I'm not sure if Encores still uses understudies. As I said, I haven't been to a production of theirs in years. (I was planning to see LOVE LIFE, but we all know how that turned out.) Nowadays, it seems like Encores is doing fully staged productions. Back in the early days and into the mid/late 2000s, the productions really were semi-staged concerts, with performers on book. Blocking and choreography were usually minimal unless a show (like CHICAGO) really called for it. I'm guessing understudies, most if not all of whom were also choristers, were minimally rehearsed, and if they had to go on, they could perform script-in-hand.