The Understudy at Roundabout Theatre Company

"The Understudy," a comedy by Theresa Rebeck, opened on November 5 at Roundabout Theatre Company in Manhattan.  I went to a matinee performance today.  This is a three-character play: the stage manager, the star, and the understudy.  Julie White plays the stage manager, Mark-Paul Gosselaar plays the star, and Justin Kirk plays the understudy.  Actually, as it turns out, the star has second billing, and is also understudy for the first billed role.

Plays about the theater itself are a popular genre, as they satisfy the curiosity of theater-goers about what goes on behind the public face of theater.  In this case, there is some exploration of the tensions between the actors cast in the roles and those actors retained to learn the roles and then standby in case it is necessary for any particular performance to replace the cast actor.  Imagine the tensions between those who are headliners and thus who just sit and wait.  In this play, the focus is on a rehearsal that has been set up for a new understudy to rehearse his role with the cast actor. Their play is a recently-discovered three-hour marathon by Franz Kafka.  As is not infrequently the case on Broadway these days, the cast actor has achieved a certain amount of reknown working in film, while the understudy is strictly a stage actor, and resentful of the film and TV talent that comes slumming to perform in limited live theater runs.  To complicate matters, the stage director has a "history" with the understudy that threatens to derail the rehearsal. 

Justin Kirk has been a favorite of mine since "Old Wicked Songs" played at the Promenade Theatre, and I actually went to four performances, so smitten was I with the play and with Kirk's performance.  (It didn't hurt that the Promenade Theatre is in my upper West Side neighborhood, so it was no big deal to go back again and again.)  Then I loved his performances in the TV version of "Angels in America" and the film of "Love, Valour, Compassion."  I'm just a big old Kirk fan, I guess, so I had to see this and I'm glad I did.  He is marvelous in the part.

As someone who does not watch broadcast TV I was totally unaware of Mark-Paul Gosselaar, but I am unaware no longer.  He held his own with Kirk, the stage veteran, even though this was his NY stage debut, and did a marvelous job playing the egocentric but insecure movie actor working on a limited-run Broadway play.  Actually, the character turns out quite sympathetically....

And, finally, the real comic lead of the play is Julie White, the stage manager, who gets many of the best lines and definitely makes the most of them.  She probably has the most varied experience of the three, having done lots of live theater, TV and films.  I was smitten.

Actually, all three actors were superb, and Theresa Rebeck has provided a superb vehicle for them, ably directed by the always-reliable Scott Ellis.  Alexander Dodge's set is spectacularly good, and all the technical contributions are the high level one expects from Roundabout, among the best of NY's non-profit theater companies.  Definitely worth a visit.