TV REVIEW : Tapping Ore in Williams’ ‘Last Summer’

Suddenly, television is making one of Tennessee Williams’ lesser works reasonably respectable.

*

Tonight’s “Great Performances” (at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28, 8 p.m. on KPBS-TV Channel 15 and KVCR-TV Channel 24) offers a version of “Suddenly Last Summer” that owes its sparkle to a pair of outstanding performances.

The fetid climate of the play remains as blatantly overheated as ever, but this Southern melodrama is made intriguing by Maggie Smith as the imperious Mrs. Venable and, above all, by Natasha Richardson’s immaculate performance as Catharine Holly, the cousin and sometime companion of Venable’s son, the mysterious Sebastian, who died suddenly on a beach the previous summer.

The manner of his death has Catharine’s mind spinning and tongue wagging--enough for Venable mere to martial her considerable resources to try to shut her up.

Unlike the film version that starred Elizabeth Taylor as Catharine, there is no effort here to expand the piece by showing us Sebastian or the beach where he died. Director Richard Eyre of Britain’s Royal National Theatre takes his cue from the play. He confines the action to an antebellum porch, relying on his actors to deliver the very long speeches--including, of all people, Rob Lowe as the doctor Mrs. Venable hopes to bribe into lobotomizing Catharine.

It is a credit to all that one finds oneself absorbed in the Gothic tale that crosses Catharine’s lips. Thanks for that are due to Richardson’s elegant and bright portrayal. She holds us in thrall with a story that, in lesser hands, would be unbearably soapy. Single-handedly, she elevates the drama by presenting a vibrant young woman traumatized by events, rather than one destroyed by them.

Richardson, who has her mother Vanessa Redgrave’s high-cheekboned beauty and classic grace, bristles with intelligence. Her Catharine is a commanding and unrepentant witness who will not be silenced by Sebastian’s domineering mother, the threatening presence of the doctor, the venal 2003399528and brother (Moira Redmond and Richard E. Grant) or the much keener pain of her own tortured memory.

Eyre, to his credit, has surrounded Richardson with unintrusive support, playing down the cartoonish aspects of the leeching Redmond and Grant, insisting that Lowe’s doctor remain subdued and extracting a performance from the majestic Smith without idiosyncratic excess. Once again, the remove of a British director and actors has tapped hidden ore in an American playwright.