Rebeck's "The Understudy' in Cape May

The Understudy, Theresa Rebeck's sly comedy about behind-the-scenes backbiting at a Broadway play, got the full creative treatment last January at the Wilma in Philadelphia, and the farce benefited by the grandness of the Wilma's sets. The current production by Cape May Stage has a smaller venue, but director Roy Steinberg has managed to utilize the space wisely, thus adding more dimensions to the interpretation.

For example, the stage manager, Roxanne, often is strategically placed below the stage and in the front aisle as she yells out directions to Jake the movie star and Harry the underappreciated understudy.

As Roxanne, Kristen Calgaro conveys a not too disguised vulnerability beneath her hard-tempered mannerism. This weakness easily comes to the forefront when she literally lets her red hair down from her tightly twisted knot. Luke Darnell as Jake is earnestly handsome and winsomely stupid, while G.R. Johnson's Harry is too anal retentive to be anything else but annoying and bumptious. They make a good sardonic threesome.

In the Philadelphia production many people in the audience (at least on opening night, when I attended) came from a theater background and so readily appreciated the myopic view of the actors and Rebeck's snide heckling of her theater kin. But the Cape May crowd seemed to care little about backstage politics. Many of Rebeck's razor-sharp lines elicited no laughter from the audience.

I blame the playwright here for casting her considerable comic skills in too shallow water. I guess the line, "But will it play in Peoria?" still carries meaning.