Send in the clones! Starry second-stringers keep Broadway shows going
Friday, June 25th 2010, 4:00 AM
The official start of summer this week coincided with the informal beginning of Substitute Season on city stages.
On Monday, Eddie Izzard and Dennis Haysbert assumed roles originated by James Spader and David Alan Grier in David Mamet's legal drama "Race."
On July 6, Helen Hunt takes over as the Stage Manager in the Off-Broadway hit "Our Town."
And on July 13, in a hotly anticipated switcheroo, Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch step in for Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury as daughter and mother in Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music."
The part of pinch hitter is a new one for Peters, a beloved Broadway star and two-time Tony winner. Taking on the challenge of being an alternate came at the suggestion of Sondheim, a longtime collaborator.
Hunt, an Emmy and Oscar winner, arrived at the idea of stepping in herself after seeing the show early in its run downtown.
"I met her over a year ago," says "Our Town" director David Cromer, who played the Stage Manager for the show's first six months.
"Helen came to see the show and stayed an hour talking about it. She has a long history with the play."
In 1989, she took over the role of Emily Webb for Penelope Ann Miller in a Broadway revival.
"I think she felt a sort of esthetic kinship between the two productions," says Cromer, who was tickled that she "seemed sweetly nervous about going into the role after me."
And why not? Even though replacing a role brings the chance to add, as Peters has noted, "a fresh direction to the part," following someone else's performance also comes with inevitable comparisons.
The B Team is often said to leave something to be desired in contrast to the A Team. A recent example: the first replacement cast of "God of Carnage."
But sometimes substitutes have been wholly successful in making a role (and show) their own. Reba McEntire achieved that it in "Annie Get Your Gun." Fantasia, too, in "The Color Purple."
On July 19, Broadway vet Marin Mazzie takes over as the bipolar mother in the musical "Next to Normal," alongside real-life husband, Jason Danieley, who'll play her spouse.
When she dove into the role of the Lady of the Lake in "Spamalot" she didn't seem to fret about comparisons to its originator (Sara Ramirez), saying: "I had seen the show, and I just thought it would be a lot of fun to do, and I was right."
Among theaterphiles eager to catch the "fresh direction" Peters brings to the colorful character of Desiree Armfeldt are Cromer.
"I cannot wait to see her in 'A Little Night Music,'" says the Chicago director whose career has spread to New York. "I've never gotten to see her onstage."
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