Critics' Voices

By TIME''S REVIEWERS/Compiled by Andrea Sachs

ART

JOHN RUSSELL POPE AND THE BUILDING OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, National Gallery of Art, Washington. The repository of some of the nation's most cherished pieces of art is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an exhibit of 75 drawings and photographs that explore the creation of the West Building and the career of its architect. Through July 7.

THE DRAWINGS OF ANTHONY VAN DYCK, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City. For the 350th anniversary of the death of this Baroque master, the museum has amassed 90 drawings, ranging from Van Dyck's earliest sketches to studies for his glowing royal portraits. Through April 21.

MOVIES

JU DOU. The colors -- bright, sensuous, all enveloping -- tell the story of a young Chinese woman, her brutal husband and her timid lover. Fate enshrouds them, as it has Zhang Yimou's beautiful film: Ju Dou has never played publicly in China, and the authorities tried unsuccessfully to rescind its Oscar nomination as Best Foreign Film.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. The lacerating suspense of Thomas Harris' novel is missing from this earnest adaptation, but if you haven't read the book about an FBI trainee tracking one serial killer with the help of another, you ought to see the movie. Main attraction: the intellectual tug-of-wills between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.

THEATER

THE BIG LOVE. When Errol Flynn died in 1959, he was traveling with starlet Beverly Aadland, who had been his mistress since she was 15. This chillingly believable Broadway play has as its sole character Beverly's mother Florence (unforgettably played by Tracey Ullman), a ferocious stage mama who would stop at nothing.

THE SPEED OF DARKNESS. Playwright Steve Tesich brings together two former Army buddies and trash-haulage partners in this haunting Broadway production, one (Stephen Lang) now scruffy and homeless, the other (Len Cariou) now South Dakota's man of the year. Ironically, the dropout is at peace; the man who suppressed his dark secrets to fit in exists on the knife edge of anger.

TELEVISION

AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE (PBS, March 20, 22). The anthology series opens its 10th season with a double dose of Broadway: Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim's musical twist on Grimms' fairy tales, and The Grapes of Wrath, the Steppenwolf Theater's adaptation of Steinbeck's Depression novel.

THE MAHABHARATA (PBS, March 25, 26, 27, 9 p.m. on most stations). Another stage event, Peter Brook's marathon version of the Hindu sacred epic, comes to TV in three two-hour segments.

THE ACADEMY AWARDS (ABC, March 25, 9 p.m. EST). Hollywood's annual fete is still king of all the awards shows. And Kevin Costner is grooming himself for this year's crown.

MUSIC

GRAHAM PARKER: STRUCK BY LIGHTNING (RCA). Don't get in this man's way: "She's a living example," he sings, "of God's bad taste." And that's a love song; well, sort of. It's typical of the venom-tipped but still lyrical reflections stashed throughout the 15 tunes on this high-velocity workout by one of the orneriest but most beguiling rockers in the neighborhood.

STRAUSS: DER ROSENKAVALIER (London). In this historic 1954 performance of an endlessly ravishing opera, a master conductor (Erich Kleiber), superb singers (Maria Reining, Sena Jurinac and Hilde Gueden) and an outstanding orchestra (the Vienna Philharmonic) blend color, vitality and balance with intelligence and resonant beauty.

BOB WILBER/KENNY DAVERN: SUMMIT REUNION (Chiaroscuro). Rarely has a musical marriage been so harmonious. Wilber and Davern first teamed up back in the '70s in a highly touted jazz sextet called Soprano Summit. That group is no more, alas, but this studio rematch, featuring Wilber on soprano sax and Davern on clarinet, scales a new peak.

ETCETERA

AN IMPERIAL FASCINATION: PORCELAIN. More than 500 pieces of Imperial porcelain are on display -- the largest number ever shown outside the Soviet Union. At New York City's A La Vieille Russie, through April 20.

BLUE PLANET. Astronaut's-eye views of earth, filmed during five space-shuttle missions. From the wind-sculpted dunes of the Namib Desert to smogbound Los Angeles, the images underscore the urgency of saving the environment. Showing at more than two dozen science museums in the U.S. and Canada through the summer.

BOOKS

THE PROMISED LAND by Nicholas Lemann (Knopf; $24.95). The second great migration that shaped the U.S.: the movement of millions of blacks from the rural South to the cities of the North.

NEW OXFORD ANNOTATED BIBLE edited by Bruce Metzger and Roland Murphy (Oxford; $37.95). Last year's gender-blended New Revised Standard Version with notes and articles making judicious use of higher criticism.

MOZART MAVEN

One of the great pleasures of this year's Mozart bicentennial will be Mitsuko Uchida's performances of the composer's 18 piano sonatas in a series of five recitals at New York City's Alice Tully Hall between now and April 21. She will also perform some of the sonatas in other cities, including Philadelphia, Toronto, Washington and Pittsburgh. Uchida, 42, plays her specialty with a remarkable combination of energy and tenderness, a considerable rhythmic freedom and a lovely tone. This spring Philips Classics is rereleasing her recordings of these sonatas, along with a splendid new recording of Mozart's piano concerti Nos. 15 and 16, accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra and conducted by Jeffrey Tate. Born in Japan, trained in Vienna and now residing in London, Uchida has a repertoire that ranges from Chopin to Ravel, not to mention Bartok and Carter, but she calls Mozart's work a "kind of world in itself . . . so complete that you can forget about the rest. Then you come out, and you are blinded."