Pittsburgh man is thrown into the fire on Broadway

A month ago, Nick Lehane got a surprise text at noon: He might be needed to go on that night as Warren, the hapless teenager played by Michael Cera, media darling and star of “This Is Our Youth,” itself the media darling of the early Broadway year.

An hour before the show, it was definite. There wasn’t time for a full rehearsal with the other two stars, Kieran Culkin and Tavi Gevinson. Nor was there time to notify his parents back in Pittsburgh, director and CMU professor Gregory Lehane and actor Laurie Klatscher, so they could get to New York to see him.

It was, after all, his Broadway debut.

That’s how it goes for understudies, unheralded in the media coverage, which for this show had been a press agent’s dream — Mr. Cera on the “Today” show and the “Late Show With David Letterman,” Ms. Gevinson on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Sunday Morning,” Mr. Culkin on “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” cover stories in New York and Time Out New York and feature articles in Time, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Variety, Rolling Stone, etc., etc.

“Unheralded” is an understudy’s middle name, even though they usually do more work than the stars — twice as much in Mr. Lehane’s case, since he understudies both Mr. Cera and Mr. Culkin, which means knowing both halves of many long exchanges, both verbal and physical (there are fights).

This is the Broadway debut for Mr. Cera, Mr. Culkin and Ms. Gevinson, as well. They’re deservedly the stars (see accompanying review), but their fame wasn’t earned on stage. They benefited from long rehearsals and a seven-week summer run at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre; Mr. Cera and Mr. Culkin also did it in Australia in 2012. Mr. Lehane, on the other hand, was thrown into the fray without much rehearsal, in front of a Broadway audience deprived of one of the stars.

He can do it because he was trained, both back home in Pittsburgh and in an active off- and off-off-Broadway career in the few years since he graduated. Also required is lots of energy for the “waiting, waiting like a race horse. They expect you to be ready as soon as your feet have done the blocking once.”

But Mr. Lehane must also have some deep reserve of calm and self-assurance. That certainly seemed the case a week or so after his debut, when we went to Sardi’s (my treat — he’d never been there) to talk.

Actually, Mr. Lehane made his stage debut abroad — playing a sheep in a Paris preschool, age 3. (French sheep say, “ma! ma!”) About age 10, he was in “Hapgood” at Quantum, “Cryptogram” at City Theatre and “Hidden Children” at the JCC. In high school he did some commercials, plus the famed Schenley musicals, playing Danny in “Grease.”

Still, his theatrical parents tried gently to dissuade him from making it a career (“Mom really encouraged me when I did science”), but he got into Carnegie Mellon and the die was cast.

Arriving in New York he took every job that came along: the full list of projects he was involved in has 36 titles. His very first was a tour with “me, a woman and a hand-puppet,” puppetry having been an early interest in Pittsburgh. And you never know: from playing Pegasus in one off-Broadway black box theater, he got a manager, and that manager got him the audition for “This Is Our Youth.” The final audition was on film, sent to the director who was staging the show in Chicago.

Mr. Lehane credits Pittsburgh not just for his training but its vibrant professional theater scene in general. “There are lots of examples of people making professional careers as actors.”

This Broadway run is slated to end Jan. 4, because the stars have other commitments. Mr. Lehane hopes that his experience will recommend him to the major regional theaters that might do the play, so he can do it for real, rehearsals and all. Of the two roles, he thinks Warren might ultimately fit him best.

But who knows? On Saturday he had to go on in mid-play for Mr. Culkin, playing the other role, Dennis, and then he did the whole show at the Sunday matinee. Again there wasn’t time for his parents to come see him. But he was ready.