Short Takes

TELEVISION

Orwell Meets the Marx Brothers

When Larry Gelbart's Broadway comedy MASTERGATE opened three years ago, it was deemed a parody of the Iran-contra hearings. With the passage of time -- and a sharp TV adaptation for Showtime -- it seems bigger than that: a definitive satire of the obfuscating language of government and the media. The setting is a congressional hearing investigating a CIA diversion of funds, but the details are drowned in dialogue that sounds like a cross between Orwell and the Marx Brothers. "My involvement was strictly limited to the extent of my participation," huffs one official. A TV anchorman anticipates a witness by "waiting for the arrival of his appearance." Richard Kiley, Ed Begley Jr. and Tim Reid are standouts in a superb cast.

MUSIC

Kicking Back

KEITH RICHARDS, THAT OLD DEVIL Stone, has for so long been rock's paradigm of advanced dissipation that it comes as a surprise to hear him here, on his second solo album, in a mood that veers dangerously close to relaxed. Kind of a nice surprise at that. Main Offender (Virgin) offers 10 jaunty cuts. Richards does a pretty good job on a ballad -- yes, a ballad -- called Eileen. There is also a spiffy, slow-tempo reggae number, Words of Wonder, and a neat one-two punch of reflections on compromised love, Hate It When You Leave and Runnin' Too Deep. Some folks, as they say, go to hell in a hand basket. If Richards is there already, then, to judge by this album, he's swinging in a hammock.

MUSIC

Voice Out of Russia

OF ALL THE COMPOSERS TO EMERGE FROM the collapse of the Soviet Union, the most significant is ALFRED SCHNITTKE. Long a word-of-mouth favorite of emigre artists like violinist Gidon Kremer, Schnittke, 58, has a firm grasp of structure, a masterly hand with orchestration and, most important, a distinctive, expressive voice. A new London/Decca recording of Schnittke's Concerti Grossi Nos. 3 and 4 displays his gifts in full flower. The Third (1985) harks back to Bach in a tour de force of stylistic synthesis, while the 1988 Fourth (which, confusingly, the composer also calls his Symphony No. 5) takes an unfinished work by Mahler as its launching pad. Riccardo Chailly and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw achieve lift-off and soar in both.

CINEMA

A Beastie Brings Fear Times Five

Who can make your heart stop?

Pull it from your chest?

Scarify your best friend

And scare off all the rest?

The CANDYMAN can.

SAMMY DAVIS JR.'S SINGSONG CANDY MAN was a genial guy. The '90s version, from the fetid, fertile brain of horror bard Clive Barker, is a malefic beastie who preys on those foolhardy enough to say his name five times. Now he's lusting to make a curious grad student (Virginia Madsen) his charnel bride. Borrowing from Stephen King and Freddy Krueger (while paving the way for a batch of Candyman sequels), director Bernard Rose deftly juggles sense and slaughter. This is clever, spooky stuff, with a lingering autumn chill.

BOOKS

Bitter Harmonies

RACISM IN THIS COUNTRY IS TALKED about primarily as a problem for its victims. But Bebe Moore Campbell knows better. Her remarkable first novel, YOUR BLUES AIN'T LIKE MINE (Putnam; $22.95), begins with a fictionalized account of the murder of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy who was lynched in 1955 for speaking to a white woman in a rural Mississippi town. As in real life, the murderer is acquitted by an all-white jury, but over the next 30 years the murderer's family, unable to adapt to the new ways brought on by the civil rights movement, falls into poverty. The victim's family seeks solace in the North but falls prey to the evils of the inner city. In clean, elegant prose, Campbell offers a powerful reminder that racism is a crime for which everyone pays.