, you know.Sue: It's supposed to be fun. We were a community theater, for heaven's sakes. It's not like these people were getting paid to do this. They were all volunteering except for him! When I'd had enough of that, I pulled him aside and I said, look, we can't have this. And then I got the tears and listen, I'm going through cancer treatment and it makes me very cranky.
And even though he was already on her s*** list, Sue says Richard still managed to wreak havoc. She had given Richard money to pay their set builder. And mysteriously, the money never made it to the set builder. Sues says that, paired with the increasingly flimsy-looking cancer story was the final nail in the coffin.
She just feels lucky she didn’t let Richard near her theater’s finances. And like Paul Revere’s midnight ride, she’s made it her mission to warn everyone about the impending arrival of tyrannical force. When Sue learned that Richard had gone on to work for a community theatre in nearby Bristol, Rhode Island - she suspected he might also try to pillage their trust and wallets. So she tried to thwart his attempt.
Marie says the company had recently heard some rumors about Richard, that he had left a few other companies and no one would say why, exactly. But that was it. Maybe he was unreliable, but - Marie: Checks that like he would say to the treasurer, I need to pay the lighting guy, but I don't know how much it is. So leave it blank and I'll fill it out or I don't know who we’re paying this to.
Marie: I think I was surprised at the extent of it. You know, money's coming in, we're paying the bills, we're managing our overhead and we're skating by which is what community theaters do. So it wasn't a huge thing until we started hearing from vendors that invoices have been doctored. Quincy: In March 2014, the Bristol police arrested Richard and charged him with embezzlement, fraud, and several counts of obtaining money under false pretenses. And he was sentenced to pay restitution. That was the last time Marie saw him.Marie: I believe we collected half of the just about $14000 that he owed us. So about half of that is still outstanding.
Because of the pandemic, the Bristol Theater Company took a big financial hit. That’s why they’re in storage now. And even though Marie doesn’t expect Richard to pay the rest of what he owes, she can’t help but think about how it’d help the community theater regain some footing. He’s practically down the road from some of the people who say he conned them- in Swansea, Massachusetts.
Quincy: There was the treasurer who, after asking Richard about missing finances, was blamed by Richard and blackballed by the New England Community Theater scene. Marie: I'd like to see him go to jail where he can't do this to anyone anymore, but I don't see that happening. I think I feel the worst out of everything for his parents. I mean, I met them once and they were very sweet people, and I think he has just ruined their lives.
Richard would leave early in the morning to go work and when he got back, he would tell Jason all about his day. It seemed like Richard was killing it at his job and getting one step closer to his Broadway dreams.Quincy: Jason remembers being on the subway with Richard, and Richard getting callbacks from auditions.
Jason: So I let it go on for quite a while where I just kept sort of banking up the lies until I had enough to really sit down and confront him about it. It all came out for me.Jason: He admitted to me that he had lied. He didn’t care that he lied. He just had this like yeah, oh . He had no remorse. He has no remorse. He has no feelings, which I think is the most bizarre thing. Even when he looks at you, it’s just dead.
And Jason figured that with the story in the open, co-existing with the arrest warrant for Richard, he’d get to see some kind of justice done. Maybe he’d have to do community service. Or would be banned from local theatres. Something. Maybe Richard could get some counseling while he was at it.Jason: Like I told you, even when I had when I had gone to the Swansea police - they know who he is. They know his name. I don’t know he hasn’t surfaced. He’s probably going to.
But there is a consensus: people are still hurt. Richard owes thousands of dollars and as many explanations or contritions or mea culpas. Quincy: I walk up to the door and in my mind and in some ways my heart, I’m carrying all these questions and sentiments that people have for this man. And I ring the doorbell.
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