South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 65

Sun-Sentinel, South Florida ARTS ENTERTAINMENT MS Saturday, January 8, 2000 3D Out About id Death MAIN EVENTS Styx The power poprock group The Best of Times, Come Sail Away, Lady) is booked at 2 p.m. today at Gulfstream Park, 901 S. Federal Highway, Hallandale. Admission $3, $5. Call 954-454-7000, 305-931-7223.

Ramsey Lewis oe prom ON TV Third TV offering of classic play almost perfect in everyway. The jazzpop pianist (The In Crowd) is booked at 8 tonight at Duncan Theatre, Palm Beach Community College, 4200 Congress Lake Worth. Tickets Call 561-439-8141. Meat Loaf The rock singer is verbally instead of physically to keep Kate Reid's Linda at bay. Dennehy's Willy combines the bulk of Cobb with the fragility of Hoffman; despite his size, and his occasional angry outbursts, this Willy is ineffectual even in his opted to capture it but not tame it.

Except for Ron Eldard, who replaced Kevin Anderson as wayward son Biff partway through the Broadway run, every actor in this TV Death of a Salesman was with the show for the duration. Not only does Program: Death of a Salesman Stars: Brian Dennehy, Elizabeth Franz, Ron Eldard, Ted Koch Airs: 8 p.m. Sunday, 7 p.m. Wednesday on Showtime am not a dime a dozen I am WILLY it's less a cry than a bray, an animalistic howl of pain. And though the intensity may be generated by the moment, it fits perfectly in character.

So does everything else in this Salesman, right on down the line. Browning, in seeking the show's essence, may have missed a few wide shots that would have served the set or other characters better, but he more than makes up for it with his beautifully blocked closeups. Howard Witt, as Willy's loyal friend Charley, is nothing short of perfect; Richard Thompson as Charley's son Bernard, and Steve Pickering as Willy's unsympathetic boss, also make invaluable contributions. This Salesman, like its Lewis that give this telecast the benefit of a cast that's completely familiar with the material, but it raises the emotional ante by filming the drama, using nine cameras, at its final performance. Dennehy seems aware, as an actor, that it's his last turn as Willy, so he doesn't bother to frustration and this Linda, played by Franz, provides so much spark and fire and empathy that, perhaps for the first time, Death of a Salesman gives her character as much impact as his.

Franz, Dennehy and director Falls all won well deserved Tonys for their efforts. In preparing this By DAVID BIANCULLI New York daily news Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller's classic American play, has been treated better by television than perhaps any other stage work this side of Shakespeare. Two electrifying adaptations of Miller's drama about weary and dejected Willy Loman have been televised already one starring Lee J. Cobb in 1 966, reprising his role from the original 1949 production, and the other with Dustin Hoffman in 1985. Sunday night, Showtime adds a protect his voice for another show.

When masterpiece for television, TV director Kirk Browning Browning ne snouts 1 third flawless gem to the Death of a Salesman TV collection. It's a performance of the recent Broadway revival starring televised predecessors, is simply too good to miss. As Linda Loman says about her hard-working, overlooked husband, "Attention must be paid." Next year, at Emmy time, it had better be. Brian Dennehy, and it's an amazing, inspiring, haunting version, without one false note or unimpressive performance in the entire show. Part of the difference this time, in the stage version av a booked at 8 p.m.

Sunday at Gusman Center, 1 74 E. Flagler Miami. Tickets $39.75, $49.75. Call Ticketmaster (954-523-3309, Ambrosia The poprock group How Much I Feel, Biggest Part of Me) is booked at 2 p.m. Sunday at Gulfstream Park, 901 S.

Federal Highway, Hallandale. Admission $3, $5. Call 954-454-7000, 305-931-7223. SHOW AND SALES Gems and Jewelry 1 0 a.m.-6 p.m. today and 1 1 a.m.-5 p.m.

