On Broadway

TELEVISION

Wednesday, March 23

BEETHOVEN: ORDEAL AND TRIUMPH (ABC, 10-11 p.m.).-This special studies the early, highly creative years of the composer. It features the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Pianist Claude Frank. U.N.C.L.E.'s David McCallum is the voice of Beethoven.

Thursday, March 24

THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Relaxing with Dean are the Supremes, Imogene Coca, Jackie Mason, the Tijuana Brass and Jane Morgan.

Saturday, March 26

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Top skiers compete for the Werner Cup in Sun Valley, Idaho.

GOLF WITH SAM SNEAD (NBC, 5:30-6 p.m.). Slamming Sammy gives the first of 13 golf lessons with actual students who are tall, fat, old and young, to show the particular problems of each.

SECRET AGENT (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Agent John Drake starts his search for the source of a top-secret information leak in the House of Lords, zeroes in on the husband of the richest woman in the world.

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). Where the Boys Are. The lem-minglike migration of college students to Fort Lauderdale and "freedom." George Hamilton, Paula Prentiss, Connie Francis and Yvette Mimieux agonize about it.

Sunday, March 27

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). "Man of the Month." This time he's a woman, Mrs. Indira Gandhi. The program includes a brief biographical resume, an interview with Mrs. Gandhi, and a long look at the problems which she is facing in India.

BELL TELEPHONE HOUR (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). "Masterpieces and Music," with Charles Boyer waxing rhapsodic over art works in the background, while Leontyne Price, Benny Goodman, Ballet Dancer Edward Villella and the New Christy Minstrels perform in the foreground.

Monday, March 28

CONFIDENTIAL FOR WOMEN (ABC, 2-2:30 p.m.). Premiere. Soap opera with a degree in parlor psychology.

THE AVENGERS (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Premiere. More secret agents, British to be sure. Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg play the two in this series. In "The Cyber-nauts," they track down an assassin who kills industrialists exclusively.

THEATER

WAIT A MINIM! is a South African mu sical revue that is light of heart, flip of wit, and full of wondrously exotic instru ments like the mbira, timbila and kalimba.

The five-man, three-woman, all-white cast is so remarkably gifted that it may never see Johannesburg again.

3 BAGS FULL, by Jerome Chodorov. Writ ten in mock-Edwardian, directed like a six-day bike race, this adapted French farce is irresistibly droll, thanks chiefly to that dour master of ludicrous mayhem, Paul Ford.

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! When a man buries his past, he rarely faces the future dry-eyed. But Brian Friel applies the saving sponge of humor to the Irish sentiment pouring from his play, and Dubliners Donal Donnelly and Patrick Bedford, as twin images of the hero, stir up a fine farrago of laughter and tears.

SWEET CHARITY. As a dancing doxy with a heart of gold, Gwen Verdon is one of nature's eternally winning losers. Choreographer Bob Fosse adds redeeming grace to Neil Simon's feeble script.

INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE. Middle age, joyless loves, and his own irredeemable mediocrity have given John Osborne's anti-hero a screaming case of psychic jitters. Yet the play is armed with irascible wit, and Nicol Williamson's whiplash acting raises laughs as well as welts.

THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE. With the cool ferocity of a mad scientist, Director Peter Brook conducts a controlled experiment in audience anxiety. Result: exciting theater that may scare the living daylights out of playgoers.

CACTUS FLOWER is a French farce adapted to U.S. tastes by Director Abe Burrows. Handling dialogue like a bone-dry martini, Nurse Lauren Bacall is all efficiency in the office but predictably cuts loose on the dance floor, with some torso twisting that causes Dentist Barry Nelson to drop his dentures.

THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN. Chris topher Plummer gives a forceful interpretation of the stormy Conquistador Pizarro in Peru.

Off Broadway

THE MAD SHOW. Against a background portrait of the grinning "Me Worry?" symbol, five cavorting performers convey a more or less Mad message through zany skits and impersonations. Thanks to the cast, the show is funnier than its material.

HOGAN'S GOAT bares the roots of American experience with its forceful evocation of the Irish character, customs and political power. Emigrants relocated in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn reflect Playwright William Alfred's ethnic truths.

CINEMA

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.

A contradiction in terms: a truly faithful Biblical film made by a Communist, namely Italian Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who employs only nonprofessional actors and uses a script based entirely on Holy Writ.

OTHELLO. A stagy film, starring Sir Laurence Olivier as the Moor. Although he seems pitted less against lago than the Bard, Olivier, blackface, West Indian accent and all, still manages to show why today he is the most versatile actor in the world.

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX. How to make a little plane out of a big one that has crashed in the Sahara. Surprisingly well-paced and acted by an international troupe of pros including James Stewart, Hardy Kruger and Richard Attenborough, who struggle for survival against the sun, the sand and themselves.

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. A grainy, gritty double exposure of the spy racket on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Richard Burton is brilliant as a Western burned-out case; Oskar Werner is his preeminent prey from the East. Martin Ritt (Hud) is responsible for the near-perfect direction.

DEAR JOHN. Love is considerably more than sin-deep in this tour de force of erotic realism by Swedish Director Lars Magnus Lindgren. Jarl Kulle plays a sea captain, Christina Schollin the cafe waitress with whom he has a one-night affair that, oddly, ennobles them both.

