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- CRITICS' CHOICE, Page 6
-
-
- THEATER
-
- MANDY PATINKIN IN CONCERT: DRESS CASUAL. The edgy,
- high-energy star of stage (Evita) and film (Yentl) thrills
- Broadway with a brilliantly idiosyncratic styling of ballad and
- show tunes.
-
- THE ROAD TO MECCA. South African Athol Fugard directs and
- stars in his masterly drama of the artist as outsider, at
- Washington's Kennedy Center.
-
- HENRY IV, PART II. The darkest and most brooding of the
- Bard's histories is richly illuminated by the Oregon Shakespeare
- Festival at Ashland.
-
- SHOWING OFF. What ever happened to the witty little revue?
- It's thriving off-Broadway in this four-person jape at assorted
- cultural pretenses, including odious sing-alongs, the subject
- of the sing-along finale.
-
- MOVIES
-
- WHEN HARRY MET SALLY . . . he asked her: Can a man and a
- woman be friends without worrying about having sex? Billy
- Crystal and Meg Ryan spend a beguiling dozen years trying to
- figure it out.
-
- SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE. Next question: Can a man and a
- woman be lovers without having sex? In Steven Soderbergh's
- elegant, poignant, very funny film, the answer matters less than
- the interplay of four congenially tortured souls.
-
- PARENTHOOD. Didn't Tolstoy say that each unhappy family is
- funny in its own way? This brave and original movie, starring
- Jason Robards as curmudgeonly Grandpa and Steve Martin as his
- No. 1 son, piles up most of our worst parental nightmares in a
- single midsummer comedy. It really shouldn't work, but it does.
-
- BOOKS
-
- AUGUST 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Farrar, Straus &
- Giroux; $50 hardback, $19.95 paper). This novel first appeared
- in English 17 years ago. Since then the 1970 Nobel laureate has
- added some 300 pages to his fictional but heavily researched
- saga of Russia's catastrophic involvement in World War I.
-
- POLAR STAR by Martin Cruz Smith (Random House; $19.95).
- Smith sets Moscow investigator Arkady Renko (Gorky Park) off on
- another bizarre case, this one on a fishing boat on the Bering
- Sea; one dead body leads to others along an arc of increasing
- menace and violence.
-
- FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar,
- Straus & Giroux; $22.95). A Pulitzer-prizewinning Middle East
- correspondent looks back on the brutal realities of a region
- drenched in myths and bloodshed.
-
- ART
-
- BENJAMIN WEST: AMERICAN PAINTER AT THE ENGLISH COURT,
- Baltimore Museum of Art. Period pieces today, these 52 canvases
- show what made "the American Raphael" (1738-1820) the toast of
- London and the first American artist to achieve international
- renown. Through Aug. 20.
-
- EDWARD HOPPER, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
- City. A major realist painter, Hopper (1882-1967) is also an
- enduringly popular chronicler of New England lighthouses,
- late-night cafes and other American vignettes. Through Nov. 5.
-
- MUSIC
-
- SWING OUT SISTER: KALEIDOSCOPE WORLD (Polygram).
- Sophisticated jazz-pop with a British twist. Corinne Drewery's
- silky vocals and Andrew Connell's buoyant keyboards create
- expansive, richly atmospheric arrangements.
-
- BODEANS: HOME (Slash/Reprise). Brand New is the title of
- one of this album's best cuts, but BoDeans fans will be cheered
- to know that the band's still doing what it has always done
- best: focused, aggressive rock that doesn't stint on spirit.
-
- TIN MACHINE: TIN MACHINE (EMI). It's David Bowie, lying low
- with a new band that he helped create and whose rough edges he
- hones to a cutting edge.
-
- THE JACKSONS: 2300 JACKSON STREET (Epic). Remember the
- address if you want to crash a party without leaving home. The
- Jacksons make hot soul but deliver it nice and cool.
-
- TELEVISION
-
- FATAL ADDICTIONS (NBC, Aug. 9, 10 p.m. EDT). The title
- refers to a range of American bad habits, from drugs to
- gambling. Host Maria Shriver will survey the problem in this NBC
- News special.
-
- THE TURN OF THE SCREW (Showtime, debuting Aug. 12, 10 p.m.
- EDT). Amy Irving stars as the Victorian governess with a ghost
- problem in this new version of Henry James' famous novella. The
- hour-long drama launches Shelley Duvall's new series, Nightmare
- Classics.
-
- ANYTHING BUT LOVE (ABC, returning Aug. 15, 9:30 p.m. EDT).
- Angst-ridden stand-up comic Richard Lewis, playing a magazine
- writer with a yen for Jamie Lee Curtis, made this midseason
- sitcom worth watching. Now it is back for a few weeks of reruns.
-
-