Critics' Choice

THEATER

RECKLESS. Writer Craig Lucas and director Norman Rene (Three Postcards) take a hilarious and moving off-Broadway journey through one woman's bad dream, fantasy or, maybe, truly terrible life.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH. John Steinbeck's inflamed novel of the 1930s Dust Bowl migration becomes a ruthlessly unsentimental play-with-music by Chicago's Steppenwolf troupe.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Mark Lamos, one of America's most innovative stagers of Shakespeare, emphasizes the psychological backdrop of the airy- fairy love tale at his Hartford Stage Company.

TELEVISION

THE VAN DYKE SHOW and ANNIE MCGUIRE (CBS, Oct. 26, 8 p.m. EDT). They first won our hearts as Rob and Laura Petrie. Now, several TV successes and failures later, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore are making stabs at a prime-time comeback in back-to-back sitcoms.

E.T. (MCA Home Video, Oct. 27). Six years after he set box-office records, Hollywood's favorite alien finally phones home video. It promises to be the top-selling movie cassette ever.

THE MIKADO (PBS, Oct. 28, 9 p.m.). Director Jonathan Miller turns the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta into a Marx Brothers-style musical in this English National Opera production, which opens the Great Performances season.

FAVORITE SON (NBC, Oct. 30, 31, Nov. 1, 9 p.m. EST). A charismatic young Senator (Harry Hamlin) schemes for the vice-presidential nomination in a three-part mini-series, based not on Dan Quayle's life story but on a novel by ex-network executive Steve Sohmer.

ART

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM 1915-1925, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A survey of war-weary "second-generation" expressionists, forging an avant-garde in search of a new art and a better society.

EDGAR DEGAS, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. If there must be blockbuster shows, this is the kind to have -- huge (more than 300 works), thought provoking and beautiful. Its like will not be seen again in our lifetime. Through Jan. 8.

POUSSIN: THE EARLY YEARS IN ROME, Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth. The first major exhibit in North America devoted to the 17th century master who was the father of classical French painting.

BOOKS

THE FIRST SALUTE by Barbara W. Tuchman (Knopf; $22.95). The distinguished and eminently readable historian (The Guns of August) sets the American Revolution against the struggles of 18th century Europe for colonies and commerce. Among her heroes: the hardy Dutch, who were first to recognize officially the birthright of the new American nation.

A BRIGHT SHINING LIE by Neil Sheehan (Random House; $24.95). In a riveting portrait, John Paul Vann, a top U.S. adviser in Viet Nam, emerges as a man who embodied the contradictions of his ill-fated mission: a courageous do-gooder with a dark streak of amorality.

BERNARD SHAW: THE SEARCH FOR LOVE by Michael Holroyd (Random House; $24.95). The first of a projected three-volume life takes its brilliant, cantankerous subject to age 42, through journalism -- and love affairs -- to playwriting and toward his towering reputation.

MUSIC

TOM WAITS: BIG TIME (Island). The raucous low-life reveries of rock's only postmodern beatnik. Taken from the sound track of Waits' concert film.

KEITH RICHARDS: TALK IS CHEAP (Virgin). From the shaking dance-club tune Big Enough to the sinuous Locked Away, Keith Richards' first solo album is a gas. Surprise: the hardest rolling Stone is a take-charge songwriter. Who needs Mick?

BRITTEN: PAUL BUNYAN (Virgin). Amazingly, Sir Benjamin's tuneful first opera was conceived in 1939 as a Broadway show with a libretto by W.H. Auden. It never played the Great White Way, but it comes to vibrant life in conductor Philip Brunelle's hands.

BIZET: SYMPHONY IN C MAJOR; "L'ARLESIENNE" SUITE (Erato). Grace, style, panache and a certain je ne sais quoi: Bizet had it all. Just what the doctor ordered when you're sick of the three German Bs.

MOVIES

SALAAM BOMBAY! An Indian Oliver Twist learns the ways of slum-life survival in Mira Nair's poignant documentary fable. See Bombay and lose your heart.

THINGS CHANGE. Don Ameche is an aging artisan mistaken for a Mafia boss, and Joe Mantegna the gangland gofer who helps an old man come alive. David Mamet directed and co-wrote this beguiling men's-club anecdote.

ANOTHER WOMAN. Woody Allen goes serious again, but brilliantly this time. Gena Rowlands plays a New Yorker who has reached that point in life when what is past hope is past regret, but not past consolation.