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THE LOVER by Harold Pinter, and PLAY by Samuel Beckett. Pinter's couple indulge in the aphrodisiac of a make-believe affair, while Beckett's trio reveal with solemn humor the banality of adultery.
THE TROJAN WOMEN. A powerful revival of the Euripides classic about the agony of the women who were to become the slaves and bedmates of the conquering Greeks.
IN WHITE AMERICA. This series of documentary dramatic sketches about racial intolerance is moving in its self-contained pain, playfully caustic in its humor.
RECORDS
ESSEN JAZZ FESTIVAL ALL-STARS (Fantasy) .records an encounter at Essen, Germany, of four Doctors of Jazz: Pianist Bud Powell, Saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, Drummer Kenny Clarke and Bassist Oscar Pettiford, who died in Denmark a few months after the festival. All four play with great pride and inspiration, and Pettiford's fingers seem propelled by a special power of insight.
BIRD ON 52ND STREET (Fantasy) is a remarkably good collection of bebop period pieces by Altoist Charlie Parker; the boys in the band include Max Roach and Miles Davis. And on the album cover is a photo that is itself a thing of value: there stands smiling Bird in the middle of the street, and within spitting distance are marquees that bear the names of Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Jack Teagarden.
THE SHERIFF (Atlantic) presents further bloodless transfusions of commedia dell' arte and ritmos brasileiros into the arm of le jazz hot by John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet; the patient dies, but not without a gallant and occasionally beautiful struggle.
HERE'S LENA NOW! (20th Century-Fox) is a better exposition of Lena Home's social conscience than of her craft or art. The lady lives up to the freedom-now lyrics, but the singer neglects some of the songs.
JIM HALL (Pacific Jazz) is a pleasant sampler of soft and simple jazz, done with great finesse by Guitarist Hall and his trio. The late pianist Carl Perkins and Bassist Red Mitchell dignify the rhythm section with some fine rambling solos, and Drummer Larry Bunker tags along cheerfully.
DRUMMIN' MAN (Columbia) is an audio-biography on two LPs by Gene Krupa and the gang of sidemen who sat n with him from 1938 until 1949. The ?oys in the band include the likes of Frank Rosolino, Charlie Ventura, Teddy
Napoleon, Charlie Kennedy, Corky Cornelius and Roy Eldridge.
The best recordings of THELONIOUS MONK (TIME cover, Feb. 28); Criss-Cross and Monk's Draam (Columbia), Thelonious Alone in San Francisco, Brilliant Corners, Misterioso and Thelonious Himself (Riverside), Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (Jazzland) and Work! (Prestige).
CINEMA
THE SILENCE. Sweden's film genius Ingmar Bergman takes a cold view of hot blood in the story of a pair of tortured sisters whose travels bring them to a Godforsaken city where nearly everything seems incomprehensible.
THE FIRE WITHIN. The suicide of a charming, alcoholic gigolo (Maurice Ronet) animates this morbidly fascinating drama directed by France's Louis (The Lovers) Malle.
DR. STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB. Inadvertent nuclear war is sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying in Stanley Kubrick's comedy of terrors.