Critics' Choice

MUSIC

ELVIS COSTELLO: SPIKE (Warner Bros.). God's Comic, Stalin Malone, Miss Macbeth: even the titles sting. The songs are like an acid bath; no quarter given or expected.

ROY ORBISON: MYSTERY GIRL (Virgin). This was going to be Orbison's first original solo album in ten years; it turned out to be his farewell. A little slick, but at least one tune, She's a Mystery to Me (produced by U2's Bono), is the perfect valedictory.

THE AMHERST SAXOPHONE QUARTET: BACH ON SAX (MCA Classics). Purists, beware! Your prejudice against unorthodox instrumentation could be shattered by this surprising set of Bach adaptations that has nothing gimmicky about it but the concept.

ANDRES SEGOVIA: FIVE CENTURIES OF THE SPANISH GUITAR (MCA Classics). The master as you have never before heard him: 26 digitally reissued performances, from 1952 to 1968, drawn from the works of ten Spanish composers.

RADIO

THE BECKETT FESTIVAL OF RADIO PLAYS (NPR, debuting April 2). Radio drama, alas, has largely gone the way of the gramophone. But National Public Radio is doing its bit this month to revive it with the U.S. premiere of five plays written for the medium by Samuel Beckett. Billie Whitelaw and David Warrilow star in the opener, All That Fall, about an aging woman meeting her blind husband at a railroad station. Following it, on successive Sunday nights: Embers, Words and Music, Cascando and Rough for Radio II.

MOVIES

HIGH HOPES. A dotty old woman fights to keep her home amid the crush of gentrification. Working with a cast that has helped improvise its roles, British director Mike Leigh creates a group portrait of characters who live and breathe and squawk their wayward humanity on the margins of Margaret Thatcher's England.

ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN. Lovers waltz in midair, a servant (Eric Idle) outruns a speeding bullet and the King of the Moon (Robin Williams) literally loses his head in this wonder-filled fantasy from Terry Gilliam, late of Brazil.

NEW YORK STORIES. In this trio of vignettes, Francis Coppola belly flops with his tale about New York City rich kids. But two out of three ain't bad: Martin Scorsese's crafty sketch of a downtown painter and Woody Allen's comedy about the ultimate Jewish mother.

BOOKS

THE JOY LUCK CLUB by Amy Tan (Putnam; $18.95). A bright, sharp-flavored first novel on growing up ethnic in the U.S. The topic sounds familiar, but the Chinese spice added to this old recipe is invigorating and refreshingly true.

FIRE DOWN BELOW by William Golding (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $17.95). The last leaf of a trilogy begun back in 1980. An arrogant, young 19th century Englishman survives seaborne hardships to arrive in Australia -- and at some condition of self-knowledge.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS by John Updike (Knopf; $18.95). A wry, haunting memoir by an author who decided while young that the printed word would disguise his flaws, only to learn that success leaves one painfully exposed.

THEATER

CAFE CROWN. This revival is not much of a play, but Anne Jackson, Eli Wallach and Bob Dishy head a splendid cast that adroitly and affectionately recalls the Manhattan heyday of Jewish theater.

THE HEIDI CHRONICLES. Joan Allen's poignant playing turns writer Wendy Wasserstein's feminist cliches into a touching glimpse of baby boomers grown older if not wiser.

ART

LIKE A ONE-EYED CAT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEE FRIEDLANDER 1956-1987, Seattle Art Museum. Surprising perspectives on everyday images -- street scenes, jazz musicians, empty motel rooms, public monuments -- by a modern American master. Through May 7.

TREASURES FROM THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Highlights of the collection built up by British connoisseurs over two centuries at Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam, including paintings by Titian, Rubens and Delacroix, manuscripts, ceramics, sculpture and decorative arts. Through June 18.

GUIDO RENI, 1575-1642, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. Underappreciated in the modern era, Reni is restored in this choice, 50-painting show to the high rank earlier centuries accorded him as luminous colorist and elegant classical stylist. Through May 14.

% RICHARD DIEBENKORN: WORKS ON PAPER, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Some 180 works -- more than one-third of them never before publicly exhibited -- by a contemporary master in his first comprehensive show of drawings. Through May 7.