Critics' Voices: Nov. 25, 1991

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MOVIES

THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS. Bumbling burglars, wiseacre kids, nasty adults, guilty secrets: this spook sonata sounds like a forced merger of Home Alone and Arsenic and Old Lace. The movie is all setup and little payoff, but writer-director Wes Craven (the first Nightmare on Elm Street) and a good cast make it fun. Sometimes the best part of a horror movie is waiting to be scared.

FRANKIE & JOHNNY. Now that Garry Marshall's comedy about displaced lovers in New York City has proved to be a fall flop, we like it a little more. See it (in an uncrowded theater) for Michelle Pfeiffer's sad beauty, Al Pacino's drooling-puppy ardor, Nathan Lane's good-natured bitchiness.

TELEVISION

CLASSIC WEEKEND II (CBS, Nov. 23-25). CBS has found gold in its rerun vaults. Following last season's high-rated tributes to All in the Family and Mary Tyler Moore, the network has put together clipfests of M*A*S*H, The Bob Newhart Show and (for a second time) The Ed Sullivan Show.

HOT COUNTRY NIGHTS (NBC, debuting Nov. 24, 8 p.m. EST). Dolly Parton failed a few seasons back, but this music series will try again to cash in on the nation's love of country.

LAND OF THE EAGLE (PBS, Nov. 24-27, 8 p.m. on most stations). "For the Cherokee, autumn is a time of great renewal . . ." If you can survive George Page's droning narration, you'll better appreciate the lush photography in this eight-hour survey of the natural history of North America.

MUSIC

JOHNNY ADAMS SINGS DOC POMUS: THE REAL ME (Rounder). Superb R. and B., recorded in New Orleans this past spring shortly before the death of the songwriter it does so proud. Doc Pomus, who wrote his fair share of classics (Save the Last Dance for Me, This Magic Moment), had a lyric finesse that could not only match but also bring out the best in his collaborators. Prominent among them was the estimable Dr. John, who co-wrote seven of these 11 cuts, all sung by Adams with a soul of fire.

ABBEY LINCOLN: YOU GOTTA PAY THE BAND (Verve). Abbey Lincoln has done it all -- supper-club singing, song writing, movie acting (The Girl Can't Help It, For Love of Ivy). Now on the comeback trail as a jazz diva, she combines the emotions of Billie Holiday with a personal delivery rooted in her own poetic lyrics. Never has her talent been better displayed than on these 10 songs, five of them from her own pen, featuring outstanding backup work by the late tenor-sax great Stan Getz.

DVORAK, SYMPHONY NO. 6; JANACEK, TARAS BULBA (London). Though Dvorak composed at least four great symphonies in which Czech-flavored melodies flow with Schubertian ease and Brahmsian grandeur, he is known mostly for his ninth, the "New World." Christoph von Dohnanyi leads his Cleveland Orchestra here in a fine performance of the sixth and a deftly dramatic reading of Leos Janacek's programmatic rhapsody Taras Bulba.

THEATER

THE HOMECOMING. A quarter-century's passage and a second-rate Broadway revival reveal that what seemed scary, mysterious and darkly funny in Harold Pinter's signature work was mostly just implausible. The one strong performance, by Roy Dotrice as a chortling gutter patriarch, lacks the ferocity of Paul Rogers in the original.