Television Reviews : Improved Performances in ‘I Never Sang for My Father’

Harold Gould makes his lines sing in “I Never Sang for My Father” (tonight at 9 on Channels 28 and 15). As garrulous old Tom Garrison, filling up his declining years with self-important blather, bushy-browed Gould is alternately exasperating and amusing, but always fascinating. Just be grateful you’re watching him in a play, instead of coping with him in life.

For preserving this performance, and improving two others, we should be grateful for this installment of “American Playhouse,” directed at KCET by Jack O’Brien of San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre.

Dorothy McGuire has retained the sweetness inherent in Tom’s wife. But when she argues with her husband in a restaurant, her voice has a sharper edge than it had during the play’s run at the Ahmanson Theatre last winter. The prodigal daughter (Margo Skinner, still lively and vital) may have learned how to argue from her mother as well as her dad.

At the Ahmanson, Daniel J. Travanti’s put-upon son, Gene, faded too far into the woodwork in the first part of the play and then pushed too hard near the end. At one point in tonight’s show, his voice sounds as artificially intense as it did at the Ahmanson, but generally Travanti’s performance is much more carefully modulated here. And it’s easier to appreciate his baleful sidelong glances at his father when they’re in close-ups.

There are a few too many close-ups. Perhaps O’Brien was trying to duplicate the son’s feeling of confinement, but it makes for slow going through a few of the scenes.

Then again, perhaps the budget just wasn’t big enough to expand the frame. In the opening scene, much is made of a set of luggage, but the luggage remains unseen. Two exterior shots of the Garrison home hardly seem to match; the second view of the home makes it look much too California ranch-style. But one element of the set design nicely updates the 1968 play and also makes it more filmic--instead of speaking his narration to the audience, Tom speaks to himself as he types into a computer.