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Belafonte, New York 19 (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The "19" in the title of his first of two specials refers to the midtown-Manhattan postal zone over which the folk singer will peregrinate—including such nightspots as Birdland and the Palladium.
Mon., Nov. 21
Tomorrow (CBS, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). "Big City—1980" takes the measure of the troubled metropolis, with case studies of newly created Brasília and creatively renewed Philadelphia. An unlikely lay host, Garry Moore, poses the questions that are authoritatively answered by an M.I.T. panel including Pietro Belluschi, dean of M.I.T.'s School of Architecture and Planning.
THEATER
The Unsinkable Molly Brown. A merely pleasant score by Meredith Willson and a funny-paper treatment of the tale of an illiterate, Missouri-born status seeker are kept afloat only through the magic of the unquenchable Tammy Grimes.
An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. With their eyes deadly keen and their tongues brilliantly sharp, these freewheeling improvisationists devastate the fatuous, vulgar, neurotic and just plain human, lacing into everything from Tennessee Williams to the P.T.A.
A Taste of Honey. Joan Plowright performs brilliantly in a work of understated, unhistrionic realism, which blinks at nothing in a shabby world. Written by Britain's Shelagh Delaney when she was 19, the play is episodic, yet shows a promising knack for theater and a well-developed sense of truth.
Irma La Douce. A piquant and jaunty French musical comedy fleshed out by the song-and-dance skill and saucy insouciance of Elizabeth Seal, who plays a girl of whom no one can say 'tis a pity she's a whore.
The Hostage. Less a play than a dramatization of the playwright, this sprawling, incoherent account by Brendan Behan of an English soldier held as hostage in a Dublin brothel is howlingly off-key as well as marvelously in tune, humane and hilarious.
The holdovers from last season still holding their own include. The Miracle Worker, Toys in the Attic and Bye Bye Birdie.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Metamorphosis of the Gods, by André Malraux. A handsomely illustrated, portable Uffizi-cum-Louvre and a flight of speculation that soars from the Sphinx to Botticelli's Venus. The author's provocative argument: up to the 15th century, art glorified religion; after it, art became a religion.
The Go-Away Bird, by Muriel Spark. In the title novella and in ten accompanying short stories—mostly semi-supernatural suspense tales—the talented Scottish novelist (The Ballad of Peckham Rye) displays her deft, deceiving style and consummate con-woman skill in unmasking the hoaxing face of the world.
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike. Writing with chilling and relentless despair, the author tells with great craft of the crack-up of a dreary young man; what the reader must decide is whether society (as Updike seems to suggest) or mere poverty of soul caused the collapse.