Without an Understudy, the Show Barely Goes On

Suddenly you’re on stage. But you don’t know your lines. And you can’t even figure out which characters the other actors are playing.

Or if that classic actor’s dream isn’t bad enough, try this one: You show up at the theater, ready to go on in your role--only to discover that the performance started two hours earlier, without you.

Both of these nightmares came true last Sunday at South Coast Repertory. One actor didn’t show up for his role, and another, totally unprepared, was invited from the audience to fill in. This real-life drama raises questions about the availability of understudies at some of the area’s most prominent theater companies.

The schedule for the South Coast production of “Hay Fever� was altered in its final week. The number of weekend performances was halved. James Cromwell, who played novelist-husband-father David Bliss in the Noel Coward comedy, thought the one Sunday performance was in the evening instead of the afternoon. It wasn’t.

As the minutes ticked by before the matinee was to begin, with Cromwell nowhere in sight, cast member Marnie Mosiman suggested to director William Ludel that a professional actor who was in the audience, Bruce Gray, might step in. With only a few minutes to spare, Ludel--who had previously directed Gray in another production--approached Gray and asked him if he would please go on.

Gray, who wasn’t even familiar with the plot of “Hay Fever,� thought Ludel was joking. Even when Ludel led him backstage, he suspected the director was staging a prank. But soon a script was thrust into his hands and he was being dressed for the part.

After a 20-minute delay in starting the play, Gray went on, with script and tea tray in hand. Although he was “frankly mystified� by much of what was going on, he recalled, the audience seemed to appreciate his effort--especially when he lost his place and then found it again, just in time to speak the line: “I’m doing the best I can.� Halfway through the performance, Cromwell showed up, but by this time the audience was rooting for Gray, who finished the show.

Where was the understudy?

South Coast can’t afford to hire understudies on a regular basis, said theater spokesman Cris Gross.

If an actor’s absence is known in advance, an understudy is hired. One went on recently for Lisa Howard in South Coast’s Second Stage production “So Many Words� after Howard realized--days earlier--that a TV job would conflict. But unexpected illnesses may simply cause performances to be canceled, as happened with two performances of “Great Day in the Morning� earlier this year. Refunds, twofers or exchanges are offered in such circumstances.

Actors’ Equity does not require most of the theaters that use its League of Resident Theatres (LORT) contract, such as South Coast, to hire understudies unless they do actual repertory (concurrent productions using some of the same actors in different shows). The only such theaters that are required to hire understudies (except for bit parts) are those on the “LORT-A� contract, organizations that were deemed sufficiently endowed for that category in 1987. One of those seven “LORT-A� theaters is the Mark Taper Forum. Michael Solomon, associate manager of the Taper, said the requirement will cost the Taper $128,000 in the 1992-93 season.

Equity would like to require other LORT theaters to use understudies, and brought up the issue in recent contract talks, only to drop it as part of the negotiations.

“You’d end up paying for understudies and not for the quality and number of actors you actually use on stage,� said LORT President Thomas Hall, who is also managing director of San Diego’s Old Globe.

The Old Globe uses graduate students affiliated with a professional training program as understudies. A woman in her 20s played the role of a woman in her 60s in the Old Globe’s “Morning’s at Seven� during five recent performances. The Old Globe also asks its resident company members to cover each other.

But Hall acknowledged that such stretching has its limits. When a young actor in “Falsettos� lost his voice shortly before opening, the boy who created the role in New York was hired to fill the gap.

La Jolla Playhouse uses “internal� understudies--supporting players in the same cast who can substitute in major roles, and then hires at least two offstage understudies who can fill in the regular roles of the “internal� understudies. The Pasadena Playhouse hires at least three understudies for each production and pays them as much as the regular actors. In only one performance since the Playhouse was revived was a production caught empty-handed--when an understudy himself collapsed while performing a role in “Other People’s Money.� In that case, the stage manager read the rest of the role from the sidelines.

No one in Sunday’s South Coast audience complained or asked for a refund, Gross said. The theater “lucked out,� said Equity’s Joe Garber. Not using understudies is “like not having health insurance. If you get sick, you’re stuck.�

Gray will be paid for his emergency performance. But now he’ll also have to reinstate his active membership in Equity--which costs him. “We’re trying to work out some agreement,� said Garber, “so that we don’t stick it to the theater, but we don’t deprive him of compensation.