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Sports blog: Warrior Nation

By DAVID A. ROSENBERG

Hour Theater Critic



Actors are a peculiarly contradictory lot, egocentric yet open, suspicious yet trusting, exuding public confidence and private doubt. Remote and pampered in films, they sweat and strain on stage, contending with fellow Thespians and sometimes wayward audiences.

Take the performers in two new, affectionate off-Broadway plays, the amusing "The Understudy" and the labyrinthine "Love Child." In the former, author Theresa Rebeck imagines that a harried stage manager named Roxanne has to conduct what's known as a put-in rehearsal where Harry, a newly engaged understudy, has to learn his moves. Jake, the performer Harry just may go on for, is a movie actor who's taking a flyer in the theater.

The play they're rehearsing is a hitherto unproduced drama by, of all people, doom-and-gloom Franz Kafka. Harry, experienced but unheralded, has both envy and contempt for Jake whose last picture grossed $67 million, with dialogue consisting of variations on "Get down!" and "Get in the truck!" Jake, however, considers himself a serious Kafka student. "They sought their castle as a sign of divine grace," he explains at one point.

Roxanne and Harry were once engaged to be married, until Harry chickened out. Wearing figurative protective armor, she's given to exasperated pronouncements like "You have no rights - you're an actor." After visiting the lair of a stoned, indifferent technician, she reports that the booth "looks like the inside of a bong."

Switching back and forth between the rehearsal and actual scenes from the Kafka play, "The Understudy" hits its targets under Scott Ellis' dizzying direction. It's a slight work, but Julie White is deliciously funny, her every fiber a-quiver with anxiety, as Roxanne, while Justin Kirk is a wry Harry.

But both veterans make way for new-to-the stage Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Jake. The TV star ("Raising the Bar," "Saved by the Bell") gives off vibes that suggest another Marlon Brando. He projects a similar sensuality, humor and believability that makes even a stale reference to Jeremy Piven seem fresh.

Poor Piven, who abruptly left a show last season after pleading mercury poisoning, has become the butt of Broadway jokes. His rival for instant gag fame may be Erik Estrada whose name is bandied about in "Love Child." As written and performed by Daniel Jenkins and Robert Stanton, this quick-change show relishes its own literary titan. Reaching back centuries before Kafka, the playwright of their moment is Euripides whose obscure "Ion" questions the sanctity of Apollo, the veracity of his oracle and the tangled relationships among individuals and their families.

Jenkins and Stanton play not only actors in a production of "Ion" but various audience members, relatives and hangers-on. What happens makes Greek tragedy look like an elementary school picnic. Anything that could go wrong, does. One's tolerance for all the evening depends on an ability to keep everything straight and how much to invest in watching confusion.

Carl Forsman's frantic direction fits perfectly with the characters' mad transitions. Both Jenkins and Stanton imbue what is basically an acting exercise with enormous skill, evoking the occasional big laugh. But where "The Understudy" is exhaustive, "Love Child" is just plain exhausting.


"The Understudy" is at the Laura Pels Theater, 111 W. 46th St., N.Y., through Jan. 17. Call (212) 719-1300 or visit www.roundabouttheatre.org.

"Love Child" is at New World Stages, 340 W. 50th St., N.Y., through Jan. 3. Call (212) 239-6200 or visit www.telecharge.com

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Photo/Alex von Kleydorff. L-R Bill Glass, Karen Strickland, Stephanie Barksdale, Colleen Fawcett, Lisa Bogan, and Steve Pierce are the obesity panel, meet at Comstock Community Center.