The breaks of the stage

Castmates know the struggles of the actors they play in 'The Understudy'

"The Understudy" cast members (from left) Bradley Cooper, Kristen Johnston, and Reg Rogers at Williams College. (Stephen rose for the boston globe)

WILLIAMSTOWN - Being the understudy is one of the most thankless, and potentially unrewarding, roles in the theater. You're considered a lesser talent than the star you're covering. You'll probably have few, if any, opportunities to go on - and little time to prepare. And if you do make it up on stage and manage to pull if off, half the audience will want its money back anyway.

Worse, for every Anthony Hopkins success story - his breakthrough role came as an understudy for Laurence Olivier in a 1967 production of "The Dance of Death" - there are countless actors who go unnoticed.

That potentially mortifying situation is the backdrop for Theresa Rebeck's trenchant backstage satire "The Understudy," which is receiving its world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival through Aug. 3.

In the play, Harry is a caustic workaday theater actor struggling with the unforgiving world of show business. He's just landed an understudy assignment in a hit Broadway play featuring a couple of big-league movie stars, though it's unlikely Harry will ever go on.

At the "put-in" rehearsal, Harry collides with the play's second-billed star, Jake, whose latest flick just grossed $90 million in its opening weekend, and Roxanne, the frenetic stage manager with whom Harry was once romantically involved. The kicker is that the play-within-the-play is a recently discovered masterpiece by that prince of darkness, Franz Kafka.

The author of acclaimed plays like "Bad Dates" and "Omnium Gatherum," Rebeck admits to a great affection for actors and the harsh realities they face. In fact, during her nearly 20-year-career as a working playwright, Rebeck has penned no less than four pieces centered on actors, as well as a handful of others about the Machiavellian world of showbiz.

"My work really depends on the kindness of actors," she explains. "And they take good care of me."

Rebeck shines a light on the peculiar plight of a performer - the ups and downs, the rejection and disappointment, the fears and frustrations. But she also illuminates the creative fulfillment one can find from the profession.

"The central issue of the play really comes down to how the wounds of the heart are answered by the act of storytelling," she says. "Yet the sort of terrible dilemma of the actor is that those wounds are often inflicted by the act of storytelling itself - the way that actors are treated by the tabloid culture. It becomes terribly debilitating to the spirit. So the only way they are left to heal themselves is to do it again."

As Harry, Reg Rogers admits he can relate deeply to the circumstances of his downtrodden character. The 43-year-old actor, a former Tony award nominee (for "Holiday" in 1996), boasts a long and varied stage resume, including a stint as an understudy and subsequent replacement for Loren Dean in John Patrick Shanley's "Four Dogs and a Bone" in 1993 and 1994. But unlike his costars, Bradley Cooper and Kristen Johnston, who have both appeared extensively on the big and small screens, he's never landed the breakthrough role that would bring him wider renown - and a bigger paycheck.

"The part is surprisingly close to me and my own experience - almost exactly like me in a weird way," Rogers says during a chat after a recent rehearsal. "I'm a theater guy. I've done a little TV and film. But I don't have the kind of luck with it that other people have. That's where this guy is. He's trying to get past feeling bitter about it - which I can certainly understand."

While Rogers's costar, Bradley Cooper, may not command $2.3 million per picture like his character in the play, the 33-year-old is a hunky young rising star, having appeared in films like "Wedding Crashers" and "Failure to Launch," in addition to several seasons on the hit TV series "Alias." He also has a slew of high-profile films lined up in the next two years.

While Cooper is reluctant to draw explicit parallels with his character, he says that he can identify with at least one aspect of the play - the ways that actors can become overly preoccupied with their careers.

"My character has set his sights on getting this one movie role," Cooper says. "But he's making all these wonderful discoveries [during the rehearsal with Harry] about things that are ultimately going to be more important in his life. Yet the minute that other light starts blinking - which is the other potential role - that's where all his focus goes. Which I find funny, but also just relatable."

In a twist that underlines the unpredictable nature of show business, Tony award winner Julie White ("The Little Dog Laughed") was originally slated to play Roxanne, but was forced to drop out when she took a part in the "Transformers" sequel. Kristen Johnston, best known as Sally Solomon on the aliens-come-to-Earth sitcom "Third Rock From the Sun," heard the news and e-mailed Rebeck herself about the part - without even having read it.

Still, she admits, "I'm the least ambitious person you'll ever meet. I don't give a [expletive]. I'm never on the phone with my agents. . . . I'm always like, 'Oh, I didn't read that yet. . .' But I like doing really great parts like this one."

While Rebeck's plays are always brimming with sardonic humor, her recent works like "Mauritius" have wallowed in the darker aspects of humanity. For "The Understudy," she says she wanted to dip her toes into "a more buoyant and tender universe." So it's more than a little ironic that she turned to Kafka, who wrote nightmarish tales about the annihilation of the individual by an impersonal society.

In recent years, Rebeck, who holds two degrees from Brandeis University, found herself increasingly obsessed with Kafka. On vacation in Prague with her husband, she even went on a tour of Kafka landmarks. For this play, the bleak existentialist just seemed like a perfectly unexpected - and perfectly ridiculous - choice.

Interestingly, none of the actors has an understudy for the show. Yet they acknowledge that the play-within-a-play element has helped them to see how their own lives relate to their characters' predicaments, and to connect with "The Understudy" on an almost profound level.

"All of the characters have a moment that hits very close to home - like suddenly they're speaking, and it's not the [Kafka] play anymore. It's them talking. It's their own thing," Rogers says. "And I think all three of us actors have moments that are like that, too, where we step out of these parts and just become ourselves."