CABLE MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Tidy Endings’ Sunday on HBO Deals With Grief After AIDS Death

A man dies of AIDS, and his ex-wife (Stockard Channing) and lover (Harvey Fierstein) meet to divvy up his belongings. So goes “Tidy Endings,” an hourlong one-act on Home Box Office cable Sunday at 9 p.m.

Fierstein originally wrote “Tidy Endings” as the concluding segment of his 1987 Broadway trilogy “Safe Sex.” Here the beginning has been opened up to include shots of the AIDS victim’s funeral, and the bulk of the dialogue has been set in a colorful post-modern apartment. But the play remains a play, for the most part: two people talking about their mutual grief and debating whether it’s really all that mutual.

Fierstein’s character, who nursed his friend during the last years of his life, resents the woman’s appropriation of widowhood. The woman gamely takes most of his criticisms on the chin. Then, near the end, she unloads a whammy of a revelation that balances the emotional scales more evenly.

Both characters are almost too exemplary; there isn’t a venal bone in either of them. But Fierstein’s speeches are pumped up to showcase his ability to shift moods suddenly. One minute, he’s lacerating his listener with righteous indignity; the next, he’s cracking little jokes about his weight. It’s a tad showy and self-indulgent.

Nonetheless, Fierstein and Channing bring conviction to the play, and eventually it becomes a passionate appeal for conciliation and respect in the face of the plague.

Gavin Millar directed.