Broadway

On the Waterfront

 (Brooks Atkinson Theater; 1,082 seats; $60 top)

By JEREMY GERARD

A Mitchell Maxwell, Dan Markley, Victoria Maxwell, Pines/Goldberg, Michael Skipper, Harvey J. Klaris, David Young, Dina Wein-Reis, James L. Simon, Palmer Video Corp. and Workin' Man Films presentation, in association with Fred H. Krones, Hugh Hayes and Alan J. Schuster, of a play in two acts by Budd Schulberg with Stan Silverman; incidental music by David Amram. Directed by Adrian Hall.
 
Cast: Ron Eldard (Terry Malloy), Penelope Ann Miller (Edie Doyle), Kevin Conway (Johnny Friendly), David Morse (Father Barry), Brad Sullivan (Pop Doyle), Michael Harney (Charley Malloy), George N. Martin (Father Vincent); Barry McEvoy , Jarlath Conroy, Robertson Carricart, Jerry Grayson, Michael Mulheren, Desmond Devenish, Skipp Sudduth, Lance Davis, Afemo Omilami, Leon Addison Brown, Richard Pruitt, Alison Sheehy, David Warshofsky, Wayne Grace, Steve Ryan, Charlie Hofheimer, Lynn Eldredge, Kevin Hagan, Peter Linari.
 

"On the Waterfront" opens on Broadway after the rockiest tryout in recent memory. There was a last-minute change of director and of actors in two important roles, along with escalating preview costs that lifted the tab to nearly $ 3 million as the script went through numerous changes. As if that weren't enough, at the final preview, actor Jerry Grayson suffered an onstage heart attack, the drama eclipsing anything performed onstage as a doctor from the house valiantly performed CPR while all looked on in stunned silence.

Grayson survived. "On the Waterfront" probably won't, but in truth it's less of a disaster than the buzz has had it. To those familiar with Elia Kazan's 1954 film masterpiece -- and it's hard to imagine anyone isn't -- a stage adaptation begs the question: Why? This doesn't offer a very persuasive answer.

To be sure, there's plenty of contender in this show, and on at least one of the toughest calls the producers got it right: To play the role of Terry Malloy -- ex-boxer, pigeon lover and errand boy for his mob-owned big brother -- they found Ron Eldard, an actor who brings an appealing humanity to a role one would have thought inseparable from the actor who created it, Marlon Brando.

Eldard's Terry, like Brando's, is a wounded animal, but less earthbound. Eldard has a dancer's poig-nant grace and he isn't pretending to be his famed predecessor. The line readings are his own and the big speech he delivers to his brother Charley (Michael Harney) -- the scene is transposed from a car in the movie to a deserted pier in the play -- has a different resonance here. "I could have been a contender" is all but tossed off; for Eldard's Terry that fact is secondary to the issue of his brother's betrayal, and it's no small accomplishment that the notion comes across with such depth of feeling.

And Eldard's not alone in giving his gutsy all. He's matched by the priceless , Cagney-esque Johnny Friendly of Kevin Conway, the union boss. Conway tears into his speeches with the same hunger he has brought to every role in an extraordinary career.

Designer Eugene Lee's waterfront set is a world away from his Mississippi River setting for "Show Boat," and yet the effect is equally insular: It says we are being granted entrance into a world we have not known. Huge panels of corrugated steel rise and fall with thunderous clanging as the scenes shift around the dockside setting. The scale is as overwhelming as the grimy London Lee created for "Sweeney Todd."

The second-act death of Runty Nolan (Lance Davis) is a real theatrical jolt: the Phantom's chandelier has nothing on this effect.

Director Adrian Hall recalls no one so much as Lee's other longtime collaborator, Harold Prince, in the use of a chorus as Brechtian commentators. The crowds of men, whether angling for a day's work on a banana boat or circling to watch Terry's final confrontation with Johnny Friendly, are hauntingly and smoothly deployed.

For all that, the show never takes on a life of its own. Budd Schulberg, who adapted his screenplay and novel with the help of StanSilverman, has come up with a mere echo, and much of it is flat. This is particularly true of Father Barry (David Morse), the local priest who takes on the mob. For most of the play , Morse is a blank, speaking into the distance and never connecting.

More problematic is Edie Doyle, created memorably by Eva Marie Saint and here played by Penelope Ann Miller. The part, a college girl who returns to the waterfront determined to find out why her sweet brother Joey was murdered, seems even more underwritten than in the movie.

The production betrays the ravages of a chaotic gestation. The key role of Terry's brother Charley was taken over during the final previews by Harney, who comes across as someone who would have lasted about 15 seconds in this rough company. And many of the small roles are drawn and acted in the broadest strokes. On the other hand, Brad Sullivan has a haunted, ravaged quality as Pop Doyle.

The script of "On the Waterfront" never measures up to the screenplay bearing the same name, nor does the play in any way equal the movie. Like those sonorous clanking panels of steel, there are effects here to spare. In the end, however, they seem like about $ 3 million worth of gimmickry.

Sets, Eugene Lee; lighting, Peter Kaczorowski; costumes, Ann Hould-Ward; sound, Dan Moses Schrier. Opened May 1, 1995; reviewed April 30. Running time: 2 hours, 40 min.