There are 11 different characters in Thomas McCormack's comedy-drama Endpapers, and, most astoundingly, they're played by 11 different actors. And no, it's not a musical. In an age when playwrights daren't pen anything with more than a half-dozen roles in it (because producers won't produce anything with more than a pocketful of Equity salaries attached to it) we're reminded of just how much breathing room a full-size cast gives a dramatist. Though more than 2 ½ hours long, Endpapers zips by, not just because it tells a good story of two senior editors pitted against each other for the top slot of a struggling book company; not just because the slick, conniving editor (played with panache by Tim Hopper -- his best role to date) may be right for the job while the workaholic, ethical one (Bruce McCarty, equally excellent) displays enough leadership flaws to make us question why we root for him; not just because the author's fondness for wordplay (apt for the setting) only rarely comes off as too glib for the room; and not just because the denouement ties everything up in a gentle and surprisingly logical way. Endpapers also works because its author (whose decades as CEO of St. Martin's Press stole him away from playwriting) hasn't felt constrained by the newfangled penury of playmaking. If some supporting roles border on caricature (the two star clients of the firm shown here are a narcissistic, has-been actor-turned-autobiographer and a fey, Capote-esque quipmonger), the rest contribute to the milieu and enliven an atmosphere that would otherwise become hermetic. To make a long manuscript short, Endpapers is a page-turner worth its weight in gold leaf.
