Reviews Short Takes

MUSIC

Look Who Lightened Up

For those who have found the lyrics of INDIGO GIRLS too overwrought, good news: in their new album, Rites of Passage, they have injected a little humor into their songs. Amy Ray and Emily Saliers provide, as usual, sharp, expressive guitar playing and seamless harmonizing. But in addition, they have turned down the melodrama and fine-tuned their writing. The playful Airplane offers an amusing take on the fear of flying, as a passenger barters with God to land her plane safely. Galileo, with its reincarnation theme, pokes at ^ Shirley MacLaine. And the throaty Ray belts out a recklessly romantic and downright sexy solo rendition of Dire Straits' Romeo and Juliet that grounds the album with a hard-strumming rock edge.

THEATER

Pygmalion, Part 99

Andrew, a professor, is engaged to preppy, Lydia. But he has the hots for Georgie, a low-life woman upstairs whom he is tutoring as a yuppie. To avert infidelity, he "gives" her to his buddy Edward, a criminal lawyer of no known scruples -- until Georgie displays more street-corner savvy than either of them. The setup smacks of formula, but Theresa Rebeck's SPIKE HEELS, which opened last week off-Broadway, is full of tart wit, feminist insight and quirky detours of plot. In a marquee cast -- Saundra Santiago of Miami Vice, Tony Goldwyn of Ghost -- the standout is film veteran Kevin Bacon as Edward, blending ribaldry, rudeness, rapscallion reprehensibility and believable redemption.

CINEMA

Hot Stuff

Return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear -- specifically the 1950s -- when the phrase "art film" whispered an erotic promise that U.S. movies, gagged by censorship, choked on. These imports generally offered about three minutes of hot stuff and an hour and a half of lugubrious regrets. Vicente Aranda maintains the classic balance in LOVERS. Set in '50s Spain, it tells the story of a sulky ne'er-do-well (Jorge Sanz) who is betrothed to a virginal housemaid (Maribel Verdu) but smitten by his kinky landlady (Victoria Abril). Older moviegoers may be nostalgically warmed by Aranda's sober replay of youth's sweet cheats; younger ones will have further evidence that Mom and Dad must have been really weird.

TELEVISION

Fundamentalist Festival

The term Fundamentalist is usually applied, dismissively, to U.S. Christians with overly firm convictions. But the documentary series THE GLORY AND THE POWER, on pbs the next three Mondays, uses it to describe zealots in all faiths worldwide. The series, based upon the University of Chicago's long- range Fundamentalism Project, is flawed but refreshingly free of hysteria. The first program portrays hard-shell Protestants at America's Bob Jones University; the second, Israel's Gush Emunim settlers in the West Bank; and the third, militant Muslims, mostly in Egypt. The Muslims get the most sophisticated treatment -- fittingly, since they seem the only one of these groups destined to win political control someday.

POLITICS

^ Sound Bites

It's a good thing Bill Clinton has a job -- he'd never make a living with his tenor sax. Sure, it took guts to play on The Arsenio Hall Show, and sure, he looked cool in those shades. As a musician, however, he was in way over his head. Of the two numbers he played, Clinton seemed more at home on Heartbreak Hotel; his growly sound suited the rhythm-and-blues genre, though his attacks were sloppy. Billie Holiday's ballad God Bless the Child was a mess. Clinton's phrasing was unsure, his tone thin, his melodic lines disintegrated into meaningless trills. But the audience loved it -- and maybe they were right. In a campaign dominated by sound bites, it is refreshing to hear a candidate come out with something really important like jazz. Just don't buy the album.