TV Review : ‘New Light’ on AIDS an Ambitious Special

You have to cheer ABC for turning over two hours of prime time for the ambitious, often sexually explicit “In a New Light ‘94,” the third annual entertainment and information special on AIDS.

On the other hand, given the show’s report that half of all AIDS cases hit youths from ages 15 to 24, you can only decry the Saturday night time slot when many young people might be out of the house.

AIDS “has become the background of our life,” says host Barbara Walters. Yet, she says, “we have seen an apathy growing, amazingly of boredom, with the discussion of AIDS itself.”

This production replaces apathy with passion, musical and otherwise, and is alertly edited, cutting between incisive facts and entertainment. A major theme of “In a New Light”--directed by Lauren Harris and written by Danny Lemos, producer Joseph F. Lovett and Madalyn Minch--is condom safety. In one lively scene, Youthwave, a group of HIV-positive young adults, demonstrates how to apply a latex condom, as wide-eyed students in a high school auditorium look on.

Throughout the program, there is great music with performances from, among others, country singers Clint Black and Kathy Mattea, jazz great Jimmy Scott, Lou Reed, Lisa Minnelli, Chaka Khan, Gloria Estefan, Michael Feinstein. The Seattle-based rock band Rumors of the Big Wave performs a ribald, safe-sex number, “Love Glove,” and closes the program with the stirring “I Choose Life,” during which celebrities call out the names of loved ones who have died of AIDS-related illnesses. Rather than arch sentimentality, it works dramatically.

Personal commentaries from, among others, Rosie Perez, Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, Gregory Hines, Susan Lucci, Bebe Neuwirth and Dr. Ruth Westheimer are illuminating, incisive and often funny. Singer Lou Reed candidly says, “I believe trying to set your life in order is a very good thing to do. I’m not here because I’m smart. I’m here because I’m lucky.”

What lingers are the courageous portraits, none more touching than the profile of the late Broadway conductor James Raitt, taped shortly before his death last April and emotionally riveting in its depiction of an ebullient Raitt expressing the powerful effect of attitude during rehearsals for Broadway’s “Damn Yankees.”

One AIDS survivor in Gotham, Peter Jablonski, displays a Rolodex half-filled with cards of his dead friends. Spiritually dead, he’s given a new lease on life by the love and grace of heterosexual friends who ask him to help raise their young son. Carrying the little boy around New York on his shoulders, the ghost of Jablonski rises from the ash heap.

“It’s possible to lose everything and everyone you love,” he says, “and still go on and have a wonderful life.” * “In a New Light ‘94” airs at 8 tonight on ABC Channel 7.