Sunday at Broward Convention Center, 1950 Eisenhower Fort Lauderdale. Admission $6 adults, children under 1 6 free with paid adult admission. Call 954-765-5900. Antique Car ShowAuction 1 0 a.m. today and Sunday at War Memorial Auditorium, 800 NE Eighth Fort Lauderdale.

Admission $8 adults, children 1 2 and under free. Call 954-761-5382. Antiques Show 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. today-Sun. at Quiet Waters Park, 401 S.

Powerline Road, Deerfield Beach. Admission $2.50. Call 954-360-1315. 'festivals Las Olas Art Fair With more than 300 artists, strolling musicians. 1 0 a.m.-5 p.m.

today and Sunday on Las Olas Boulevard from Southeast Sixth to 1 1 th avenues, Fort Lauderdale. Free admission. Call 954-472-3755. Oshogatsu Japanese New Year Celebration, 1 0 a.m.-4 p.m. today at Morikami Museum, 4000 Morikami Park Road, west of Delray Beach.

Admission $5.25 adults, $4.75 i seniors, $3 children ages 6-1 8, children Sunder 6 free. Call 561-495-0233. 'Correction Friday's Showtime calendar contained a listing for a Bob Marley Caribbean Festival kickoff party that is not open to public. We regret the error. directed by Robert Falls and co-starring Elizabeth Franz as Willy's wife, Linda, is that the power dynamic has shifted without changing a word of Miller's script.

When Cobb played Willy Loman, he was a hulking, frustrated ball of rage, towering over Mildred Dunnock's cowering Linda; when Hoffman played Willy, he was a frail figure, 'but still an imposing one, lashing out I "rxs ft ry yijjyj' NO HARD Ufei) SELL: Ron SjCClr'f'' Eldard, Brian A i Dennehy st it 1 bersofthe i 1 jT I Showtime photo MASTER CLASS Fox Family's big-boat film sinks like Britannic Learning to make instruments sing IF YOU GO New World brass players get lessons in lieder. The New World Symphony, with baritone Thomas Hampson and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, performs music by Brahms, Mahler, Schoenberg and Thomas at 8 tonight and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Lincoln Theater, 541 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. Tickets are 1 0 to $54. Call 305-673-3331 or 800-597-3331.

By DAVID KR0NKE 'Los Angeles Daily news i. i Fact: Titanic grossed well in excess of a billion dollars, making it the all-time box-office champion. Fact: There was a sister ship, the ostensibly even more unsinkable Britannic, that went down tONTV during World War the Program: target of I Britannic German I Stars: Amanda saboteurs. Ryan, Jacqueline Shame on Bisset, John Rhys- everyone else i Davies, Edward in the world Atterton for not cashing Airs: 8 and 1 0 p.m. in on those two Sunday on Fox facts.

Shame i Family Channel on the Fox Family Channel for Thomas Hampson By TIM SMITH MUSIC WRITER Virtually every classically trained singer can expect, at some point along the way, to attend a master class in lieder German art songs, those marvelous fusions of romantic poetry and music for voice and piano. A veteran vocalist will conduct the class, calling up one singer at a time and minutely examining each phrase, each tone, even each breath. Advice will be dispensed; the student will try again, and again, to produce what the master singer suggests. So far, so normal. But when celebrated baritone Thomas Hampson gave a lieder master class Thursday evening at the Lincoln Theatre in Miami Beach, his students didn't sing a note.

They played horn, trumpet and tuba instead. They were members of the New World Symphony, and they played the vocal parts of songs by Schubert and Mahler. Joining the baritone in the mentoring was New World artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas; the two are collaborating on this weekend's New World Symphony concerts. Thomas came up with the notion of a lieder master class for wind players as a way to get them to consider new possibilities, new ways of expression. "The idea is, here's a song with a specific text, some idea that has to be conveyed," says New World coaching assistant Michael Lin-ville, who helped orchestra members prepare for the session.

"The challenge is, can you find a way for to do that without having a text?" That was the main issue Hampson raised all evening, starting with horn player Andrew Karr, who had chosen Schubert's Gretchen am Spinrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel). "Do you know what the song is about?" Hampson asked him. "What intrigues you about it?" Karr shuffled a bit, nervously. "It's beautiful," he said. line or accompaniment would be performed.

