We’ll know soon enough–and not just about Thompson’s play. “Wit” is one of two Pulitzer Prize winners adapted for TV this month. ABC will debut the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific,” starring Glenn Close and Harry Connick Jr., on March 26. PBS has just launched a new theatrical division called Stage on Screen that both adapts plays and broadcasts live performances. There’s even a fledgling network devoted to pay-per-view specials of Broadway shows. Is there an audience to sustain the Great Broadcast Way? That remains to be seen. But at the moment there are almost as many theater openings on television as you’ll find in some seasons on Broadway.
Theater on TV is hardly new. ABC has had great success recently with musicals like “Annie” and “Cinderella,” and cable and PBS have long shown a smattering of plays. From the ’50s to the ’70s, even the networks did some theatrical adaptations. But that was when theater was at the center of popular culture. What’s remarkable about these new projects is that, in a world where the stage has had to become a spectacle to survive, TV is taking on some of the theater’s most challenging works. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard HBO was doing ‘Wit’,” says Jac Venza, who created “Great Performances” back in 1972. “When you hear it’s about a woman with cancer, you think it’s a play no one will want to see. Of course, when you see it you’re transformed.”
No one was more skeptical of television’s interest in “Wit” than the play’s author, Maggie Edson. “I thought they would have to jazz it up, add different themes and different places and a car crash,” she says. But then HBO’s Colin Callendar, one of four producers vying for the work, said something that changed her mind. “He was the only one that said you have to pick someone you trust, and that made me trust him,” says Edson. Callendar next went to Thompson. She needed convincing, too. “It’s quite rare that plays work when filmed. They’re designed for a different kind of experience,” says Thompson. But she not only signed on, she had an idea about a director: Mike Nichols. Thompson, who worked with Nichols on “Primary Colors,” called him herself. “I didn’t know if Mike would be interested in directing in television,” says Thompson, “but I rang him up and said, ‘Listen, I’ve been asked to do this “Wit.” Do you fancy directing?’ And there was this slight pause and he said, ‘Well, sure’.”
“Wit” the movie is both faithful to and different from the stage version. Thompson and Nichols, who co-wrote the screenplay, added almost no new dialogue, while retaining about 90 percent of the original text. Even so, Thompson had misgivings: “I felt the same way I did when I was adapting ‘Sense and Sensibility’–like I was bastardizing something that’s perfect.” The main difference between versions comes from Thompson’s performance as Prof. Vivian Bearing. Onstage, Bearing was fierce. She used her intellect to swat away anyone who got close to her, even her own cancer doctors. The movie softens her a bit. Whether that’s because the camera brings us right up into her suffering face or because Thompson opted for a gentler interpretation is hard to say. Still, it’s a heart-wrenching film made all the more powerful by the stillness that infuses it. Does it measure up to its Pulitzer-winning parent? Nichols, who directed the Burton-Taylor film version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” insists that’s not a valid question. “They’re two different things, two different processes, two different results,” he says. “I didn’t particularly compare Elizabeth Taylor and Uta Hagen, either.”
The producers of “South Pacific” took a more revisionist tack, and for good reason. “South Pacific” is perhaps Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most formidable work. It contains two love stories set against the backdrop of World War II, all complicated by issues of intermarriage and racism. It was also the victim of one of the most notorious big-screen translations in history: the overdubbed, colorized 1958 movie directed by Joshua Logan. For the TV version, the producers have changed almost everything but the music and lyrics. Songs have been moved. New scenes open up the narrative and take advantage of the Australian seascape where the $15 million film was shot. “I’m sure we’ll get some very rigorous criticism,” says Close, who plays Navy nurse Nellie Forbush. “This pushes the envelope. It has a much bigger canvas, so it’s a bigger risk.” The risk pays off. ABC’s “South Pacific” is gorgeous to look at and listen to–yes, Close sings very nicely, thank you. And the changes in the story–especially in the graphic way we see Lieutenant Cable’s (Connick’s) fate–have turned “South Pacific” into the most moving TV musical yet.
Not everyone is going to the ends of the earth–or at least Australia–to put theater on the tube. Last week the Broadway Television Network broadcast “Jekyll & Hyde,” its second pay-per-view special from New York. Will people really pay $19.95 to hear David Hasselhoff sing? Some skeptics wonder whether there’s a big enough audience to support all these electronic stages. “The fine arts often don’t survive in a commercial environment,” says PBS’s Venza. “Success is judged differently.” But for now, at least, TV is gung ho about putting on a show. ABC is planning to do “Mame” next year, reportedly starring Cher. HBO is working on the “The Laramie Project,” from the off-Broadway play about Matthew Shepard. In May, Showtime will broadcast Neil Simon’s “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.” “People always say Broadway is dead, the theater is dead,” says “Annie” producer Neil Meron. “It’s our job to turn that around.”
