Vanessa, Florida and Tennessee : TNT Opens Up The Famous Playwright’s ‘Orpheus Descending’

“There she is,” someone murmured.

Vanessa Redgrave made her entrance, briskly walking onto a small PBS sound stage with cigarette in hand. She seemed tired and frail--even vulnerable. Her red hair was dyed a brassy blond.

Wearing dark brown contacts over her blue eyes, bedroom slippers and a frumpy black dress with a multicolored print, the actress looked like she stepped out of a Tennessee Williams play. And she had.

Redgrave reluctantly had come in this Sunday morning, her one day off, to pose for publicity photos for TNT’s production of Williams’ drama “Orpheus Descending” (it premieres on the cable network Monday night). Despite her rather sullen demeanor, Redgrave began to cross her eyes and mug for the camera. A small group of onlookers laughed at her clowning.

Later, she slowly moved to talk to a reporter while the crew readied the next setup. “Don’t sit on the stool,” she said maternally, bringing over a chair. “This is much more comfortable.”

Last year, Redgrave, 52, scored a hit in “Orpheus” in London and on Broadway, playing Lady Torrance, a lonely Sicilian immigrant wife whose life changes when a stranger (Kevin Anderson) wanders into the tiny Mississippi town where she lives.

Earlier this year, Redgrave, Anderson and director Sir Peter Hall came to Jacksonville to film “Orpheus” for TNT.

The shooting schedule had been grueling--six days a week with Redgrave in practically every scene. Still, she said, “I am very, very glad we are doing this film for TV. Tennessee always wrote for film.

“If a film tries to take away most of his dialogue--because films are supposed to have less dialogue--you immediately lose what makes him wonderful for film, that is, his stories and the way they develop and the characters’ thoughts and situations. This is very far from being a film of the stage production. This is bringing it to completely new life.”

George Manasse, the producer of “Orpheus,” said he found Redgrave “a consummate professional.”

“She damaged her knee on Broadway and had microsurgery on it,” he said. “I was slightly concerned, but the other day she had a scene on her knees and I came in and she was kneeling on the concrete floor. There is tremendous dedication there.”

That dedication helped make “Orpheus” a critical and commercial hit on both sides of the Atlantic, though the original 1957 Broadway production closed after just 68 performances. Even the 1959 film version, “The Fugitive Kind,” which starred Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward, failed.

Redgrave credits not herself, but today’s audiences.

“I think audiences, which are just living people, have caught up with the times they are in,” Redgrave said. “There was a lag. So when a writer writes something, and they say he’s ahead of his time, it’s the other people who are still behind. But then you have a big leap. You suddenly haven’t a limited audience anymore, but a large audience for ideas which were first expressed a long time before.”

Throughout the interview, Redgrave spoke softly, rarely making eye contact. She nervously kneaded her thighs. She seemed concerned that her politics would be the main subject of discussion.

Redgrave’s controversial political beliefs have nearly overshadowed her numerous artistic successes. A member of England’s radical Workers Revolutionary Party, she caused a furor after her 1978 Oscar acceptance speech (for “Julia”) when she called Jewish protesters “Zionist hoodlums.” Her convictions have cost her jobs.

Redgrave now refuses to discuss politics or her personal life with the media and insists most journalists sign a contract agreeing to these terms (though no contract was required for this interview). Her self-imposed silence, though, has paid off. She now works almost nonstop.

So what drew her to “Orpheus Descending”?

Redgrave looked down at her dress and smoothed it.

“The story tells, and the particular characters show, an extraordinary understanding of the situation of dispossessed people. The Sicilian dispossessed can’t find jobs or keep their families together and have to immigrate to America to find a life.

“They can’t find (the life) here and become trapped. This (situation) comes together with the situation of the Indian people and the black American people and the situation of poor white sharecroppers, which is a reflection of the vestiges of a feudal society still there (in the South)at the time he (Williams) wrote it.”

Redgrave glanced up from her dress. “One of the wonderful things about doing this for TV is that it’s going to mean people are going to see this story they don’t know,” she said. “People (will become acquainted)with the writing of this man. People know his name, but it doesn’t mean very much to them because they don’t see his writing anymore in the theater. It’s important.”

Redgrave suddenly stopped. “What time is it?,” she asked. “I have to leave at 2 p.m.” Someone checked a watch, saying it was nearly time to go. She smiled a smile of relief. The interview was over and she could get back to work.

“Orpheus Descending” airs on TNT Monday at 5 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.; Tuesday at 7 a.m.; Saturday at 7 p.m., and Sept. 30 at 1:30 p.m.