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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
In *Snakebit, *the p a st is prologue
BV JERRY TALLMER
Michael and Jonathan have been best
friends since the age of 13. Or were. Back in
school in Connecticut, Michael was the
sensitive, brooding one, Jonathan was the
jock. Michael would be forced to spend
whole afternoons watching Jonathan shoot
baskets. Not too many years after that,
Jonathan would be in awe of Michael’s
capabilities as a dancer.
That was a long time ago. Now Jonathan
and his wife Jenifer arc visitors at Michael’s
house in Los Angeles — the house that
Michael’s boyfriend has gone olT and left
Michael to brood in, alone. It’s been years
since Michael gave up dancing; he is now a
social worker, a very dedicated one, working
to give repair to “kids that eat cal food on
Sunday,” if indeed their home life hasn’t
delivered them, battered or otherwise abused,
to hospitals.
Jonathan the jock has become an actor,
or in any event the macho-type star of a film
called “Brute Force II," and is now tensely
s w e a lin g
out more
work along
those or any
Vltirtisri
THEATER
o t h e r
c in e m a tic
lines. In his
monumental scif-invoivcment, leaping
toward every ring of the telephone, he’s
pretty unconscious of anything else that’s
happening around him, including the near
crackup of wife Jenifer in her anxiety over the
months-Iong illness and weight-loss of their
10-ycar-old daughter back in New York.
One of the other things Jonathan docs
not know is that the last woman Michael
ever slept with, 11 years ago, was Jenifer.
That’s putting the structure a lot more
bluntly than it emerges with subtle, humane,
mlricale interplay in “Snakebit," the olTBroadway winner by David Marshall Grant
— an actor himself, though not in this one
— that in its Naked Angels production has
graduated from the 74-scat Grove Street
Playhouse to an extended run at the 299-seat
Century Center on E. 15th St.
There’s something about playwright
Grant, with his clean, handsome all-American
face and his earnest hom-rimmed glasses,
that’s evocative of, oh, the young William
Holden of “Bom Yesterday,” taking Judy
Holiday to learn what the Lincoln Memorial
is all about — though Grant isn’t really all
that young.
He was bom in New Haven in the summer
of 1955, the son of intcmist/ncphrologist,
James Grant and pediatrician Arlinc Lemer
Grant, who’d first met one another at
Columbia University Mod School.
“Snakebit,” says its author, is a play of
winners (Jonathan) and losers (Michael),
because “this is a very win/losc country” —
or, seen another way, it’s “a play about
someone [Michael] who’s stuck in life, and
is romanticizing what it is to be stuck
The outlines first came into Grant’s
head, he says, about a dozen years ago,
when he himself, a decade out of Yale Drama
School and far more a Michael than a
Jonathan, felt stuck in life, mired
unsuccessfully in Hollytvood — and not yet
quite ready to step all the way out of the
closet.
“I started thinking: What happens to
Villagtr photo byJaet Altsandtr
David Alan Baschc, left, Geoffrey NaufTts and Jodie Markell play old friends caught in
a web of secrets in ^*Snakcbit”
friendships when great things happen to
one person and terrible things happen to
another?"
Plus one other factor: “Being
preoccupied with the unfairness of life.”
What that meant, close to home, was that
multiple sclerosis had pul someone he dearly
loved in a wheelchair ever since David had
been a kid grpwing up in Westport, Conn.
The person who pointed that kid toward
the theater had been A1 Pia, a “genius drama
teacher" at Staples High School. After a year
at Connecticut College, Da\id followed his
heart to Yale Drama School (under Robert
Brustein), and out of that came a part in
Martin Sherman’s “Bent" at the Eugene
O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference in New
London,
When “Bent" moved to Broadway —
starring Richard Gere - David Grant went
with it, and remained with that show for a
year as the chap who gels beat up by Nazis
on the train to Dachau. The decade in which
Grant would get beat up by Hollywood
immediately followed.
“ Snakebit" has had several incarnations
before this one, starting in 1993 at the
Remains Theater in Chicago. It was there
that a call came out of the blue — “God
knows how, the luckiest day in my life" — to
audition in a hcadcd-for-Hcw York work by
Tony Kushner called “Angels in America."
The part was that of Joe Pitt — “the
uptight Mormon husband who’s
homosexual and doesn’t admit it" — and
Grant’s performance, even as he himself was
nudging open the door of that closet, earned
him a Tony Award nomination.
The long run in that drama brought
Grant back to New York. He now lives on the
Upper West Side with a companion of whom
he chooses only to say: “Oh no, not another
actor — that’s all that matters.”
Everything in the plot of “Snakebit" is
imaginary, says the playwright — “1 never
slept with my best friend’s girl” — except, of
course, for the moral questioning, the
alertness, and the sensibility of its characters,
or some of them. Which means all but
Jonathan.
