Television: May 31, 1968

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Friday, May 31

SAME MUD, SAME BLOOD (NBC, 10-11 p.m.).* NBC News Correspondent Frank McGee's account of the role of the Negro soldier in Viet Nam, filmed during a month under combat conditions with the 101st U.S. Airborne Division. Repeat.

Saturday, June 1

THE BELMONT STAKES (CBS, 5-5:45). The 100th running of the Belmont Stakes, third of the Triple Crown thoroughbred races, live from rebuilt Belmont Race Track, Elmont, L.I.

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Champions Track and Field Meet from San Diego, and National Air Races from Reno.

THE PRISONER (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Patrick McGoohan, formerly the weekly hero of Secret Agent, returns as a man incarcerated in a remote and mysterious community by unknown captors. His identity and the reasons for his imprisonment unfold as the series progresses. A summer replacement for the Jackie Gleason Show, Première.

Tuesday, June 4

The California presidential primary will be covered by the three U.S. networks, with correspondents, commentators and pundits ruminating on the significance of the results. NBC airs its special from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., ABC and CBS from 11:30 p.m. to midnight.

Check local listings for dates and times:

NET FESTIVAL. "The Tenth Annual Monterey Jazz Festival." Selections from the "blues afternoon" of the 1967 festival, featuring such gospel and blues performers as T-Bone Walker, B. B. King, Richie Havens and the Clara Ward Singers.

THE CREATIVE PERSON: "Georges Simenon." A documentary about the prolific French novelist and author of the famous Inspector Maigret detective stories. A selection of Simenon's works will be dramatized on a NET Playhouse series. Thirteen Against Fate premieres next week.

THEATER

On Broadway

HAIR. While fresher than the rest of the season's stale musicals, this tribal-rock extravaganza seems a decidedly dated and slightly square rendition of hippiedom. Loosely directed by Tom O'Horgan, Hair is dedicated to the propositions that noise equals singing, energy equals style, and bad taste equals imaginativeness.

JOE EGG. Humor is one way to meet an insoluble obstacle and ease insupportable pain. Peter Nichols' tender play tells of a shaky marriage held together by a spastic daughter. Donal Donnelly and Zena Walker deftly balance laughter and pain.

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is this season's winner of the Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Tony. From Shakespeare's clay, Tom Stoppard has fashioned two contemporary characters of existentialist angst, Beckettian apprehension and collegiate wit.

Off Broadway

THE MEMORANDUM. Joseph Papp's latest production is a harrowing parable on the perils of conformity and cowardice. Czech Playwright Vaclav Havel has written a nonsensical narrative about an office man ager who delivers himself into the clutches of bureaucracy when an official language is introduced into his firm.

MUZEEKA is a fable, contemporary in sensibility, modern in metaphor and haunting in its humor. John Guare mixes whimsy and horror as his hero trips on the way to his destiny, lands first in the suburbs and finally in Viet Nam.