TV REVIEW : ‘Dragons’ Captures Life’s Blows

“TNT Screenworks,” the TV marquee for playwrights that made a strong debut last month with David Mamet’s “The Water Engine,” continues to impress with its second showcase, Horton Foote’s Southern family drama, “The Habitation of Dragons” (on TNT tonight at 5, 7 and 9 p.m.).

The terrific ensemble cast includes Frederic Forrest (in a searing performance), Jean Stapleton, Maureen O’Sullivan, Pat Hingle and the late Brad Davis, who completed the movie shortly before his death a year ago today. He delivers an uncharacteristically soothing, gentle performance as Forrest’s younger brother.

The territory is characteristic Foote country: small-town southern Texas, the milieu celebrated in the playwright’s “The Trip to Bountiful” and “Tender Mercies.” Here ordinary people, a family sprawling with hangers-on and ghosts of the past, habituate with the dragons of betrayal, rivalry, lust and murder. Ultimately, when all the shock and anguish, including the drowning of two children, are laid to rest, the characters learn forgiveness by embracing humility and compassion. Foote took his title from a verse in the Book of Isaiah: “In the habitation of dragons where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.”

Set in 1935 (and shot in Seely, Tex.), the production is redolent of a diminishing world of quaint eccentrics, Victorian houses, wide front porches and sweeping lawns. In one of those homes, a two-story, white-and-blue picture-book house, the Tollivar family is living a Gothic tale.

At first, the comings and goings at the Tollivar spread seem confusing, the characters unfocused. But quickly enough, under the direction of Michael Lindsay-Hogg (“Brideshead Revisited”), the faces and anxieties assume sharp identities.

The play catches life’s rapid, unforeseen blows, which rain down like curses fated to be repeated from the family’s past. The sweet, fluttery family matriarch (Stapleton) helplessly watches her brood slide from one trauma into another.

Somehow, Foote, comprehending that every family has an off year, makes it all seem natural.