Critics' Voices

By Compiled by Andrea Sachs

THEATER

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Dustin Hoffman plays Shylock, warts and all, in a shimmering Broadway production transferred intact from a sold-out London run. A tough ticket worth every penny and every minute of the wait.

CLOSER THAN EVER. This musical sampler from lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. and composer David Shire is an off-Broadway charmer deftly performed. Special joys: character songs that actors Brent Barrett and Sally Mayes render as richly nuanced as one-act plays.

MYSTERY OF THE ROSE BOUQUET. Jane Alexander and Anne Bancroft play a nurse and a patient in a taut psychological study by Manuel Puig, author of The Kiss of the Spider Woman, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR. Like its Rockefeller Center neighbors -- a towering fir tree and a glistening ice rink that displays the endlessly watchable gyrations of amateur skaters -- this New York City bring- the-family pageant is one of the grandest holiday traditions in the U.S. Satisfyingly the same from year to year, yet spruced up just enough, the fast- moving script mingles Charles Dickens, Santa Claus and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker with carols and hymns. The climactic Nativity scene features camels, donkeys and other live animals. This year's production serves up dazzling special effects and opulent costumes, as well as the show-stopping, high-kicking Rockettes. If at times the narration suggests the entire world is Christian, or should be, the overwhelming message is joy and goodwill.

MUSIC

LINDA RONSTADT: CRY LIKE A RAINSTORM, HOWL LIKE THE WIND (Elektra/Asylum). Ronstadt takes lessons learned from her three successful albums of pop standards and puts them to work on the kind of material she did so well in the '70s: confessional ballads and songs of love gone amiss. The cathedral- filling orchestral arrangements threaten the fragile structure of some songs, but Ronstadt's singing (superbly accompanied on four tracks by New Orleans soulster Aaron Neville) keeps everything on course.

ART

THE NEW VISION: PHOTOGRAPHY BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. This smartly conceived show, which introduces the Metropolitan's new Ford Motor Company Collection of 20th century photographs, highlights the camera's courtship of pure form. Through Dec. 31.

THE INTIMATE WORLD OF ALEXANDER CALDER, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York City. A delightful demonstration that for family and friends the sculptor could make practically anything out of anything. Through March 11.

MOVIES

VALMONT. Maybe it's time to call it a day for film remakes of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' novel of sexual gamesmanship among 18th century French aristocrats. Director Milos Forman and screenwriter Jean- Claude Carriere have not so much adapted this deliciously nasty tale as they have embalmed it.

IMMEDIATE FAMILY. Glenn Close and James Woods desperately want a child; Mary Stuart Masterson is about to have one. Director Jonathan Kaplan's comedy-drama finds sympathetic laughter in everyone's burdens and opportunities. The tears come later.

BOOKS

THE PEOPLE AND UNCOLLECTED STORIES by Bernard Malamud (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $18.95). This posthumous volume includes an unfinished novel and 16 short stories never before collected in book form. The novel is little more than a sketch of what might have been, but the stories -- grim and comical in equal measure -- offer poignant reminders of Malamud's gift and his stature as an American master.

THE STORYTELLER by Mario Vargas Llosa (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $17.95). A Peruvian narrator, who strongly resembles his creator, remembers a college classmate in Lima during the 1950s and ponders the possibility that his old friend has become a bard to an endangered Amazonian tribe. This ruminative novel about storytelling and its place in society shows a world-class author in splendid form.

TELEVISION

MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE (NBC, Nov. 23, 9 a.m. EST). Might as well face it -- she's here to stay. Today show usurper Deborah Norville joins terminally jovial weatherman Willard Scott to narrate this year's float extravaganza.

FIFTY YEARS OF TELEVISION: A GOLDEN CELEBRATION (CBS, Nov. 26, 9 p.m. EST). Stop us before we kill: yet another survey of "classic moments" from TV's past. Hosts include Walter Cronkite, Carl Reiner and Miss Piggy.

THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE (PBS, Tuesdays, 9 p.m. on most stations). What's this? A documentary series featuring real-life news footage rather than actors re- creating it? That is an admirably quaint notion that has spawned some fascinating programs. Former Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell is profiled this week.