Waiting in the Wings : Understudies, unheralded and often unknown, live a real-life suspense drama.

Understudies. As in underdogs. They’re not listed on the marquee. When you look at the program, they’re not in the cast list, and you won’t find a biography for them. If you squint very hard, you’ll find their names listed on the cast page, but apart from the cast list, as if in some graphics gulag.

Who in the audience notices them, especially when one came to see Frank Langella or Kate Nelligan or Robert Goulet?

But when Langella or Nelligan or Goulet can’t go on, the understudy is the center of the universe. A moment in the sun--or in hell, depending on how things go.

A couple of horror tales happened in Los Angeles just recently. One saw Langella, workhorse of workhorses, flee off stage in the middle of a “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” matinee with a nasty stomach problem. Understudy John Castellanos came on--with script in hand. Several Ahmanson Theatre patrons were not amused. But when Castellanos also performed that night with the script, word got around town.

In the case of “Hurlyburly,” now in its final week at Westwood Playhouse, the situation was reversed. The entire regular cast wouldn’t go on (claiming that the motorcycle accident suffered by friend-of-the-cast Gary Busey emotionally disarmed them for the work at hand). The understudies couldn’t even help. One actress was understudying all three female roles and clearly could not perform for all of them. It was a problematic turn of events, admitted producer Barbara Ligeti.

It probably didn’t occur to anyone that those understudies also missed out on a possible performance, which is the whole reason understudy jobs in major shows are coveted.

“There’s tremendous competition for them,” says actor-director Al Rossi, who has replaced Victor Brandt as “McCarthy” at the Odyssey Theatre. “It’s a real plum to be covering for a James Earl Jones.”

Elizabeth Savage, who understudied for Kathy Bates in “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune” at the Mark Taper Forum, was told that dozens of actresses auditioned for the chance.

“And I’m sure they all knew that it meant being under an actress who’s famous for not missing performances,” says Savage, who actually did go on--if only once.

In a sense, the whole act of being the one ready to go on if the star (or, more commonly, a regular actor) can’t, is the drama behind the drama. And it’s one the audience seldom gets to see.

Sometimes, going on means a triumphant escape from obscurity. Think of Shirley MacLaine going on for an injured Carol Haney in “The Pajama Game” on Broadway in 1954. Hal Wallis caught her act and the next stop was Hollywood.

It’s not unlike the third-string quarterback entering a must-win game and firing some touchdown passes. Rossi remembers being sad to learn that he wouldn’t see Jones in “The Great White Hope,” until understudy Yaphet Kotto went out and blew the audience’s collective mind.

Understudy dreams come true. Understudy reality is more like the kind Laura Wernette is experiencing right now, standing by for both Deirdre O’Connell and Nora Heflin in the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s “Stars in the Morning Sky”.

Wernette was hired a week before its Dec. 16 opening. This is standard operating procedure at LATC, confirmed artistic director Bill Bushnell, as well as at many Equity houses. (“We’ll hire earlier with complicated, big cast shows,” Bushnell added.) Wernette says she can understand why LATC hires so late in the game, especially if it’s trying to keep on budget.

In general, Actors’ Equity contracts provide that an understudy receive the same pay as the performer he or she replaces, whether or not the understudy actually goes on stage. Pay varies on a show-by-show and actor-by-actor basis, but an understudy to a major star could receive the same pay as the star.

(Director-actor Austin Pendleton explains that, in addition to costs, it’s smart to hire late in the game since many first-rate actors won’t sit around and wait through weeks of rehearsal.)

“But with ‘Stars,’ it was pretty rushed,” Wernette adds. “Deirdre was sick during preview week, and I had to do her part in the last key rehearsals, right after I had signed on.” At a previous LATC show, 1987’s “King Lear”--one of those “complicated, big cast” shows Bushnell alluded to--Wernette had four weeks to watch rehearsals and prepare for Goneril, Regan, Cordelia and, last but not least, the Fool.

“You do feel somewhat in prison, wanting to break out and show yourself in the role,” says Wernette, “while never, ever , upstaging the regular (actor in the role). It’s a challenging, painful, lonely and very valuable lesson for any actor. You get to watch brilliant and not-so-brilliant choices taken by the regulars.”

While Wernette laments the last-week rush into “Stars,” the most notorious, and stressful, aspect of an understudy’s existence is the last-minute notice that he or she is on.

Rossi knows about this. His last three LATC jobs were as standbys. (A standby is on call, as opposed to the strict sense of understudy, which means that one must be at the theater before every performance. The latter practice exists at the Taper, which prefers to identify actors as “covering” roles, according to Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson.)

In the last couple of years, Rossi was under Ron Liebman in “Tartuffe,” Charles Hallahan in “Come Back, Little Sheba” and Robin Gammell in “The Caretaker.” Under the Actors’ Equity production contract, which applies to Broadway and large nonprofit houses such as the Taper and LATC, the production need not notify the substituting actor until a half-hour before curtain.

