Review

In the midst of drought, a town's prayers were doubly answered in last week's Staring Match on CBS's Studio One. First, in spotless white business suit, came Mr. White (James Daly), a winning stranger who knew everyone by name. He owned up to being "an angel o' the Lord" sent to find the town a well. ("A miracle!" cried a bystander. Beamed Mr. White: "I believe that's what they're called here, yes.") On his heels came another friendly, omniscient stranger (James Gregory), all in black, making the same claims. Each accused the other of serving Satan, and confronted the townsfolk with a choice that might leave them with the Devil to pay.

In his TV debut, Playwright Jerry Mc-Neely, 29, deserved credit not only for an original fancy but for making his fable's dilemma both wonder-struck and plausible in the telling. By ingenious design, his exchanges between Mr. White and Mr. Black abounded in ambiguously open-ended clues to their real identity. He also managed a neat solution: a staring match between the contenders, proposed by the ornery town skeptic to keep the town from stampeding in favor of Mr. White. Isolated in a drawn circle, the two stared and glared away for days, without flinching or even growing a whisker. When Mr. White seemed to falter, a little girl rushed into the forbidden circle with a dipper of water and suddenly collapsed in a thunderclap. Who turned away from the staring match to help her? Mr. Black, who thereby lost the match but established more convincing angelic credentials--and helped to show that black and white are not always what they seem, and even the grey of skepticism may serve a lofty end.

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