The Assays of Elia

By Paul Gray

THE UNDERSTUDY by ELIA KAZAN

347 pages. Stein & Day. $8.95.

As a director, Elia Kazan earned a niche in theatrical history with considerable help from classic scripts (Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire) and talented actors (Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Lee J. Cobb). Kazan's second career in the solitary business of writing has so far resulted in three commercially successful novels that tend to thrash about in alien corn. There is nothing wrong with The Understudy, for instance, that a good script and some believable characters would not help.

Such problems are doubly disappointing because Kazan has tackled a subject on which he qualifies as an expert: actors. Sonny, 54, broke into Broadway as the understudy for Sidney Castleman (ne Schlossberg), a much bellied matinee idol 20 years his senior. Now the worm has turned. Castleman is on the skids, sponging off Sonny while sneering at him as a "mechanical rabbit," a thespian technocrat devoid of true passion. To top it all, Castleman involves Sonny in a gang war between black hoodlums and a Polish mobster. But Sonny simply loves the old gaffer all the more.

Instead of seeing an analyst, Sonny goes off on an African safari. While watching the lions gnaw on bits of zebras and wildebeests, he ponders the survival of the fittest and all the superb reasons for putting Castleman behind him. But it is no use. Only Castleman's death will release the younger man from his loyal bondage. Even worse, only Castleman's death, which does not oocur until seven pages from the end, releases readers from one of the more tiresome fictional presences in recent memory.

The wheel-of-fortune theme is always potentially intriguing (Who's up? Who's down?), and the acting profession, with its embattled loyalties and ulcerous rivalries, is a better place than most to find it. Kazan, however, rarely trusts his material to stand on its own. He piles up absurdities, apparently hoping that someone will say, "I couldn't put it down." On one page Castleman kisses Sonny's hand, then "wallops" him across the face on the next.

Save for a few anecdotes about Marlon Brando, the novel skimps on backstage gossip and theatrical lore. One of Sonny's more probing thoughts about his profession is "Crap's better in an English accent." Maybe. Laurence Olivier reading The Understudy aloud might improve it, but not enough.

PauI Gray

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.