The Theatre Center is downtown. Rossi lives in the San Fernando Valley. Isn’t a half-hour shaving it awfully close?

Rossi: “You’d be amazed what you can do in a half-hour. The hardest thing is that you’ve got to be ready. One minute, you’re eating dinner with your family; the next minute, the stage manager calls to tell you the lead is sick.”

Jordan Bennett, who has the formidable task of understudying lead William Solo as Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” at the Shubert, see his current post as nothing compared with some past adventures.

Like the time he had to go on in the lead of “March of the Falsettos” at the Huntington Hartford with two hours’ notice. This was when he was also starring in “Movie Star” at the Westwood Playhouse.

“It was the arrangement I had worked out with (‘Falsetto’s’ producers). I was also covering some smaller roles, but I hadn’t even read the lead in three weeks, though I carried the rehearsal tape with me. Remember that this show is a roller coaster and never stops. You can’t lose a cue.

“As I sped to the theater, listening to my tape,” Bennett recalls, “I realized ‘My God, I’ve forgotten a lot of this.’ During overture, my knees were like rubber.”

Bennett survived. As Elizabeth Savage says, “This isn’t brain surgery. People are not going to die.” Actually, Bennett and others will darkly joke, at those rubber-leg moments, death doesn’t seem like such a terrible alternative.

“William Solo and I had the same thought cross our minds the first times we went on as Valjean,” says Bennett. “I can just walk right out of here and close the door. I probably won’t work again, but I won’t have to go through this.’ ”

The dizzying aspect of it all, says Savage, is getting ready to go on because the lead is turning green, only to turn around and see the lead on stage.

“In the New York ‘Frankie and Johnny,’ Kathy (Bates) would run off stage with an ad-libbed line like ‘Sorry, I have to go to the bathroom,’ be sick, (co-star Kenneth) Welsh would cover for her, and she’d run back on (to finish the performance). Ken’s standby didn’t go on for a year!

“The crucial thing,” Savage stresses, “is that you have to assume that the actor can’t make it, and that you’ll cover. At the same time, you try awfully hard not to make them feel like you’re some vulture, waiting.”

Producer Ligeti: “In my experience, I’ve noticed that understudies for stars assume that they’ll never go on, and when they find out they have to, they go totally ape. Stars are stars partly because they’re troupers, and the assumption is that the Christopher Walkens and Frank Langellas never get sick.”

In smaller theaters, such as the Tiffany, understudies are not required. A sick actor can create havoc, as producer Craig Strong learned when one of the regulars in “Ladies’ Room” couldn’t go on, and the understudy couldn’t be reached.

“We were desperately trying to reach the understudy by phone,” Strong explains, “but it was out of order. She had no idea of the crisis, it was going on 8 o’clock, and I had to announce the performance’s cancellation to the audience.” The theater added a performance on Wednesday, and patrons who can’t attend have been given tickets for another date.

The good side of understudying in smaller houses is that there’s a greater chance of performing. Savage says that, in those cases, she always gives the understudy some shows--letting them go on for the experience. “There isn’t much pay, and it’s the decent thing to do under the circumstances.”

Rossi notes that the more one understudies, the easier it gets. There are, however, real dangers of becoming typecast as a substitute. And major actors, remarks Austin Pendleton, just won’t give understudying the time of day.

The Theatre Center’s Bushnell has faced this in the casting crunch, “but the way we’ve gotten around it is promising a major talent like Gerald Hiken (understudying Milton Selzer in “The Model Apartment,” which closed over the holidays) that he doesn’t have to come to the theater. This way we’re able to get extraordinary actors to cover roles.”

Pendleton creates some incentives, as he did for Laurie Kennedy, his pick to understudy Kate Nelligan in the recently closed “Spoils of War” on Broadway.

“I promised her that I would work with her. A lot of directors just don’t. They give it over to the stage manager. I also convinced her that it would be a great workout, and she’d get paid on top of it. Those promises, plus the encouragement to find their own approach to the role, are the attractions for top people to understudy.”

Kennedy, to top it off, got some performances. But, mostly, it’s a lonely wait, not wanting the worst for the regular actor while knowing that only the worst will mean a chance in front of the audience.

The preference for Rossi is the next closest thing to standing by: replacing the original actor, as he’s currently doing in “McCarthy”.

“The new actor,” he observes, “is going to create what makes sense for the new actor. Yet it also has to fit within the director’s established framework.”

Which sounds much like Carol Potter Eastman describing the other seldom-understood actors’ niche--the alternate. Eastman was Christine Lahti’s alternate in last year’s “Summer and Smoke” at the Ahmanson, playing matinees for the pregnant Lahti, and then taking over the role entirely in the last three weeks.

“You sort of have the best of both worlds when alternating,” she said. “You work a good deal with the director, really honing the character. And you don’t have seven performances a week.”