Critics' Choice

THEATER

THE TAFFETAS. Goofy and winsome and ever so tuneful, this off-Broadway spoof biography of a fictional '50s girl group is superbly arranged and sung.

BLACK AND BLUE. Three great singers, two dozen top dancers, 28 bluesy numbers and a zillion sequins add up to Broadway's hot new musical revue.

DARKSIDE. Stars twinkle all around, and the big blue marble of earth eerily arises in a set designer's triumph in this haunting new play about astronauts on the moon, at Denver Center Theater Company.

MOVIES

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. David Lean's 1962 biopic, starring Peter O'Toole as adventurer T.E. Lawrence, was the first and finest epic of ideas. Now the film has been lovingly restored to 217 minutes, every one of them glorious. Military strategy was never so movie-compelling. Sand was never so sexy.

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. Strange people and situations pile into a Madrid penthouse until the place looks like the stateroom in A Night at the Opera. Carmen Maura is the put-upon heroine in this glossy farce by Spain's naughty new auteur Pedro Almodovar.

THE JANUARY MAN. Not a conventional whodunit. The mysteries in this spitball comedy are matters of the eccentric heart: How will a New York City fireman (Kevin Kline) win back his ex-girlfriend (Susan Sarandon) or find accommodating love with the mayor's daughter (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) ? John Patrick Shanley, whose luminous script for Moonstruck won an Oscar, scores again here.

ART

CEZANNE: THE EARLY YEARS, 1859-1872, National Gallery of Art, Washington. The least-known period of one of the best-known painters: his restless 20s and early 30s, when he disciplined his huge talent. Through April 30.

GOYA AND THE SPIRIT OF ENLIGHTENMENT, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This superb show rescues the Spanish master from the romantic shadows of the Goyaesque and presents him as a man immersed in the liberal currents of his time. Through March 26.

WALKER EVANS: AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS, Museum of Modern Art, New York City. These spare, poetic images from the Depression era gave American photography a candid new spirit and a lasting legacy. Through April 11.

BOOKS

CAT'S EYE by Margaret Atwood (Doubleday; $18.95). A middle-age painter is lured back to Toronto, where she grew up, by a retrospective showing of her works, and falls into a quirky, brilliant meditation on childhood as seen from the middle distance.

THIS BOY'S LIFE by Tobias Wolff (Atlantic Monthly Press; $18.95). This memoir by a highly praised author in his early 40s evokes the bizarre details of his upbringing, dwelling not on hardships but on the promise of awakening every morning in a vast land where people are prepared to forget the past and believe anything.

TELEVISION

ASK ME AGAIN (PBS, Feb. 8, 9 p.m. on most stations). A boy and girl cope with some aggressive parental matchmaking in this American Playhouse comedy, scripted by Broadway newcomer (Eastern Standard) Richard Greenberg.

TALKING HEADS: BED AMONG THE LENTILS (PBS, Feb. 12, 9 p.m. on most stations). Maggie Smith holds the stage for nearly an hour, portraying a vicar's frustrated wife in a monologue written and directed by Alan Bennett.

HIJACKING OF THE ACHILLE LAURO (NBC, Feb. 13, 9 p.m. EST). The docudrama mill churns on, this time reprising the 1985 terrorist attack that resulted in Leon Klinghoffer's murder. Karl Malden, Lee Grant and E.G. Marshall head a sturdy cast.

MUSIC

THE LILAC TIME: THE LILAC TIME (Mercury). Bouncy, folk-tinged Brit pop, with jagged political subtext. Return to Yesterday has the jubilant rhythm and incidental melancholy of prime Simon and Garfunkel.

JASCHA HEIFETZ: THE DECCA MASTERS, VOL. 2 (MCA Classics). Jascha plays Gershwin! And Stephen Foster! And Irving Berlin! The greatest violinist who ever lived, in dazzling arrangements of It Ain't Necessarily So, Old Folks at Home and White Christmas, among other American bonbons. Those were the days.

BANGLES EVERYTHING (Columbia). Cool sex and hot rhythm from four women rockers. Crash and Burn tells the story: funny, flinty and slick enough to slide into your heart like a knife.

MILT JACKSON: BEBOP (East-West). The Modern Jazz Quartet's eminent vibes man dives deep into the bop era, working fresh wonders on eight vintage tunes, mostly by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. If Bird lives in Clint Eastwood's recent film biography, he gets a neat new lease on life here.