For Understudies, There’s No Substitute for Patience

The play is called “Three Tall Women.” But for Lois Markle, the standby for two roles in the current Mark Taper Forum production of the new Edward Albee play, the title should be “One Tall Woman and a Couple of Medium-Height Men.”

Markle, a New York-based actress, has never appeared onstage in “Three Tall Women” since it opened Jan. 11 at the Taper--and may never get a chance to before the play closes Saturday. She has never rehearsed with the show’s three regular performers, Marian Seldes, Michael Learned and Christina Rouner. In fact, she hasn’t stepped before an audience since the show’s national tour began four months ago in Boston.

Yet Markle is at the Mark Taper Forum for every performance and each week has two rehearsals: one for the Seldes role, a 92-year-old dowager, and the other for the Learned role, the elderly woman’s middle-aged caretaker. In those rehearsals, Markle works with either production stage manager Mark Wright or stage manager Gregg Fletcher, each of whom will read the other women’s roles. Since Markle understudies both Seldes and Learned, “you are constantly playing against yourself,” she says, laughing.

Michael Piontek, standby for the Beast in the Shubert Theatre’s musical “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast,” has had the opportunity to go onstage for a stretch of five performances while permanent Beast Michael Barbour attended a wedding during the first few weeks of the show, and for three more performances since. But like Markle and hundreds of other standbys and understudies in productions all over the world, he spends most of his time waiting.

Contrary to the cliche, standbys are not “waiting in the wings”; they are usually sitting in a dressing room, at home or simply available by beeper or cell phone. Being on standby away from the theater is more common in New York, where actors can walk or take cabs to the theater without the risk of L.A. traffic.

The rules vary by production; some productions have no understudies at all, usually for financial reasons. Arnold Mittleman, producer of the comedy “Bermuda Avenue Triangle,” which opened Feb. 4 the Canon Theatre after three months at the Tiffany Theatre, reports that stars Beatrice Arthur, Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna have had no unscheduled absences. Last week Mittleman hired the show’s first understudies for those lead roles; they will merely be required to call in before the show rather than standing by at the theater.

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Markle is required to be at the theater half an hour before the show and may leave once the second act is underway (but never does). Piontek must arrive at the Shubert an hour ahead because it takes that long to apply the elaborate Beast makeup--and he is required to stay through the second-act “transformation” scene, in which the Beast rises into the air and turns from hairy to handsome. Piontek does not get into makeup before every performance because of the expense of applying about $100 worth of non-reusable prosthetic devices each time.

“It has never happened during this show that the Beast has gone down,” Piontek says. “They are going to have a problem if he does, because the show is going to have to stop for at least half an hour because there is no way the makeup can be put on in any less time than that.”

The transformation, which requires an elaborate harness, is a horror, Piontek says. “You are wearing a brace that is locked into a little piece of metal. If you are just slightly not vertical, the metal pinches and you can’t get off the brace. My nightmare is, I wake up in a cold sweat, I’ll get stuck out there and not be able to get off the thing.”

When called in to play the Beast after 2 1/2 months off, Piontek insisted on a last-minute harness rehearsal, which caused the show to start 10 minutes late.

But he learned his lesson about being prepared when technical gaffes almost cost him his first job on Broadway--as understudy to the big, bad wolf in “Into the Woods.” The role naturally required a wolf suit; the 6-foot-3, 190-pound Piontek was squeezed into costumes and prosthetics designed for 6-foot, 170-pound Robert Westenberg.

“The wolf suit is an elastic thing that was too small, and the prosthetic had a foam bridge that went across my nose so I had to suck air through my mouth, which you never do as a singer,” Piontek says. “Halfway through the number, I literally started to see stars. . . . I thought my theatrical career would be over . . . as an understudy, or a cover, you have to learn to protect yourself.”

Piontek also stood by for rock singer Sting in 1989’s ill-fated Broadway revival of “Threepenny Opera”: “In those situations you come to the theater every day praying [to] God that he is not going to miss, because people are coming to see this mega-star,” Piontek says. “I think it’s a problem when you start getting into star-driven vehicles, which is what this business is turning into. Producers are investing more and more money into getting a show up and running, they are looking for some sort of guarantee. . . . It’s marquee value, like in the film industry. I think you have problems when you do that, because when you are doing a show for a long run, seven or eight shows a week, people go down.”

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While there are no set actors’ union terms for the positions, a “standby” or “cover” for lead roles, like Markle and Piontek, generally doesn’t play smaller roles in the show. The term “understudy” usually connotes someone who plays a smaller role in the show but is prepared to step in for the lead role. And then, at the bottom of the heap is the “swing,” generally cast for musical theater, who is prepared to step in for a number of smaller or ensemble roles.

This is Markle’s first experience as a standby; she says a decision to do so again would depend on the part. “There is no question that I would rather be playing a role than standing by. But a man I know, who is a wonderful actor who was standing by for someone on Broadway, said to me: ‘I’d rather be standing by for a brilliant role than be on the boards for an insignificant one.’

“I love both of these roles, and I would love to play them, and I know someday I will--not necessarily with this company. . . . I know this play is going to be done, somewhere, forever, and sooner or later I’m going to be playing it.”

Piontek is fueled by a similar hope--most Beast standbys have gone on to be cast as the Beast in one of the show’s numerous companies in various cities. Piontek’s wife, Paige O’Hara, was the voice of Belle in the Disney film on which the musical is based, and their dream is to someday do the show together.

“If in some company that role opens up and I am not offered that role, I have to step back and look at my situation: ‘Do I want to continue to do this?’ ” Piontek says. “In many cases, a standby or an understudy position is a dead-end street. Particularly when an individual covers multiple roles, and covers them all well--from the producer’s standpoint, he becomes harder to replace than a person who does one role really well.

“I would find it difficult to cover a role if I did not, ultimately, think I had a chance to play it. That’s the cutting line for me.”