Critics' Voices

By TIME''S REVIEWERS/Compiled by Andrea Sachs

THEATER

OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD. Does art enoble the lowest wretch? Are convicts and their captors kindred spirits under the skin? Playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker says so in this didactic, sporadically touching Broadway drama, staged without subtlety in a transfer from the Hartford Stage Company.

THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES. Tommy Tune's staging and choreography capture the splash-and-dazzle Ziegfeld extravaganzas of the teens and '20s, and Keith Carradine engagingly replicates the rope-twirling humorist who starred in them. But Will Rogers, the biggest multimedia star of his time, proves of little interest today, and every enduring thing he ever said has long since has been quoted to tedium.

ANOTHER TIME. Albert Finney revives his London triumph in Ronald Harwood's drama about a South African pianist as Chicago's Steppenwolf troupe opens a sumptuous new $8 million theater. But the company members, most of them much younger than Finney, are at a loss playing relatives a generation older.

BOOKS

THE SOCCER WAR by Ryszard Kapuscinski (Knopf; $21). Back when Hunter S. Thompson still needed a road map to find Las Vegas, this Polish journalist was taking absurd, gonzo risks in the Third World. This is a breezy compilation of anecdotes recalled from the years he spent covering Africa and Latin America. Kapuscinski displays a keen empathy with the aspirations, however inchoate, of people who have glimpsed freedom for the first time.

MOVIES

TRUTH OR DARE. Madonna, stern mistress of her own evolving image, invites the camera along on her Blond Ambition concert tour. This rude documentary, long but lots of fun, features star cameos by Warren Beatty, Kevin Costner and Sandra Bernhard.

LA FEMME NIKITA. Sleek spy stuff in this melodrama about a killer (Anne Parillaud) recruited by French intelligence. Director Luc Besson serves a handsome mix of violent action and sulky introspection. Look for a Hollywood remake, minus the navel gazing.

CITIZEN KANE. Orson Welles' masterpiece, a detective thriller about a missing sled, is 50 years old and back in movie theaters, its freshness, wit, breadth and daring intact. What Cecilia Ager said on its release still applies: "It's as if you'd never seen a movie before."

TELEVISION

KURT VONNEGUT'S MONKEY HOUSE (Showtime, May 15 and 20). Three adaptations of short stories by the sci-fi fabulist. Hardly first-rate Vonnegut (more like second-rate Rod Serling), but more fun than most anything else on TV this month.

O PIONEERS! (PBS, May 17, 9 p.m. on most stations). American Playhouse brings to TV a stage-musical version of Willa Cather's novel about Swedish immigrants on the Nebraska frontier, starring Mary McDonnell (Dances with Wolves).

OUR SONS (ABC, May 19, 9 p.m. EDT) Julie Andrews and Ann-Margret play two women who cope very differently with homosexual sons and the tragedy of AIDS, in one of the first TV movies since An Early Frost to tackle the subject head on.

MUSIC

MICHAEL BOLTON: TIME, LOVE & TENDERNESS (Columbia). In an age of drum machines and synthesizers, Bolton relies on his remarkable voice to pack more soul into a love song than anyone else in

grove plays with the confidence and maturity of jazzmen twice his age. With his sharp attack and liquid tone, he brings both fire and lyricism to a repertoire that is always anchored in melody. Alto saxman Antonio Hart adds a riveting counterpoint to this tight, driving quintet.

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO. 7 & KINDERTOTENLIEDER (Philips). Seiji Ozawa leads the BostonSymphony Orchestra in a performance of extraordinary transparency, penetrated by the miraculous colors and moods of this vast, emotionally charged work. Jessye Norman's soprano is more enveloping than probing in the achingly beautiful Songs on the Deaths of Children.

ART

CATHERINE THE GREAT: TREASURES OF IMPERIAL RUSSIA: Memphis Cook Convention Center, Memphis. Almost 300 items from the era of the 18th century Czarina, including court costumes, an embroidered war tent, bejeweled snuff boxes, saintly icons and a newly restored gilded coronation carriage. Through Sept. 8.

EXPLORATIONS II: THE NEW FURNITURE: American Craft Museum, New York City. Sixty fanciful and inventive works by 11 contemporary American artists. Through Aug. 4.

ETCETERA

JELLY ROLL MORTON AND HIS RED HOT PEPPERS. Headed by Terry Waldo, a 7-piece stage band joyfully recreates the music of this legendary New Orleans pianist, composer, hustler and pool shark who dubiously claimed to have "invented" jazz and undoubtedly put his mark on the

"GORGEOUS!"

GOULD CONDUCTS WAGNER (Sony Classical). Shortly before his death in 1982, the legendary pianist Glenn Gould decided to experiment with the idea of becoming a conductor. Since he had abdicated the concert stage 18 years earlier, he & quietly rented a hall and hired some members of the Toronto Symphony. Though most famous for his electric keyboard interpretations of Bach, Gould chose for his orchestral debut Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, which he took at a glacially languorous tempo. When it was over, he blurted onto the tape an accurate verdict: "Gorgeous! Magnificent! Heartbreaking!" Along with that performance, the newly released album contains Gould's superb piano transcriptions of the Idyll, Siegfried's Rhine Journey and the prelude to Die Meistersinger. After nearly a decade of legal negotiations, it marks the beginning of a 30-disk series of Gould recordings, which will include such previously unreleased radio performances as Chopin's Sonata in B Minor