“Yet I have a fondness even for
Jonathan," says Grant. “People who read
the play say, ‘Oh, Jonathan — such an
asshole.’ Then they come sec it, and
suddenly he becomes their favorite character
in the show. The interesting thing is that
he’s the only one who always tells the truth
— and the only one the two others, Michael
and Jenifer, keep secrets from."
The Jonathan at Century Center is Da rid
Alan Baschc, recently much admired in a
very un-Jonathan role opposite Eli Wallach
in “Visiting Mr. Green." The Michael is
GcolVrcy Naulfts, the Jenifer is Jodie Markcll,
and Michael Weston rounds out the cast as
a mysterious young man who drops in
disturbingly in the second act. Direction is
by Jacc Alexander.
Da\id Marshall Grant has a new play in
the works, “Current Events" — says it’s
“about a local politician’s relationships with
his family." Wliich opens some interesting
prospects.
And he’s written a screenplay entitled
“Fuzzy Logic" — “a Hollywood love story'
set in the computer world, except that instead
ofRichardGereand Julia Roberts, it’s Richard
Gere and Matt Damon."
Maybe Jonathan from “Snakebit" and
“Brute Force 11" could play both of them.
Snakebitf at the Century Center^ III
E, ISth St., open-ended run, Tue.-Sat. 8
p.nu, Sun., 7p.m., mats. Sai. & Sun., 3 p.m.,
$]7.S0-$47.S0, aS9-6200.
‘Admissions* gets
extended run
“Admissions," written by Tony
Velella and directed by Austin
Pendleton, will continue to run through
Mar. 31, the Blue Heron Theatre
apnounccd. Previously set to close
on the 28'^ “Admissions" is the story
of a diverse group of student leaders
who take over the offices of their
college president, The play runs Fri.Sat., 8 p.m., and Sun., 3 p.m; 332-0027.
ARTSBEAT
BY TRACI KAMPEL
THE EYEBROWS HAVE
IT... You’d think the man who penned
such literary masterpieces as “The
E xecutioner’s Song" and “The
Naked and the Dead" would consider
his brain, or at least his typing hand,
his best feature. Not so, Norman
Mailerwouldhavc us believe. Mailer
and his wife, the painter Norris
Church, have apparently decided to
swap mediums: she’s now billing
herself as a writer, he’s now calling
him self a painter A painter of
eyebrows, to be more specific.
M ailer’s sclf-portrail.s virtually
ignore his other facial components,
showcasing instead, in a rather
im pressionistic
manner,
the
protective strips of hair above his
peepers. As one puiA’cyor described
the pieces, “ Eyebrows arc
everything." It’s not something you
hear everyday....W ebster Hall
presents an exhibit of the strange
choice of subject this Fri., Mar* 19,
after 10p.m. 125E. IIlhSt , 353-1600.
LIFE ON THE STREETS...
Undeniably among the top 10 most
irritating things about Downtown
cultural life is the not just slim but
em aciated chance of acquiring
tickets to anything at the Angelika
unless you camp out foniiours ahead
of time. Now though, there’s a
consolation prize and maybe c\en a
non-cincmatic reason to trek to
M crccr and Houston. Newlyinstalled at the artsy, coffee-andmuffin-serving theater is “Houston
Street," a 40-ft. painting on five panels
by Craig Kane, who presents
Downtown sidewalk goings-on with
a hint of whimsy. That’s quite a coup
for the 33-ycar-old Brooklyn-based
artist, and not one he achieved easily.
The panels, each one 8x7 ft., were
difticult to get through the door of
his studio, and too big to lay fiat,
which meant he nc\’cr saw the entire
work until it was in place at the
Angelika. The creation, done in oil
paint, will hang permanently along
with some of K ane’s sm aller
offerings.
THE ICE MAN PAINTHTH...
Conjure a famous artist at work and
h e ’s probably wearing paintsplattered overalls, an ensemble of
all black, a bandana perhaps, maybe
a nice beret or ripped jeans ..but a
New York Rangers jersey? It’s true,
says artnet.com, at least in the case
0 f Leo Castelli vc t Frank Stella The
man is a die-hard Rangers fan who
actually said, "Only two things in my
life matter One is my art, the other arc
the New York Rangers."
GOOD WILL SMITH...In a
shocking turn o f events. Will
Smith’s next blockbuster may ha\c
nothing at all to do with aliens. Smith,
the one-time Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,
a former Man in Black and a July 4
savior of the earth, is allegedly
hammering out the details of a project
with Dreamworks that would put a
film about Muhammad AH upon the
big screen in the near future. What
seems to be holding up the process
is the stipulation upon which Smith
insists- that Ali be paid a $3 million
consulting fee. Such an insistence is
particularly admirable since, if the
deal fails, Smith walks away from the
$20 million he’s usually paid for
Conlimicd on ya^e 33