Critics' Voices

By Compiled by Andrea Sachs

BOOKS

WORDS ON THE PAGE, THE WORLD IN YOUR HANDS. Three volumes edited by Catherine Lipkin and Virginia Solotaroff (Harper & Row; $14.95 each). Some 25 million adult Americans cannot read even product-identification labels or street signs; 35 million more are vocationally handicapped by inadequate reading skills. The problem is embarrassing, but trying to improve reading proficiency from books suited for children can also be humiliating. Deciding that writing "to" rather than "down to" their students was a better approach, editors Lipkin and Solotaroff sought and received literary contributions from a range of successful novelists, story writers and poets, including Garrison Keillor, Russell Banks, Joyce Carol Oates and Nikki Giovanni. The result is a breakthrough in adult education: accessible poetry and prose that engage men and women with style and mature themes.

THE WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES: IRREVERENT NOTES FROM A DECADE OF GREED by Barbara Ehrenreich (Pantheon; $19.95). The populist essayist leads a neoliberal charge against the '80s with some witty Reagan bashing, yuppie demolishing, corporation crunching and hearty swipes at a time when a clever few made so much at the expense of so many.

FLASHBACKS: ON RETURNING TO VIETNAM by Morley Safer (Random House; $18.95). Visiting old battlegrounds and interviewing old soldiers, the veteran CBS correspondent reminds us of a time when the typewriter, not the portable hair dryer, was the essential tool of the TV journalist.

ART

ALBERT PINKHAM RYDER, National Museum of American Art, Washington. Ryder (1847-1917) was a familiar type -- the unwashed, eccentric recluse -- but his small, shadowy paintings are unlike anything seen before or since: elegiac, visionary, haunting. Through July 29.

JOHN BALDESARRI, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Paint, photos, movie stills, magazine clips and printed words come together cryptically in the work of this Los Angeles-based conceptual artist who, at 58, is savoring a belated success. Through June 17.

THEATER

HAMLET. Kevin Kline's 1986 performance of the actor's Mount Everest was romantic, comedic and gloriously literate. This time he not only stars in but also directs a much anticipated off-Broadway staging.

WHAT A MAN WEIGHS. Sherry Kramer's astringent off-Broadway play starts out as blunt, confrontational feminism, but its view of sexual politics becomes more and more complex, funny and biting.

KING LEAR. Hal Holbrook is the ousted monarch at Cleveland's Great Lakes Theater Festival.

TELEVISION

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BUGS: 50 LOONEY YEARS (CBS, May 9, 8 p.m. EDT). And he's never been more popular. Among the celebrators: Bill Cosby, Mary Hart, Hulk Hogan and Porky Pig.

IN LIVING COLOR (Fox, Saturdays, 9 p.m. EDT). Keenen Ivory Wayans (I'm Gonna Git You Sucka) created and stars in this weekly satirical revue with a black spin. The impersonations (Arsenio Hall, Mike Tyson) are dead on, the laughs abundant. TV's brightest new spring comedy, by a mile.

PEOPLE LIKE US (NBC, May 13, 14, 9 p.m. EDT). A journalist (Ben Gazzara) seeks to avenge the murder of his daughter in a two-part movie based on Dominick Dunne's best seller.

MUSIC

THE BLUE NILE: HATS (A&M). A trio of ethereally rocking Scotsmen, the Blue Nile weaves a sound mosaic that is part sci-fi parable and part Arcadian fantasy. Gentle, uninsistent and insinuating, a single listen to The Downtown Lights could convert anyone this side of an Aerosmith fan to full-fledged Nile fever.

BUSONI: PIANO CONCERTO (Telarc). A bit grandiose but truly grand, with Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Cleveland Orchestra and spearheaded by Garrick Ohlsson's heroic playing of the difficult piano part in this rarely performed 1904 concerto.

BILL COSBY: WHERE YOU LAY YOUR HEAD (Verve). Jazz buff and drummer manque, the Cos directs an assortment of talented sidemen in five numbers written by Cosby and his longtime musical collaborator, Stu Gardner. The material is mainstream, mostly danceable, occasionally overcalculated -- sounding more like a jazz score than the real thing. This is the first in a projected series of Cosby-produced jazz recordings. Give the man B for a good beginning.

MOVIES

Q&A. Mike Brennan (Nick Nolte) is a good cop. He is also a murderer and a racist -- but then, in this study of New York's finest, who isn't? Director Sidney Lumet creates an atmosphere of relentless, compelling viciousness, where cops and crooks have the same dirt under their nails -- and on their tongues.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. In just six weeks, $100 million worth of movie- goers have seen this live-action version of the TV cartoon. Were any of them adults? If so, they have seen a dark, plodding melodrama only rarely leavened by wit or derring-do. Heroes on the half shell; hit film on the hard sell.