Critics' Voices

By TIME''s Reviewers. Compiled by Andrea Sachs

THEATER

BLACK AND BLUE. Tony winner Ruth Brown seemed irreplaceable as the comic heft of this gorgeous Broadway review, but LaVern Baker (also heard on the Dick Tracy score) gets the same laughs and is, if anything, torchier. In other regards this celebration of blues song and tap dance is better than ever: the all-black cast has infused a newfound Harlem funk into the Busby Berkeleyesque glamour.

CAMILLE. Charles Ludlam died of AIDS in 1987, but his plays' nutty mix of drag-queen melodrama, camp slapstick and sly deconstruction lives on. His longtime companion and collaborator, Everett Quinton, restages and stars in yet another of them at off-Broadway's Ridiculous Theatrical Company.

MY CHILDREN! MY AFRICA! South Africa's laureate of liberal anguish, Athol Fugard, staged the La Jolla Playhouse's production, near San Diego, of this harrowing play about the breakdown of civility and of the possibility for compromise in his native land. As always with Fugard, the language is poetic, the vision inspiring and the truth unflinchingly confronted.

MOVIES

DARKMAN. Director Sam Raimi mines comic-book terrain with a plucky heroine, a couple of corporate villains and plenty of explosive violence that virtually reads KA-BOOM! in block letters across the screen.

PUMP UP THE VOLUME. By night, Mark Hunter is "Hard Harry," sole owner of a pirate radio station on which he endlessly, maniacally articulates sedition, sexual and social, to his schoolmates. His monologues very possibly constitute the most direct and original route into the junkheap of the adolescent mind that any moviemaker has yet found.

MUSIC

PRINCE: GRAFFITI BRIDGE (Warner Bros.). The movie -- a sequel to 1984's Purple Rain -- is not out until October, but this funked-out, sizzling soundtrack won't wait that long. Sensual and spiritual: better grab it fast.

MARK WHITFIELD: THE MARKSMAN (Warner Bros.). This prodigiously gifted 24-year- old jazz guitarist is right on target with a mellow, bluesy swing that will have you jabbing the "repeat" button before the first tune is over.

BERLIOZ: LES NUITS D'ETE; MAHLER: SONGS (Bridge). The great mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani's last recording renders almost palpable the feelings of yearning and fleeting gaiety, along with the elegiac beauty, that make these songs, and her art, imperishable.

TELEVISION

LEARNING IN AMERICA: SCHOOLS THAT WORK (PBS, Sept. 5, 9 p.m. on most stations). Roger Mudd is the anchor for a special on elementary schools that are using innovative teaching approaches.

MISS AMERICA PAGEANT (NBC, Sept. 8, 10 p.m. EDT). There he is, Mr. Miss America. Bert Parks, who got dumped as the pageant's longtime host in 1979, will make a return appearance this year to serenade a bevy of former winners.

LIFESTORIES (NBC, Sept. 12, 10 p.m. EDT). Of the networks' new fall entries, this slice-of-life-and-death series about people going through medical crises is one of the oddest. A downbeat mix of soap opera, psychological drama and medical-advice column, it will try to woo viewers away from America's Funniest Home Videos. Sort of NBC's death wish.

BOOKS

THE ANTS by Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson (Harvard; $65). The result of 20 years of collaborative research into the mysteries of the planet's most ubiquitous and useful invertebrate, superbly published to appeal to both specialists and laymen.

ART

RENOIR: THE GREAT BATHERS, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Renoir's Great Bathers combined impressionist technique and the classical figure to produce a manifesto on how modern painting could also be monumental. The famous canvas is here surrounded with related paintings, drawings and sculptures. Sept. 9 through Nov. 25.

ROMANCE OF THE TAJ MAHAL, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. During more than three centuries, people have never tired of looking at -- or portraying -- India's fabled building, as attested by these models, paintings, drawings, photos and artifacts. Through Nov. 25.

ET CETERA

SPLASH! Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City. A celebration of the swimsuit, from the armature worn by 19th century bathers to Rudi Gernreich's topless shocker (1964). Through Sept. 15.

THREE STOOGES FESTIVAL. N'yuk, n'yuk, n'yuk! At the Akron, Ohio, Civic Theatre, the legacy of Larry, Curly and Moe will be celebrated with 21 Stooges films, look-alike contests, a Curly Shuffle competition and an "Alphabet Song" sing-along, complete with free kazoos. Sept. 7 to 9.

FESTIVALS

Forget last year's cultural fad, the Soviets, and this year's fad, the Germans. The Los Angeles Festival is betting that in the long haul, changing U.S. demographics will give primacy to the Pacific Rim, defined loosely enough to embrace not only Bali and Korea but also Chile and Laguna Beach. The 290- plus events, 70% of them free, range from Thai transvestism to Buddhist religious ritual, Indian dance drama to Japanese music, with an emphasis on performance art over literary text -- as one might expect from festival artistic director Peter Sellars, whose oddball adaptations of stage and opera classics leave no spectator indifferent. Samples: the six-hour Dragon's Trilogy, an East-meets-West tale performed in Chinese and English; court dance from Java; American Indian ceremonial dance and birdsong; street theater staged by a troupe made up of the homeless. The $5 million extravaganza sprawls over six dozen venues until Sept. 16, and some attractions continue into October.