Just Another Player

Second City comedy troupes, long a mainstay of the Chicago and Toronto entertainment scenes, have traditionally been ensembles that no one player is supposed to dominate. The cast that set up shop in Santa Monica early this year at the converted Mayfair Theatre is no exception. Still, Robin Duke is more easily recognizable than her four comrades, thanks to her stint on “Saturday Night Live” (1981-84) and frequent appearances on “SCTV.” Aren’t a disproportionate number of faces in the crowd each night bound to be trained on hers?

“I haven’t been conscious of that at all, because everybody in this cast is so strong,” says Duke, taking a break from rehearsals in the upstairs room at the Mayfair affectionately dubbed the Opium Room. “Second City should never have a star in the cast, and it’s not like you ever go out and think ‘I’m playing support in this scene.’ One of the things you learn in workshops is that you’re only as good as who you’re on stage with. And that is certainly the difference between television and the theater. You get into TvQ’s and ‘the audience is liking this person more so we’re gonna present this person more.’ It doesn’t happen here. It’s purer and it’s equal.”

Purity is a word that pops up a lot as Duke pits TV against the stage.

“On ‘Saturday Night Live,’ by the time you got an idea to air, it had had a lot of hands on it, whereas here, it’s just whoever’s doing the scene and the audience. It just goes from backstage to stage, so it’s pure.”

As far as Duke is concerned, this way of working is “the best, because it’s so immediate. Any idea that you’ve come up with that’s inspired by something that happened to you during the day you think is funny, you can go out on stage that night and present it and see if the audience agrees, which they do by laughing. It’s a great personal release.”

Perhaps the most popular skit in the current show--and Duke’s favorite as well--is an oldie in which Duke plays a snooty, conniving saleswoman who manipulates a naive customer into buying a horrific dress.

“I like the fact that a lot of people come up to me and say, ‘Is that the woman that works in such-and-such a store?’ When I did it in Toronto, I was so used to having people coming up to me and saying ‘I know that saleslady, I know who she is.’ Then my aunt--who is a saleslady--came up to me afterward and said, ‘We get those kinds of women in our stores all the time.’ She was appreciating it on a whole other level.”

--CHRIS WILLMAN