The lights are lit again on Broadway, but COVID’s continuing presence remains a game changer.
When actor David Krumholtz, who has a primary role in British playwright Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” was diagnosed with COVID last week, Matt Harrington, an understudy from San Diego, was asked to step in.
The drama spans more than five decades in the life of a Jewish family living in Vienna beginning in 1899. It opened Oct. 2 to glowing reviews, including an eight-page spread in The New Yorker magazine and a Washington Post critique calling it “simply devastating.”
The irony is that Harrington, who grew up in Point Loma, at first vacillated over accepting his invitation to the cast.
He had auditioned at the urging of his agent and was offered the understudy role for Hermann Merz along with portraying a couple of minor characters in the huge cast. It was Harrington’s first live audition since the pandemic had shuttered theaters.
At the time, he was in his second year in the lead role of the off-Broadway production of “The Play That Goes Wrong.” Not only did he love the show but, as an open-run production, it offered long-term job security, health benefits and assurance that he could pay his rent.
The actor was torn.
His mother, Point Loman Rhoda Auer, urged him not to miss the chance to work with the legendary playwright, who is now 85.
“I don’t care if you’re a waiter (in the play), you have to go work with Tom Stoppard,” she told her son. He came to his senses, she says.
Matt’s stepdad, Mike Auer, longtime drama coordinator for the San Diego Unified School District, likewise, counseled him to embrace the opportunity.
“I was nervous about being the understudy,” said Harrington, adding that the other parts were smaller than those he usually takes. Plus, there was the economic uncertainty of a new show and the threat of COVID hanging over everyone’s heads.
“But this was Tom Stoppard on Broadway in a beautiful play, so I ultimately went for it, and I’m glad I did.”
Stoppard sat through rehearsals, but Harrington first crossed paths with him in a hallway. “He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Thank you so much.’ I think this play means so much to him because it is so personal.”
Stoppard was born with the name Tomàs Sträussler in a Jewish neighborhood in Czechoslovakia. He was 18 months old when his family fled the Nazis to Singapore and later, England. It wasn’t until much later in life he learned that many of his relatives perished in concentration camps.
Harrington’s dressing room was on the fourth floor of the Longacre Theatre, and Stoppard walked up all four floors to visit every dressing room and greet each actor.
“He is such a gem of a human being — alert and sharp and the sweetest man,” Harrington says.
On opening night, Stoppard gave individual cast and crew a bound copy of the British edition of the play with a handwritten note. Harrington’s read: “To Matt, Bravo! With love and thanks, Tom”
“You can’t beat that,” says the actor’s mom.
Harrington, 40, is no newcomer to Broadway. He had portrayed Mr. Wormwood, Matilda’s dad, in “Matilda the Musical” at Broadway’s Schubert Theatre from 2014 to 2016 and later on the national tour.
Earlier, he was in the Broadway casts of “Twelfth Night,” “Richard III” and had an understudy role in “Harvey.” He also has appeared in episodes of TV series and a recent N.Y. lottery commercial.
One of his memorable moments in “Matilda,” during which Mr. Wormwood has an informal exchange with a book lover in the audience, was calling on Hillary Clinton when she attended the show in 2015.
When the pandemic darkened theater lights in Manhattan, he waited it out, honing his cooking skills, baking bread, developing a green thumb for house plants, cashing his stimulus checks and focusing on self-taping auditions.
Harrington refers to it as his “mid-life retirement” in which every day was a re-run like the Bill Murray movie, “Groundhog Day.”
When word came on Oct. 9 that Krumholtz had tested positive for COVID, Harrington was caught by surprise.
He had been preparing for the understudy part, “but I didn’t think it would happen one week into our run.” Plus, his costumes weren’t even finished.
Because of the pandemic, the director had cast two understudies so the two actors split fill-in duties for nine shows.
“I was mortified. My stomach fell,” he says of getting the notice. He called an actor friend who helped talk him through it.
“It’s the scariest thing I’d ever done,” Harrington its. “You can study for the part, but there is no way to study for the fear.”
After doing it, however, he said it felt great. “The good news is the pressure of the sword of Damocles is not hanging over my head now.”
What’s more, everything went smoothly despite a momentary panic when he blanked on a line mid-speech, took a breath and instantly recovered. Surely no one in the audience noticed when he briefly set down a whiskey glass in the wrong place.
While Harrington tries to get back to San Diego at least twice a year, he is elated that Broadway is back following more than a year of Netflix.
“Now, more than ever, it’s nice to sit in a room with others and watch people tell a story live.”
