Understudies...Would you go? Review?

I'll be seeing "Vanities" this weekend at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Would have caught it last Sunday and reviewed it for Friday, but the day/performance I booked -- the Sunday of opening weekend -- turned out actress Sarah Stiles was out with a bad back that had knocked her out of the matinee as well. Her understudy was to go on in her place.

Now, who, you may ask, is Sarah Stiles and why should her understudy or lack thereof dictate my presence at a review? Well, you can read about Ms Stiles - who I interviewed but whose work I don't know -- below:

Sarah Stiles (Joanne) is currently starring in the Broadway company of Avenue Q as Kate Monster and Lucy. She also appeared in the Broadway and first national touring companies of The 25th Annual Putnam Co. Spelling Bee, and in the national tour of Titanic. She toured with Tommy Tune in the Polynesian production of Dr. Dolittle. Her Off-Broadway credits include Captain Louie (York Theater). Her regional credits include Joanne in Vanities (Theatreworks Palo Alto); Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Estelle in The Full Monty and the Teen Girl in the world premiere of Memphis (Northshore Music Theatre); Crissy in Hair (Theatre Under the Stars); Emengarde in Hello, Dolly! (Kansas City Starlight); Ester in Meet Me in St. Louis (Virginia Music Theatre) and Frenchy in Grease (Papermill Playhouse).

OK, nice sounding career so far, Broadway credits, etc.

Is she a STAR? No, but the thing is, Ms Stiles is one of but three characters in the musical (Lauren Kennedy and Anneliese van der Pol play the other two), and the musical is going to Broadway. AND it's still relatively early enough in the P.P. run for me to wait for the lady's back to improve.

Which means I'm waiting. Maybe others wouldn't. I had the choice. I canceled. Critical props to the Playhouse's press rep, Patty Onagan, for letting me know that there would be an understudy, and offering me the chance to reschedule before I ate up gas money hoofing it out to the Rose City.

I've also been having a rash of understudies going up the night I came to review. There has been no review of the musical version of "Great Expectations" at the Odyssey Theatre, for example, because the night I chose to attend (admittedly, a rather last minute decision on my part), they had a few understudies going on including one for the guy who played adult Pip. "Great Expectations" has a lot more characters than "Vanities," but Pip is the main dude and unless the understudy was going to finish the run, I wasn't about to evaluate the performance of a guy who my readers would never see. Trouble was, I learned about the switch at intermission, not in advance. So I saw the entire show -- including a decent performance by the stand in -- but I couldn't wax critical.

Understudies in L.A. theater are about as common as Bluetooth headsets. People get sick or suffer injuries or a better paying gig comes along for a night or two, and -- duh! -- the performer takes a night or two off. There have got to be countless examples of the old "42nd Street" scenario, whereby the star breaks her ankle paving the way for the unknown to come in and BECOME a star.

But not in L.A. If someone starry goes down in the middle of the run, that's kinda the way it goes. Sucks for the audience, but there it is.

As I've noted more than a few times in TCiC, my experience seeing New York theater IN New York is relatively limited, but I do have an understudy story. Way back in 1990, I was supposed to see Maggie Smith's Tony award winning performance as an eccentric museum curator in Petter Shaffer's "Lettice and Lovage." Had a ticket and everything.

Except Ms Smith -- for reasons I frankly don't remember -- did not go on for that performance. Instead, I saw her understudy Margaret Hall who, yeah, did a very nice job. Except she wasn't Maggie Smith. I will probably never be able to say I saw Maggie Smith on stage.

I digress.

Even worse, during that same trip to New York, my brother -- the original Shakespeare hound -- saw the understudy to Kevin Kline play Kline's "Hamlet." Now that seriously sucks. Had I known that the guy playing Hamlet wasn't going on, I would have tried to recoup the cost of the ticket and gone to the movies or something.

Maybe it doesn't or shouldn't make a difference. Performers are performers, right? And a hard working sub is capable of providing just as much entertainment as the person (s)he is subbing for, no?

Maybe, but as a critic, I have to stick to my guns. As long as the role being understudied is prominent enough, I figure the performance can be seen but not evaluated.

Those out there who think differently -- or who have a cool understudy story -- feel free to chime in.