Critics’ Choice: Nov. 14, 1988

THEATER

ITALIAN AMERICAN RECONCILIATION. In John Patrick Shanley’s Little Italy, all the women are worldly-wise, and all the men are moonstruck. John Turturro leads the cast of this chocolate-heart comedy at the Manhattan Theater Club.

DINNER AT EIGHT. It’s raining stocks and bonds outside, but portents of Depression don’t penetrate the penthouses in Kaufman and Ferber’s glittering 1932 melodrama at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater.

THE COCKTAIL HOUR. Nancy Marchand is at her tragicomic best off-Broadway as a Wasp matriarch in an elegant comedy by A.R. Gurney, author of The Dining Room.

ART

DREAMINGS: THE ART OF ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA, Asia Society, New York City. Exponents of the oldest visual tradition on earth evoke their spirit ancestors in paintings and carvings of striking beauty. Through Dec. 31.

MONET IN LONDON, High Museum, Atlanta. To mark the museum’s fifth anniversary, a show of 23 atmospheric views of Waterloo and Charing Cross bridges and the houses of Parliament, done by the impressionist between 1899 and 1904. Through Jan. 8.

JASPER JOHNS: WORK SINCE 1974, Philadelphia Museum of Art. The show that won the grand prize at last summer’s Venice Biennale and cemented Johns’ status as America’s deepest living painter. Through Jan. 8.

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM 1915-1925, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A survey of war-weary “second-generation” expressionists forging an avant-garde in search of a new art and a better society. Through Dec. 31.

BOOKS

THE KING OF THE FIELDS by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Farrar Straus Giroux; $18.95). In his first novel in five years, the Nobel laureate, 84, portrays a remote tribe in a faraway past enduring the shocks of progress and civilization.

SELECTED LETTERS OF EUGENE O’NEILL (Yale University; $35). He was the first American dramatist to win international acclaim. His private correspondence records his slow disenchantment with the footlights.

ANYTHING FOR BILLY by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster; $18.95). The author of Terms of Endearment offers a horse-opera bouffe about Billy the Kid, showing how a Charles Manson in cowboy boots became a national legend.

TELEVISION

KRISTALLNACHT: THE JOURNEY FROM 1938 TO 1988 (PBS, Nov. 9, 9 p.m. on most stations). A look at the Nazi campaign of terror against Jews begins with the infamous “night of breaking glass.”

WAR AND REMEMBRANCE (ABC, Nov. 13-23). Cast of thousands! Cost of millions! Makes Roots look like a sapling! This mammoth sequel to The Winds of War will spend 30-plus hours — 18 now, at least twelve next year — following Navy officer “Pug” Henry (Robert Mitchum) from Pearl Harbor to V-J day.

COMING OF AGE (CBS, Mondays, 8:30 p.m. EST). Despite low ratings last spring, this smart sitcom is getting a well-deserved second chance. Paul Dooley stars as a sour former airline pilot facing the funny — and grim — facts of retirement.

MUSIC

SHOW BOAT (EMI). The classic Mississippi musical jes’ keeps rollin’ along, here with such stern-wheeling operatic voices as Frederica von Stade and Teresa Stratas. The first recording that is completely faithful to the original Kern-Hammerstein score reveals a raw, powerful, even angry work. And you thought it was “only make-believe”!

HOLLY KNIGHT (Columbia Records). Big-time pop craftsmanship by a songwriter who’s responsible for several hits (like Love Is a Battlefield) recorded by others.

FRANK ZAPPA: GUITAR (Rykodisc). The thinking man’s mother of invention in a double album of riffs that are sure to rile. In-A-Gadda-Stravinsky, anyone?

RAGGED BUT RIGHT: GREAT COUNTRY STRING BANDS OF THE 1930’s (RCA). Before the rhinestones, country music sounded like this: all heart and no slickum. Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers, Wade Mainer . . . the sounds are as good as the names.

MOVIES

THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM. Snaky vampires! Sexy virgins! Fluorescent caskets! Ken Russell’s campfire tale may be more camp than fire, but it shows this unabashed mannerist going for baroque in fine form.

SALAAM BOMBAY! An Indian Oliver Twist learns the ways of slum-life survival in Mira Nair’s poignant documentary fable.

THINGS CHANGE. Don Ameche is an aging artisan mistaken for a Mafia boss, and Joe Mantegna the gangland gofer who helps an old man come alive. David Mamet directed and co-wrote this beguiling men’s-club anecdote.