AUGUST 29, 1997 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

EVENINGS OUT

He's in two long-running shows, onstage and off

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Andrew Lloyd Webber has given worldwide audiences some of the longest-running musicals in theatrical history. Cats has far outlived its proverbial nine lives, Jesus Christ Superstar (and Ted Neely) has never needed a resurrection with a non-stop tour still in progress, and Phantom of the Opera is well on its way to setting many of its own longevity records.

Steven Stein-Grainger

Steven Stein-Grainger, who plays Piangi in the current tour of Phantom, knows all about longevity, especially when it comes to his 15-year relationship with his partner Jae Stein-Grainger.

Originally from Chicago, 38-year-old Stein-Grainger got his degree in music and musical theater from Northern Illinois University and moved on to star as a dancer at the Chicago City Ballet doing character roles. Arthritis caused Stein-Grainger to eventually turn to opera. He spent five years with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and was with the opera in San Francisco for another four years. "Since opera was not paying the bills," he said, "I auditioned for Cats, hoping not to get cast, but to get the casting director to listen to me."

Stein-Grainger didn't want to do Cats because it is his "least favorite musical."

"Thank God I didn't get in," he said. What Stein-Grainger did get from that audition was an audition with the people working with Phantom in Toronto. He landed the gig and spent a year and half there. After Toronto, Stein-Grainger moved to New York City where he has been for the last five years. He joined the current tour of Phantom five

months ago, straight off the Broadway cast of another Weber musical, Sunset Boulevard. He stayed with Sunset for two and a half years allowing him to play Max to all three of Broadway's Normas-Glenn Close, Betty Buckley and Elaine Page.

In Phantom Stein-Grainger plays Ubaldo Piangi, an Italian operatic tenor—a role SteinGrainger calls "wonderful and thankless."

"It's wonderful because I get to sing some high notes, I get to climb an elephant and I get killed at the end, all the time being funny and being very involved in the storyline," he said. "It's a thankless role because by the end no one remembers who I was, particularly since I spend my time on stage masked in a fat suit and other accoutrements. I am learning to get over the fact that it's not 'Piangi of the Opera.' I am older and wiser today, and I am not like many of the other opera cohorts, because it doesn't all have to be about me."

Stein-Grainger considers himself lucky that he makes his living doing what he loves, but the down side is that his career often keeps him at a distance from his partner Jae.

"It's difficult, but not impossible," Stein-Grainger says of their long-distance relationship. "The longest we have been without seeing one another is four months."

Stein-Grainger is doing the Phantom tour because he and Jae want to own a home. Regardless of where they decide to settle down, their long-standing partnership has made them into role models. "My older brother has been married five years and when he tells our mother of certain problems my mother tells him to look at Jae and Steven who have been together for fifteen years."

"Sometimes I can just stand back and look at the whole entity and in that light things like who cleans and who took out the garbage becomes so much more infinitesimal," he said.

Part of looking at this "being" from outside allows Stein-Grainger to express gratitude and humility. According to him, "As an actor I have a big old ego but I am also sensitive to the fact that I'm no big bargain and I can't believe that someone would put up with me for 15 years."

That fifteen years started when Steven was a waiter at Houlihan's in Chicago. Jae came in one day, noticed Steven and kept

coming back. Steven says that at first he didn't notice Jae and wasn't even sure Jae was gay.

i & Dry In

"You know when they're from the South, one can't tell if they're from the South or they're just gay," he joked.

Stein-Grainger has many jokes about their beginnings together.

“Jae would come in and order a piña colada and a well-done mushroom burger, and I'm sorry, but if you order meat well-done then you deserve the little briquette that comes with the plate," he said.

Steven convinced Jae to try the meat a bit

more rare.

"Had I been a vegan we'd never have met." When Steven met Jae he had just emerged from a really bad relationship and expected "a two-week fling with him at best.”

"Every anniversary since, Jae says, 'Happy two-week fling'."

The next step that Steven Stein-Grainger would like to have would be a principal role on Broadway.

"Even better, I would love to work on a new production and create a role from the ground up," he said. As a character actor, he is aware that he "will work for the rest of my life and I don't have to keep up the ingenue image."

"Besides," he continues with a laugh, “I

have Jae and don't have to be beautiful.”

Working in theater, Stein-Grainger can't help but be affected by the ongoing AIDS pandemic. He pointed to some disturbing trends which "amaze and frighten" him.

"When I look around me and see younger people in their 20s, I sense this attitude that says that this is an old man's disease," he said. "I know I have been lucky for meeting my life-partner early. I'll be honest and say that it would have been fun to go out with many people all these years, especially since sexuality is this gift that God gave us. But if you visualize quality, then you find what is good for you."

The AIDS crisis has made him and Jae "work harder to make and keep [the relationship] safe."

By his own estimates, Stein-Grainger seems to have found quality in what's good for him both personally and professionally. While Phantom has set a few records in terms of longevity, the Stein-Graingers are setting records of their own, letting people know that "family values" has everything to do with love, committment, perseverance and understanding, and little to do with gender or sexuality.

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