Knudsen's gleaming efforts failed him only once. "Sorry," he said, after getting lost. "I know that feeling so well," Hampson laughed. The tuba rarely steps out in front; the opportunity to hear it play Schubert's transfixing Nacht und Traume proved as rare as it was affecting. Steven Campbell had some technical trouble but, urged on by Hampson, brought out more and more of the song's mystical beauty, its hushed awe at a "holy night." "I always tell singers that if you don't physically feel better when you've sung a phrase, you haven't sung it well," Hampson said.

"I don't know if that makes sense with instruments, but it seems the same to me." From the sound of things, the musicians felt a lot better after working with the baritone on this only-at-the-New-World kind of project. Hampson, one of the today's finest interpreters of Mahler songs, will sing his Songs of a Wayfarer with the New World Symphony tonight and Sunday. The baritone helped inspire the other vocal work on the program, Thomas' Three Songs to Poems by Walt Whitman, in its South Florida premiere. "I wrote them with his voice in mind, the things I knew he could do with it," the conductor-composer said. Thomas characterized his songs this way: "It's as if Walt Whitman were reincarnated as Billy Bigelow doing a big Broadway soliloquy." Indeed, it is one of Schubert's most haunting songs, with the piano imitating the steady motion of the spinning wheel as the voice laments a lost love and, in an ecstatic moment, recalls his kiss.

When Karr finished playing the song through, Hampson seized on that climactic point in the song. "Is the sound you just gave me your feeling of her memory of that kiss?" Hampson asked, suggesting a warmer, rounder, less heroic tone. In another passage, Thomas wanted the horn player to somehow suggest the effect of hard German consonants that would be articulated by a singer. "You need to invent something that will be the equivalent of that sound," the conductor said. New World pianist Gideon Rubin, too, came in for close scrutiny.

"In a song, there are always three people at work," Hampson said. "The pianist's right hand, the left hand and the singer." Both hands had the baritone's constant attention. And so it went, for 50 minutes of fine-tuning. The last performance revealed the effect of all that advice, with greater sensitivity and nuance coming from both Karr and Rubin. Trumpeter Gregory Knudsen tackled a dark-themed song from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn, about a starving child and a mother's seeming indifference.

Again, there was plenty of advice; Hampson and Thomas dissected various interpretations of the text and how each would affect the way the melody GOING OVERBOARD: Edward Atterton and Amanda Ryan portray World War I lovers with baggage in Britannic. some palpable chemistry. The script has more droll moments than Titanic's leaden dialogue ever allowed, and this is the capper it tells its story briskly, mercifully shaving more than an hour off James Cameron's leviathan. (Tape it and excise the commercials, and it's less than half Titanic's running time.) Alas, it blows it all in the last half -hour with a series of risibly dopey plot convolutions and a blithering variation on Titanic's climax. Moreover, Jacqueline Bisset struts through the film in a blandly blustery fashion that fairly screams "faded-star turn." Some moments of violence and sexuality seem somewhat out of place on the Fox Family Channel.

But, then, Titanic was hardly a model of narrative integrity or decorum, and look how well it did. exploiting them so baldly and, ultimately, badly. In Britannic, a fetching young British intelligence officer (played by Amanda Ryan, who pointedly resembles Kate Winslet in a number of scenes) battles prejudice, a serpentine spy J-, network and her own libido to unearth the German spies seeking out the weaponry hidden away on the ship as it travels from London to Cairo. (This apes the speculative fiction of the film The Hindenburg.) Unfortunately, she falls for the very man she should t' be investigating, Chaplain Reynolds (Edward Atterton). Britannic actually has several things over its lofty, phenomenally successful predecessor.

The stakes in the illicit romance here are amplified exponentially from simple, dreary class warfare and, for a f- time, Ryan and Atterton exude Tim Smith can be reached at tpsmith(3 or 954-356-4707. i 1.