Definition of an understudy...

I was all excited to go to opening night of Dr Zhivago - a world premiere musical. Once we were seated we were told by the producer that Anthony Warlow had injured himself that day in rehearsal.We were pretty gutted, we are all big Anthony Warlow fans.

The producer then went on to say that the understudy and cast would perform "about half an hour" of the show and we would all get a refund/exchange on our ticket.

To me, this is peculiar behaviour for opening night of a professional production. Why is the understudy not ready to go on?! Isn't that by definition the role of an understudy? We could only speculate as to the reason/s why he was not fully ready but in my opinion it was a poor decision.

Now we have seen the first 45 minutes of the show and the cast did a great job and Anton (the "true Russian" understudy) is clearly a talented performer. I was just not into it because I knew it would end abruptly. And because we were told it would be half an hour it felt very long.

I will be exchanging my ticket rather than refunding it and I hope this poor decision doesn't hurt them in the long run.