TV Reviews : ‘Clara’ a Wrenching Work by Arthur Miller

A new play by Arthur Miller, “Clara,” dramatizing a father’s repressed psyche and hidden prejudices at the scene of his daughter’s murder, launches Playwrights Theater tonight on A&E; cable at 6 with a repeat broadcast at 10.

In what is essentially a short two-act play, Darren McGavin is the traumatized father and William Daniels a cynical and masterful interrogator who leads the father on a journey of self-discovery. The identity of the unseen suspect is unraveled but it is only the means to a larger end. Playwright Miller, who is 75, is once again dealing with themes of guilt and responsibility and the endless human possibilities for self-betrayal and heroism.

The production, directed by Burt Brinckerhoff, is spare and unwavering and, curiously, it even has the tone of 1950s Golden Age television drama in its hermetic focus, which is refreshing on the small screen.

The action is set entirely in the sitting room of the daughter’s New York apartment, where the father and police walk in on the young woman’s brutalized corpse (collage-like jump cuts of the pretty woman and her mangled body mirror the horrific imagery in the father’s mind).

McGavin’s character is a white construction worker with a knot of racial prejudices who has fought all his life to be liberal. He recounts a wonderful Army story of saving blacks from a lynching in World War II Mississippi. But clearly he is at racial war with himself.

As the detective (who’s part Greek chorus) orchestrates the questioning, we see a father who wanted to warn his social-worker daughter to stay away from a Puerto Rican ex-con boyfriend who had served time for murder.

The racial overtones of his daughter’s murder and the father’s breakdown and wrenching psychological breakthrough finally enable the dad to unblock his repressions. McGavin’s pain and turmoil are uncomfortably credible but it is Daniels as the world-weary detective who makes the production work.