Spending a summer evening in Greenwich Village can be delightful, especially if one heads for the Barrow Street Theater in the heart of the Village, to see Orson’s Shadow, the new, thoughtful comedy by Austin Pendleton.  Mr. Pendleton, perhaps because he himself is both an acting teacher and an actor himself on stage and screen, understands well great stars like Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier.  (He worked with Welles on the film “Catch 22,” playing his nerdy son, and had little respect for the star until later, when he saw Welles’ film masterpieces “The Magnificent Ambersons” and ”Touch of Evil.”)

“Orson’s Shadow” is based on an actual event in theater history: Welles (Jeff Still) directed Olivier (John Judd) in the production of Ionesco’s “The Rhinoceros” at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1960.What makes this play outstanding in addition to the dialogue, fitting at once the personality and the star status of the speaker, is also the complex characterization.  With each man, author Pendleton captures not only the myth but the man.  It is not only the specific and recognizable star in each but also a man who has reached the heights and is now looking not up, but down, fearful of the decline that inevitably lies ahead.

As narrator and also as a character in the action, Tracy Letts is outstanding as Kenneth Tynan, the drama critic who aspired to be the dramaturge of the then new National Theatre of which Olivier had been named director.  Arranging to have Welles direct Olivier in the new play, Tynan feels, would strengthen his chances of getting the job.  The success of the venture also should bolster the reputations of both Welles and Olivier, whose stardom needed a boost at the time.  What Mr. Pendleton manages to capture in the characterization of each is both the self-importance as well as the fear that failure might spell the beginning of the descent.  Welles sums it up when he complains that all his work after “Citizen Kane” is weighed and found wanting compared to “a work I directed from my highchair.” 

During the rehearsal, the two personalities are destined to clash.  They have been rivals in acting Shakespeare and at the time of the rehearsal are both attempting to raise money for a film of one of the plays, Olivier for “Macbeth,” and Welles for “Chimes at Midnight,” in which he would play Falstaff in this combination of both parts of “King Henry IV” and “King Henry V.”   Olivier had made an acclaimed, Oscar-winning “Hamlet,” and will film his stage “Othello,” a role Welles had played on stage and would be filming, having also filmed “Macbeth.”  Besides their rivalry, Olivier at the time has been going through an emotional wringer in his marriage to unstable Vivien Leigh (Lee Roy Rogers) and is now having a relationship with younger actress Joan Plowright (Susan Bennett), soon to be his second wife.  Both appear in “Orson’s Shadow,” Joan in rehearsal with Olivier, who continually forgets his lines or attempts to restage the scene, while Orson explodes with impatience.  Vivien arrives uninvited, and a touching scene with her and Olivier helps to explain his emotional distress, while also creating sympathy for him.

Directed by David Cromer, the ensemble playing of the cast is excellent in this witty, affectionate, and penetrating work.  (Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow Street, New York, N.Y. phone: 212-239-6200)