Short Takes

CINEMA

An Energy Shortage

AT THE CENTER OF LORENZO'S OIL LIES A desperately sick child. But in director George Miller's tedious film, he is also, during much of the time, lost. For this true story of Augusto and Michaela Odone (Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon) focuses on their frantic efforts to find a cure for their boy's rare disease (adrenoleukodystrophy). Their search leads them into shrill conflict with an overcautious medical establishment. It also draws them into that least cinematic of environments, the library. When they are not poring over volumes, they are earnestly discussing their various findings. Both modes distance the audience from them and their tragic offspring. Eventually the couple manage to find a palliative for the disease, but Miller never finds one for our boredom.

CINEMA

Raw Action

A PAIR OF WHITE ARKANSAS FIREMEN (Bill Paxton and William Sadler) accidentally come upon a treasure map. Its X marks a spot in a creepy, abandoned factory. As they root in the floorboards for gold, a gang of black drug dealers, whose leaders are played by rappers Ice-T and Ice Cube, turn up to use the place for a murder. Race, greed and venality on all sides soon lead to deadly conflict. There's something bracing about the utter amorality of TRESPASS. Director Walter Hill has something like a genius for staging and editing action in jolting bursts. The movie wants to make this place, these people into an urban metaphor. But because there's no one here you really care about, the film finally shows more technique than heart.

MUSIC

Sweet Balance

FEMALE-LED LIGHT-ROCK ENSEMBLES became a staple of the late '80s with the success of records by 10,000 Maniacs and Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians. The newest album from THE SUNDAYS, Blind, shows an unexpected durability of that format as well as a band that succeeds by smartly playing from its strengths. Sundays lead singer Harriet Wheeler deserves much of the credit. Front and center is her floating, shimmering alto, unfurling like a silken ribbon and ringing like brass. Her lyrics are ordinary but agilely delivered. David Gavurin's well-balanced compositions and sweet, guitar-led arrangements provide Wheeler with an intricately detailed yet unobtrusive backdrop. Sometimes pop works best when it keeps its own limits in mind.

TELEVISION

Hothouse Gothic

SEBASTIAN VENABLE HAS DIED. BUT how? That is the question in SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, Tennessee Williams' 1958 hothouse melodrama about prefrontal lobotomy, closet homosexuality and cannibalism. If the subject matter no longer shocks, the play itself can still thrill, given the right actors. In PBS's Great Performances presentation, it has them, mostly. Maggie Smith, as Sebastian's aloof, vindictive mother, and especially Natasha Richardson, as his possibly insane cousin, who was with him when he died, are superb adversaries, both of them informing Williams' lyrical dialogue with the rich emotional life it must have. Only Rob Lowe fails, more callow med student than the requisite mediating psychiatrist.

THEATER

New Hansel

AS BUDGET-BELEAGUERED SCHOOLS CUT back on culture curriculums, everyone in the arts worries about where the next generation of audiences will come from. Hardly anyone does as much about it as Theatreworks/USA, a touring troupe specializing in new musicals. During three decades, it has played to more than 20 million children in every state but Hawaii. Its new HANSEL & GRETEL blends Humperdinck's opera music (ably arranged) with a libretto that softens the grim story by making it a pageant staged by a Salzburg family. The highlight: David Gallo's sets, which are sturdy enough to travel, versatile enough to become a forest or a witch's lair, and ravishing.