Twilight of the Golds

The worthy intentions of Twilight of the Golds, a Showtime production based on the 1993 Broadway drama, are no doubt what attracted its excellent ensemble. But playwright Jonathan Tolins argues none too subtly for tolerance in his story of a young woman whose affluent Jewish family is roiled by prenatal tests that indicate her unborn son is predisposed to homosexuality. Beals is eerily understated as the expectant mom in crisis; as her gay brother who denounces the family's vacillations, Fraser is sweet but oddly stolid. Only mother Dunaway expresses enough distress to amass any will-she-abort-or-won't-she tension; add to that the sense of remove induced by the small screen, and the Golds' agony seems ultimately more theoretical than operatic. C+

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