By Harry Haun
26 Apr 2004

Arnold doesn't know what hat—dancer or choreographer—he'll wear next. "I used to have a real battle with that, because I used to think of it as an either/or proposition, but I don't look at it that way right now," he admitted. "I want to work in either field if I'm lucky enough to work on great projects. This one was fun. When they'd ask, `Does anyone tumble?,' I stopped putting my hand up years ago, and then my agents called me and said, `Well, David Leveaux is directing, and it's Tom Stoppard's Jumpers. I said, `Okay, I tumble.' To work with them, I was more than happy to throw a little flip in there."

The job description for the jumpers was pretty rangy—one of them does a speed-up walk of evolution from ape to Tarzan—and Arnold says the casting director threw a wide net: "It's really an eclectic group—Shakespearean actors and singers and gymnasts and dancers—and they just pulled everybody's specialty from them. They said, `We'll try it.'"

Glenn Close was in attendance, and not because of her contribution to the Tarzan myth (20 years ago she dubbed Andie MacDowell's voice in "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes"). "Essie Davis is a great friend of mine," she said. (And a great, Olivier Award-winning Stella to Close's Blanche in London's last A Streetcar Named Desire.)

Close, who owes her 1984 Tony to Stoppard's The Real Thing, says her next stage stint will be A Little Night Music, which she sees coming together two years down the road.

The Glass Menagerie, which Close was once to do in London, will likely be done by Leveaux on Broadway—but he's not promising. "Honestly, we start talking tomorrow about what's next, because I deliberately couldn't commit to anything immediately after Jumpers. It has been a fairly remorseless schedule" [and it tail-gated his Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof]. "I'm not sure, but I think I would probably like to do Menagerie with Jessica Lange. We're not fixed on that yet, despite what the New York Post has to say"—there's a laugh and an edge here—"as usual, in total command of the facts. "

Subtext: "Knuckles" Leveaux and Post reporter Michael Riedel had a much-publicized donnybrook at Angus McIndoe's restaurant the night Fiddler opened over some of Reidel's needling. Unfortunately, the director left the next day for London to start rehearsing Jumpers and missed his status as a folk hero in the theatre community. "Chita Rivera called me," he said, "She said, `There may be street parties when you get back.'"