Leaning forward in his chair, actor Neil Intraub paused as he prepared to deliver the most dramatic line of his character's epic confession.
"I falsified the financial statements of the company," said Mr. Intraub, reciting a line once spoken by Scott Sullivan, the former chief financial officer of WorldCom Inc. The actor went on for about 2½ hours, explaining in Mr. Sullivan's own words how the executive had orchestrated the biggest accounting fraud in U.S. history.
Mr. Intraub usually appears in TV commercials and reads his own short stories in a West Village cafe. But in his latest gig, he had a lead role in an off-Broadway drama with a captive audience -- the jury at a civil trial in Manhattan federal court.
The 48-year-old actor got his starring role only when the man he is portraying didn't show up. Mr. Sullivan, who pleaded guilty to charges linked to WorldCom's $11 billion accounting fraud, took the Fifth Amendment in the class-action lawsuit in which WorldCom investors are suing Arthur Andersen LLC, the company's former accounting firm, for not catching the fraud.
When the previous testimony of a witness who isn't available needs to be read, the job usually falls to a lawyer, a paralegal or a court reporter. At the retrial of investment banker Frank Quattrone, for instance, the public prosecutor took on the role of the defendant, reprising testimony from Mr. Quattrone's first trial.
But some lawyers turn to professional actors to breathe life into the testimony. They are less likely to give a stiff reading that will put jurors to sleep. A civil trial of an insurance case now under way in federal court in Los Angeles featured actors reading the depositions of several witnesses who are overseas.
In the case of WorldCom, one member of the investors' legal team, led by Sean Coffey, is married to a student of voice coach David Zema. He lined up Mr. Intraub and Tony Scheinman, who played former WorldCom controller David Myers. Mr. Scheinman's recent gigs include playing Henry VIII in a commercial for the History Channel.
Mr. Intraub jumped at the chance to play a villain -- his first bad guy -- and gave up a vacation to give the performance, which paid about $1,000. His wife, Robyn Stein, hopes that the role leads to others. "I just want him to get a role on 'Law & Order,' " says Ms. Stein.
Oh, what a shabby little culture this is. We've stooped from Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller and Edward Albee to Scott Sullivan in just a couple of generations.
This is one of the cul-de-sacs where the culture war has taken us: from actors giving life to the great thoughts by the leading thinkers, to cheap dramatizations of our loutish corporate courtiers.
