by Stefanie Cohen
view article on WSJ.com
Even veteran stars are succumbing to illness this winter.
Earlier this month, Jefferson Mays’ greatest fear came true: He fell victim to a virulent stomach flu in the middle of his starring run in the hit Broadway musical, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.”
“It’s such a horrible, impotent, powerless feeling, to be lying on your bed-of-pain and realizing 2½ miles away, the show is going on without you,” says Mr. Mays, who plays all the members of the dissolute D’Ysquith family. “It’s like missing your own funeral.”
It wasn’t an especially great thing for his understudy, Don Stephenson, either. Mr. Stephenson was in the middle of directing a staged concert of “Titanic” at Lincoln Center and received an email from Mr. Mays three hours before showtime asking Mr. Stephenson to take over the role(s).
Mr. Mays’ plays almost half the cast—eight members of an aristocratic family that must die in order for the conniving Monty Navarro to inherit his fortune. The part, which Mr. Mays helped create, is a killer. Not only does he transform from the family patriarch to a nutty female cousin to a maiden aunt and back again, he must change costumes with lightning speed. One costume change occurs during an 18-second interval between the curtain rising and falling.
Mr. Stephenson, who has played lead roles in “Rock of Ages” and “The Producers,” says he signed on as an understudy because he loved the role. “When my agent sent it to me, I read it with a sense of dread,” he says, because he knew the part was too good to pass up. He also knew there was an outside chance he’d actually have to perform it.
“Jefferson is a tank,” says Mr. Stephenson. When Mr. Mays starred in 2003’s Broadway hit “I Am My Own Wife” (in which he played some 40 different characters) he was absent just twice in a year.
But in the bleakest days of winter, even Broadway pros like Mr. Mays inevitably fall prey to illness. During one weekend in January, four actors in “Matilda” were out due to illness. During the course of one performance, a handful more got so sick that they had to be replaced mid-show. In “Gentleman’s Guide,” two actors in addition to Mr. Mays, were sick the same week he was out. Cherry Jones, the star of “The Glass Menagerie,” also had to miss a performance due to illness.
It is no wonder. Broadway theaters can be petri dishes of infection. They aren’t well ventilated, cast members are constantly touching and interacting with one another and audiences visit all sorts of virulent illnesses upon the cast nightly. To stave off sickness, Mr. Mays says he drinks an immunity-boosting concoction called a “Ginger Fireball,” containing ginger and oil of oregano, by the gallon. He also slathers himself with Purell hand sanitizer. “I do everything I can short of sacrificing small animals to ensure I am healthy,” he says.
But this time there was nothing to be done. So Mr. Stephenson went to the theater, laid down in Mr. Mays’ dressing room in the dark, and rolled through the entire play in his head. “I know that if I can do the whole thing in my head, I can probably do it on stage,” he reasoned.
As a “standby” for the role, he attends the first month of rehearsals and is on hand for preview performances and technical rehearsals to test lighting and set changes. Once the show starts, he sees it once a week and attends weekly understudy rehearsals, to keep the role fresh in his mind.
After his first performance, on Feb. 8, Mr. Stephenson wrote to Mr. Mays, “This part is ridiculous! I have scratches on both hands, my legs are sore, God I’m tired, boy it was fun.”
Broadway actors and their understudies have complicated relationships. The understudy takes the role for any number of reasons: Some are hoping for their big break, others are older stage actors who like to be involved in the theater any way they can. Some just enjoy the steady paycheck. (The job pays well—understudies generally get scale, which is about $1,800 a week, plus bumps in their paycheck for every show they perform, typically one-eighth their salary. Actors with higher profiles, like Mr. Stephenson, can negotiate for more.) Stars often dislike ceding the part for fear that the understudy may just outperform them.
When a star is sick, audiences can generally ask for refunds or exchanges. Joey Parnes, the producer of “Gentleman’s Guide,” said about 5% of audience members asked to exchange their tickets for a day when Mr. Mays returned.
Old-school stage actors—Harvey Fierstein, Ethel Merman, Elaine Stritch, Chita Rivera, among others—are famous for rarely, if ever missing performances. Mr. Fierstein performed the part of Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” with a hernia for a year. He took the role over from Alfred Molina, who is physically larger than Mr. Fierstein. When Mr. Fierstein, in a rehearsal, first lifted the cart he must lug around on stage, it was too heavy for him and gave him the hernia. “It weighed a fricking ton!” says the gravelly voiced actor. “I knew I’d hurt myself immediately but I also knew that if I stopped for a hernia operation it would be the end of Fiddler.”
He did the show for 13 months with a torn intestine. The only person in the production who knew about his injury was his dresser, who was often heard yelling at Mr. Fierstein in the dressing room: “Shove your guts back in and get on with it!” says Mr. Fierstein. “People thought we were kidding.”
When he finished “Fiddler,” Mr. Fierstein went to Las Vegas and did “Hairspray” for three months. It wasn’t until after that show that he finally had a hernia operation.
Some stage actors say the younger generation of actors lacks the work ethic instilled in veterans. Actress Paige Price, who starred in “Saturday Night Fever” in 1999-2000 and has been an understudy at times, says the cast of “Fever” was constantly missing shows.
“There was a lot of quote-unquote “food poisoning,” she says, “which is code for I want to go a day early to the Hamptons.”
Although he’s sorry his friend was sick, Mr. Stephenson says he’s happy he finally got to perform the role he’d practiced for so long.
Unfortunately, the part took its toll. As a result of performing the role and directing “Titanic” in the same week, he now has a cold himself.
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