Critics’ Voices: Jul. 9, 1990

MOVIES

GREMLINS 2. Those anti-Muppets are back, terrorizing a Manhattan high-rise run by a zillionaire who blends all the worst tendencies of Donald Trump and Ted Turner. It’s ingenious fun, but relentlessly noisy. After an hour or so, you may feel like a captive teacher at a kindergarten in hell.

JESUS OF MONTREAL. An avant-garde theater troupe performs its own radical updating of the Passion play. Now, shouldn’t a film with that story enrage a few conservative zealots? Alas, Denys Arcand’s French-Canadian satire is so solemn that it is not worth patronizing — or even picketing.

DICK TRACY. Forget the marketing campaign, which has blitzed everyone this side of Burkina Faso. Forget Warren Beatty’s reputation as an indefatigable Don Juan. Just plunk down your money and enjoy a suave, splendid movie romance.

ART

MAURICE PRENDERGAST, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. Prendergast evolved from a sign painter to one of the pathfinders of post- impressionism in the U.S. This retrospective traces the full arc of his progress. Through Sept. 2.

NICOLAS DE STAEL IN AMERICA, the Phillips Collection, Washington. A gathering of the brilliantly colored canvases that made the French-based De Stael a rising star in America until his suicide at 41 in 1955. Through Sept. 9.

BLACK ART: ANCESTRAL LEGACY, High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The influence of an older, African culture shapes these paintings and sculptures by 20th century black artists in the U.S. and the Caribbean. Through Aug. 5.

THEATER

PRICE OF FAME. Movie star Charles Grodin headlines off-Broadway in his own play about a movie star being interviewed by a reporter (the beguiling Lizbeth Mackay) who he realizes is out to do him in. He returns the favor more literally in a glib, genial formula comedy.

FOREVER PLAID. Even if you don’t remember the bland, white, close-harmony boy pop groups, Ed Sullivan Show variety acts and ’50s squeaky-cleanness being sent up in this off-Broadway review, the daffy humor and deft musicianship should prove charming.

SHE ALWAYS SAID, PABLO. Frank Galati, winner of two Tony Awards in June as adapter and director of The Grapes of Wrath, performed the same tasks for this dizzyingly beautiful blend of imagery from Picasso’s paintings, and poetry and music from the Gertrude Stein-Virgil Thomson Four Saints in Three Acts. Originally staged for the Goodman troupe in Chicago, it plays through July 22 at Washington’s Kennedy Center.

MUSIC

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS: FLOOD (Elektra). When they’re good, they’re winningly whimsical and goofy. When they’re off the mark (as in their current cover of the old novelty item Istanbul, Not Constantinople), you just want to lock these guys in their room so they can’t come out and play.

CHOPIN: PIANO CONCERTOS NOS. 1 & 2 (Sony Classical). Ably accompanied by Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, Murray Perahia shows a pianistic warmth, incisive brilliance and mastery of these pieces unrivaled since Rubinstein’s heyday.

PEGGY LEE: THE PEGGY LEE SONGBOOK (Musicmasters). Peggy Lee is an American icon. Her singing, no longer as seemingly effortless as it once was, now combines its sultry smokiness with the quality of having lived life with a capital L. These 13 songs, most co-written by Lee, have been beautifully recorded with a knockout team of studio musicians. Her fans should pounce.

TELEVISION

ON THE 4TH OF JULY WITH CHARLES KURALT (CBS, July 4, 10 p.m. EDT). CBS’s roadmaster celebrates the holiday with a collection of favorite vignettes of Americana.

ALIVE FROM OFF CENTER (PBS, debuting July 5, 10 p.m. on most stations). A sixth summertime season of this series of offbeat video works gets under way with Postcards, Mark Rappaport’s clever chronicle of a deteriorating romance as told through the couple’s postcard correspondence.

PIECE OF CAKE (PBS, debuting July 8, 9 p.m. on most stations). It’s back to the Battle of Britain in a new six-part Masterpiece Theatre series about RAF flyers during the first year of World War II.

ET CETERA

NEW YORK CITY BALLET/SUMMER. Every year this fleet, elegant troupe packs its trunks and heads to Saratoga, N.Y., for an open-air season. Upcoming highlights include two fine new works by artistic director Peter Martins, Fearful Symmetries and Four Gnossiennes, and seven ballets from the Jerome Robbins Festival, a popular and critical hit in New York City. July 10-28.

JAZZ

THE COMPLETE BLUE NOTE RECORDINGS OF GEORGE LEWIS (Mosaic). Frail, soft-spoken and self-taught, clarinetist George Lewis seemed an unlikely candidate for stardom. While many other New Orleans-born musicians left town in the 1920s to seek fame and fortune in the North, Lewis stayed behind, playing parades, dances and club dates, and working as a stevedore to make ends meet. Yet a series of recordings he made in the early ’40s helped spark a revival of interest in traditional New Orleans music and made Lewis a folk hero and model for hundreds of jazz clarinetists around the world, including Britain’s Sammy Rimington, Butch Thompson (of Prairie Home Companion fame) and Woody Allen. This three-CD (or five-LP) set contains some of Lewis’ greatest recorded work, much of it previously unissued, in a digital remastering that beautifully captures the relentless drive and haunting tone that were his trademarks. Mosaic Records, 35 Melrose Place, Stamford, Conn. 06902; phone (203) 327-7111.