Critics' Choice

THEATER

MANDY PATINKIN IN CONCERT: DRESS CASUAL. The edgy, high-energy star of stage (Evita) and film (Yentl) thrills Broadway with a brilliantly idiosyncratic styling of ballad and show tunes.

THE ROAD TO MECCA. South African Athol Fugard directs and stars in his masterly drama of the artist as outsider, at Washington's Kennedy Center.

HENRY IV, PART II. The darkest and most brooding of the Bard's histories is richly illuminated by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival at Ashland.

SHOWING OFF. What ever happened to the witty little revue? It's thriving off- Broadway in this four-person jape at assorted cultural pretenses, including odious sing-alongs, the subject of the sing-along finale.

MOVIES

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY . . . he asked her: Can a man and a woman be friends without worrying about having sex? Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan spend a beguiling dozen years trying to figure it out.

SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE. Next question: Can a man and a woman be lovers without having sex? In Steven Soderbergh's elegant, poignant, very funny film, the answer matters less than the interplay of four congenially tortured souls.

PARENTHOOD. Didn't Tolstoy say that each unhappy family is funny in its own way? This brave and original movie, starring Jason Robards as curmudgeonly Grandpa and Steve Martin as his No. 1 son, piles up most of our worst parental nightmares in a single midsummer comedy. It really shouldn't work, but it does.

BOOKS

AUGUST 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $50 hardback, $19.95 paper). This novel first appeared in English 17 years ago. Since then the 1970 Nobel laureate has added some 300 pages to his fictional but heavily researched saga of Russia's catastrophic involvement in World War I.

POLAR STAR by Martin Cruz Smith (Random House; $19.95). Smith sets Moscow investigator Arkady Renko (Gorky Park) off on another bizarre case, this one on a fishing boat on the Bering Sea; one dead body leads to others along an arc of increasing menace and violence.

FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $22.95). A Pulitzer-prizewinning Middle East correspondent looks back on the brutal realities of a region drenched in myths and bloodshed.

ART

BENJAMIN WEST: AMERICAN PAINTER AT THE ENGLISH COURT, Baltimore Museum of Art. Period pieces today, these 52 canvases show what made "the American Raphael" (1738-1820) the toast of London and the first American artist to achieve international renown. Through Aug. 20.

EDWARD HOPPER, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. A major realist painter, Hopper (1882-1967) is also an enduringly popular chronicler of New England lighthouses, late-night cafes and other American vignettes. Through Nov. 5.

MUSIC

SWING OUT SISTER: KALEIDOSCOPE WORLD (Polygram). Sophisticated jazz-pop with a British twist. Corinne Drewery's silky vocals and Andrew Connell's buoyant keyboards create expansive, richly atmospheric arrangements.

BODEANS: HOME (Slash/Reprise). Brand New is the title of one of this album's best cuts, but BoDeans fans will be cheered to know that the band's still doing what it has always done best: focused, aggressive rock that doesn't stint on spirit.

TIN MACHINE: TIN MACHINE (EMI). It's David Bowie, lying low with a new band that he helped create and whose rough edges he hones to a cutting edge.

THE JACKSONS: 2300 JACKSON STREET (Epic). Remember the address if you want to crash a party without leaving home. The Jacksons make hot soul but deliver it nice and cool.

TELEVISION

FATAL ADDICTIONS (NBC, Aug. 9, 10 p.m. EDT). The title refers to a range of American bad habits, from drugs to gambling. Host Maria Shriver will survey the problem in this NBC News special.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW (Showtime, debuting Aug. 12, 10 p.m. EDT). Amy Irving stars as the Victorian governess with a ghost problem in this new version of Henry James' famous novella. The hour-long drama launches Shelley Duvall's new series, Nightmare Classics.

ANYTHING BUT LOVE (ABC, returning Aug. 15, 9:30 p.m. EDT). Angst-ridden stand- up comic Richard Lewis, playing a magazine writer with a yen for Jamie Lee Curtis, made this midseason sitcom worth watching. Now it is back for a few weeks of reruns.