What a disappointment! The screenplay is so heavily stilted and pretentious that it crushes its mediocre star and sinks even gifted supporting actors. Not a single word sounds like a real, late-20th-century human being talking, but like 19th-century actors declaiming from a stage badly-written lines they've memorized but don't understand.
Richard Thomas is TERRIBLY miscast in the crucial lead role; his acting skill is far too limited to place such a ponderous burden on his slim shoulders. But even great actors like Sada Thompson and Sylvia Sidney are painfully unbelievable; the dialog is so relentlessly contrived that they can't do much more with it than Thomas does. The director Deborah Reinisch (whoever she is - she's deservedly done only minor TV work since this disaster) does nothing to help the actors cope with the impossible script.
I thank God for Terrence McNally's vital contribution to the recent dramatic changes in gay life in the United States - including this very play - and I love him dearly; but this production is a mess. It's historically important but unwatchable.
It might make for better reading than watching, and it almost surely would be better in live theatre than projected on a screen. It's so plodding and heavy-handed that the 50 minutes seemed like three hours to me.