Review: "The Understudy"
Bottom line: Slight but knowing backstage satire
When/Where: Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St., Manhattan
A backup waits for the star to fall in 'The Understudy
Photo credit: AP | Mark-Paul Gosselaar, left, and Justin Kirk are shown in a scene from Theresa Rebeck's "The Understudy," a Roundabout Theatre Company production.
"Movie stars are like a disease," says Harry, the unknown and bitter understudy for a Kafka drama on Broadway with two movie stars. "Maybe more like pathology, or ongoing cultural disaster."
And so goes the timely and bitter joke in "The Understudy," Theresa Rebeck's slight but breezy and knowing backstage comedy that is cast, yes, with two TV stars. To be fair, the understudy is played with grand alacrity and hysteria by Justin Kirk, who was an intense theater actor before he got famous as Mary-Louise Parker's intense brother-in-law in "Weeds."
And the star being understudied is portrayed by Mark-Paul Gosselaar, making his comfortable stage debut while on hiatus from "Raising the Bar." Rebeck, who has written for some of TV's best police dramas, has lots of fun with the absurdity of actors earning millions for yelling, "Get into the truck!" and brandishing prop guns.
Tony-winning Julie White, who never does one gesture when she can do a bushel, gets a little exhausting in the least interesting role, the stage manager who just happens to have been left at the altar years earlier by Harry. The 90-minute comedy loses steam when it abandons its sharp show-biz satire for soap-opera relationship stuff, but Rebeck's idea of a star-driven Kafka hit on Broadway is ridiculous enough to feel like truth.