LOVING COUPLES. Another Swedish showpiece handsomely fashioned by Film-Star-turned-Director Mai Zetterling. Antimarriage, antisex, anti-men. Couples is a long, loving closeup of three young women who come to grief because of the vain, stupid, corrupt men they cannot say no to.

RECORDS

Grammy awards for excellence in every aspect of recording, from conducting a symphony to "engineering" a pop album, were awarded last week by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Among the winners in the classical field:

Album of the year-Horowitz at Carnegie Hall (Columbia), which was also voted the best-engineered classical recording and the best performance by an instrumental soloist.

Best orchestra performance-the American Symphony Orchestra (Leopold Stokowski conducting), in Ives's Symphony No. 4 (Columbia). The Ives symphony was also voted the best composition by a contemporary classical composer.

Best opera recording-Berg's Wozzcck, conducted by Karl Boehm (Deutsche Grammophon).

Best performance by a soloist with orchestra-Artur Rubinstein playing Beethoven's Concerto No. 4 with the Boston Symphony, Erich Leinsdorf conducting (RCA Victor).

Best performance by a vocal soloist-Leontyne Price singing excerpts from Strauss's operas Salome and The Egyptian Helen, with the Boston Symphony under Erich Leinsdorf (RCA Victor).

Best chamber music performance-the Juilliard String Quartet playing Bartok's Six String Quartets (Columbia).

In the nonclassical categories:

Single record of the year-Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, playing A Taste of Honey (A & M).

Album of the year-Frank Sinatra's September of My Years (Reprise).

Best vocal performances-Barbra Streisand (My Name Is Barbra, Columbia) and Frank Sinatra (on the single record, It Was a Very Good Year, Reprise).

Best new artist-Tom Jones (Parrot).

Best jazz performance-For a small group, the Ramsey Lewis Trio's The 'In' Crowd (Cadet); and for a large group, the Duke Ellington Orchestra on Ellington '66 (Reprise).

Best rock 'n' roll single-Roger Miller's King of the Road (Smash), also voted the best single song, and male vocal performance in the country and western category.

Best folk recording-An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba (RCA Victor).

BOOKS

Best Reading

THE DOUBLE IMAGE, by Helen Maclnnes. This is Master Spy writer Maclnnes1 13th book-and it continues her tradition of bestsellers. As usual, her hero, armed only with good manners and innocence, is thrown up against a diabolical and murderous gang of international spies in a first-rate suspense tale.

BRET HARTE, by Richard O'Connor. Although his collected works fill 20 volumes, Harte (1836-1902) is best remembered today for a couple of short stories and one humorous poem. Biographer O'Connor gives Harte his due both as a literary figure and as a silken-mustached rascal, who snubbed his friends and was once feelingly described by Mark Twain as a coward, a liar, a swindler, a born loafer and an s.o.b.

THE SADDEST SUMMER OF SAMUEL S, by J. P. Donleavy. Once again Black Humorist Donleavy (Ginger Man) proves that he can make something of nothing-in this case a non-hero who has worn out his Viennese psychiatrist and baffled a predatory countess and a girl tourist in his Kafkaesque progress to nothingness.

GARIBALDI AND HIS ENEMIES, by Christopher Hibbert. Author Hibbert has clarified the vastly confused and equally grand career of Giuseppe Garibaldi, most romantic and most effective of those who waged the 19th century fight for Italian nationhood.

GREENSTONE, by Sylvia Ashton-Warner. Maori and British-descended New Zealanders come together in a graceful parable of age and childhood, mysticism and reality, told with talent enough to create a subtle celebration of life.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL, by Kenneth Rexroth. With a cast of 1,000 people who are least likely to get into Who's Who, Kenneth Rexroth, last of the old bohemians, crams the stage of a crowded autobiography. Fortunately, the old political evangelist ceases to wave the flags of social revolt in favor of chronicling the reign of a minor king of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

AUSTERLITZ, by Claude Manceron. The campaign that Napoleon always regarded as his tactical masterpiece is meticulously reconstructed hour by hour, from inception to final triumph over the combined armies of Austria and Russia.

THE COMPLETE LETTERS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE, VOLUME I (1708-1720), collected and edited by Robert Halsband. A beauty, a wit, an essayist admired by Addison, a satirist who rivaled Pope, Lady Mary was also acclaimed the greatest of the great letter writers of the 18th century.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. The Source, Michener (1 last week)

2. The Embezzler, Auchincloss (2)

3. The Double Image, Maclnnes (3)

4. Those Who Love, Stone (4)

5. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (8)

6. The Comedians, Greene (5)

7. The Billion Dollar Brain, Deighton (7)

8. Up the Down Staircase, Kaufman (9)

9. The Lockwood Concern, O'Hara (6) 10. Tell No Man, St. Johns

NONFICTION 1. In Cold Blood, Capote (1)

2. A Thousand Days, Schlesinger (2)

3. The Last 100 Days, Toland (7)

4. The Proud Tower, Tuchman (3)

5. Games People Play, Berne (4)

6. A Gift of Prophecy, Montgomery (5)

7. Kennedy, Sorensen (6)

8. Yes I Can, Davis and Boyar (9)

9. The Penkovskiy Papers, Penkovskiy (8) 10. Is Paris Burning? Collins and

Lapierre (10)

*All times E.S.T.

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