Critics' Voices

By TIME''s Reviewers/Compiled by Linda Williams

MUSIC

WHITNEY HOUSTON: I'M YOUR BABY TONIGHT (Arista). Now wait a minute. Before you go dismissing her as a beautiful but soul-less dance-floor diva, check out her way with a ballad like All the Man That I Need. She comes within striking distance of classic saloon soul here and proves she's stepping up to fast company.

ALAN FEINBERG: THE AMERICAN ROMANTIC (Argo). This young pianist displays his uncommon grasp of the romantic idiom in these flavorful, virtuoso pieces by ^ U.S. composers Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Amy Beach and Robert Helps.

ART

ART WHAT THOU EAT: IMAGES OF FOOD IN AMERICAN ART, New York Historical Society. From Mary Cassatt's 19th century vision of Five O'Clock Tea to Andres Serrano's 1984 photograph Meat Weapon, 70 works offering a rich diet of social history. Through March 22.

NATURE INTO ART: ENGLISH LANDSCAPE WATERCOLORS FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM, Cleveland Museum of Art. A generous sampling from the B.M.'s great collection, including paintings by Gainsborough, Constable and Turner, as well as such lesser known masters as Thomas Girtin and John Sell Cotman. Through March 10.

TELEVISION

SUPER BOWL (ABC, Jan. 27, 6 p.m. EST). During the commercial breaks, Coke and Pepsi will face off with big-money contests, while those beer bottles clash again in the Bud Bowl. Oh, yes, and there's a football game.

DAVIS RULES (ABC, Jan. 27, approximately 10 p.m. EST). The year's most coveted time period -- the one following the Super Bowl -- goes to this new sitcom starring Jonathan Winters as the wacky father of a grammar school principal (Randy Quaid).

MOVIES

MERMAIDS. This mother-daughter comedy has all the trappings of 1963 nostalgia -- the pop tunes, the cars and clothes, the Kennedy assassination -- plus another movie anachronism: a lot of old-fashioned heart. As Cher's daughter, roiled by puberty and obsessed with the lives of the saints, Winona Ryder confirms that she is America's most winning young actress.

AWAKENINGS. Actors love to play disadvantaged characters; it brings them big challenges and Oscar nominations. Robert De Niro is fine as a victim of sleeping sickness awakened by neurologist Robin Williams. But Penny Marshall's direction is TV-movie ham-fisted, and the film ends up as a case history of good intentions run to ground.

HAMLET. Turns out that Mel Gibson, with his brooding presence and urgent baritone, is on speaking terms with Shakespeare. And Franco Zeffirelli's film is plenty pretty. It almost works as a cloak-and-bodkin adventure, but with one problem for the kids: all that talk!

THEATER

REMEMBRANCE. Amid the turmoil of Belfast, two elderly people meet at a cemetery and form a Protestant-Catholic romance -- tender and proper and doomed by "the troubles." Quiet and exquisitely acted, this touching off- Broadway drama features the lovable Malachy McCourt and the unforgettable Aideen O'Kelly, perhaps the finest unsung actress in North America.

THREE SISTERS. Terse, scatological David Mamet and wistful, musing Anton Chekhov make a far from obvious marriage, but after successfully adapting one of the Russian's short stories and Uncle Vanya, Mamet and his Atlantic Theater Company take on a masterwork at Philadelphia's Festival Theater for New Plays.

WAITING FOR GODOT. Samuel Beckett may be gone, but his best-known play proves immortal in this production by the Virginia Stage Company's slyly funny artistic director, Charles Towers.

BOOKS

THE SECRET PILGRIM by John le Carre (Knopf; $21.95). So what if these related tales seem like outtakes from a story that has already been told? They are exciting reminders of Le Carre's fictional saga of postwar British intelligence, and best of all, they include the reappearance of George Smiley.

PORTABLE PEOPLE by Paul West (British American; $10.95, paperback). The prolific novelist turns his fertile imagination to what he calls "fictional- biography," short, lyrical and sometimes surreal sketches of famous writers, musicians, politicians, athletes, heroes and villains, ranging from John Keats and Chris Evert to Joseph Goebbels and Jack the Ripper. A tour de force that is guaranteed to leave you sockless.

ETCETERA

FELD BALLETS/NY. One of America's most talented and stable ballet choreographers, Eliot Feld is starting a six-week season -- which is no small achievement in recessionary times. Along with four premieres, there will be fond looks back at early lyrical works like At Midnight (1967). Jan. 29-March 10.

THE PASSION OF JONATHAN WADE. One of the few masters of American opera (Susannah), Carlisle Floyd sets his tragedy in Columbia, S.C., just after the Civil War at the savage start of Reconstruction. Sets by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen. At the Houston Grand Opera, Jan. 18-Feb. 2.

BIRD LIVES AGAIN!

THE COMPLETE DEAN BENEDETTI RECORDINGS OF CHARLIE PARKER (Mosaic). Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker almost single-handedly changed the course of jazz history with his lightning-fingered improvisations, rhythmic subtleties and harmonic genius -- not to mention the fast-living, drug-shooting life-style that led to his death at 34 and was, unfortunately, widely imitated by his contemporaries. One such was Dean Benedetti, a West Coast jazzman who copied Bird in every way he could, down to and including his own premature death at 34. But Benedetti left behind an extraordinary legacy: a cache of impromptu recordings that he had made of Parker's live performances in 1947-48. Now this long-lost treasure has been rediscovered and issued as a 10-LP or seven-CD boxed set. Though the nine hours of music -- consisting mostly of disembodied Parker solos--can be taxing on the casual listener, the set uniquely documents one of Bird's most fertile periods and is thus a must-have for any serious jazz fan. (35 Melrose Place, Stamford, Conn. 06902; 203-327-7111.)