Bash Compactor: Gimme a (Big) Break

The Understudy, a black comedy about the world of New York theater written and directed by Hannah Davis and David Conolly, recently screened at the Tribeca Grand as part of Cinemonde Soiree. Star Marin Ireland (soon to be seen making her Broadway debut in Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty) and co-stars Paul Sparks and Aasif Mandvi worked the room while guests mingled, nibbling canapés and sipping martinis with gorgonzola-stuffed olives. Ireland, who plays a slightly unhinged actress hired as the understudy for the title role in Electra, revealed that she actually has very little understudy experience herself.

“I’ve been offered a few understudy jobs,” she said, “and I had to really think about it. But I just couldn’t do it. And in the movie, it’s just one of those times when everything comes together at once for my character. Her family, her love life, work... A few years ago, she might have been able to handle it, but not now.” As for her upcoming Broadway debut, Ireland is excited. “We start rehearsals on the 17th and we just got a new draft. It’s amazing, because I know some movie stars auditioned for it, but that’s not what the play is about. It’s such an ensemble piece, and the director Terry Kinney really just wanted the best person.”

Sparks, who plays Ireland’s Staten Island fireman love interest, was famously an understudy in Take Me Out. “It’s always a contentious relationship, no matter who’s involved,” Sparks said. “You’re kind of a second-class citizen and either nobody wants you around or you’re the most important person in the room. And the first time I went on in Take Me Out was a few weeks in, when Neal Huff got sick during the first act. I didn’t know anybody. I mean, I didn’t even know their names. And my first scene was the nude scene. They handed me a towel and said, ‘We’ll take care of you.’ It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” And how about his understudy in Hedda Gabler? “He seems like a nice guy, but I don’t spend a lot of time with him.”

As for those nasty rumors that all was not well backstage at Hedda Gabler, Sparks adamantly denies their truth. “In rehearsals, everyone has a moment of ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing!’ And I’m so used to it… Because of who [Mary-Louise Parker] is, I think it got blown up. Mary- Louise is impish and mercurial, but in the best way. She’s a professional. And the story was strategically timed.We’d just been pummeled in the press, and here this story comes. I don’t know who [the New York Post’s Michael Riedel] talked to, but it wasn’t someone close to the cast.This is one of the closest casts I’ve ever worked with, and the whole thing actually brought us closer together.” Even the understudies, presumably.