TV Reviews : Steamy Tennessee Williams Play on A

Lesley Ann Warren, in a dangerous role for any actress, is watchable, fragile and unself-consciously erotic as the dimheaded, childlike wife in Tennessee Williams’ short play, “27 Wagons Full of Cotton” (tonight at 6 and again at 10 on the Arts & Entertainment cable channel).

This early Williams’ one-act is the play that developed into the controversial 1956 Elia Kazan film, “Baby Doll,” which made a star of Carroll Baker and triggered a condemnation by the Legion of Decency.

The good news is that the work still sizzles in this American Playwrights Theater production, which co-stars Ray Sharkey and Peter Boyle.

Warren, spilling out of her cotton house dresses, catches the vulnerability and innocence of a prototypical Tennessee Williams’ woman--one who’s utterly destructible.

The play, which is basically one big seduction scene, breezes by in 45 minutes and features solid performances from Boyle’s blustery husband and Sharkey’s smarmy business rival.

Warren’s eye-rolling and giggles, characteristics of the bored wife called Flora, never descend into the cliches that have plagued many other actresses in this role. And Sharkey is a surprise here if you’re used to thinking of him as the mob boss on “Wiseguy.”

Sharkey and Warren’s lascivious scene on a porch swing is steamy in an especially insidious context that is calibrated with perfect pitch by director Don Scardino.