The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 250

Gail Caldwell on Richard Ford, plus a life of filmmaker Fritz Lang, N15. It 1 iie Aovie Section, interviews with jVO im dirprtnr Hobbies N19 Personals N20 i( I Peter Greenaivay and jj Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung, N9. THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE JUNE 22, 1997 A iprriq fWP A 11 JL 7 il A JL i0 ife muscles The commercial clout and animated adventures of 'Hercules' By Michael Saunders GLOBE STAFF EW YORK As a doer of impossible i deeds and slayer of all things huge and sj horrible, Hercules has inspired a multi- spinners at Disney. "Hercules" (which opens Friday) is Walt Disney Production's 35th animated feature film, and not surprisingly it is a heavily sanitized version of the epic legend. Gone are the tragic elements, the all-too-human qualities that made this superhuman vulnerable.

Disney's "Hercules" is unfailingly wholesome, the sort of take-no-chances entertainment the world has come to expect from the ultimate purveyor of family entertainment. MOVIE, Page N8 --J a tude of mvths durincr the last several thousand years. His heroic features and burly frame have been immortalized by artists throughout the ages. And now this manliest of men has been tackled by the pop-culture yarn- THE MAGIC FORMULA I Why Disney hits seem familiar Aladdin Aladdin Jasmine Jafar Abu, lago Genie Bambi Bambi a Man, fire Thumper, Father a female deer Flower Beauty and Belle Beast Gaston Assorted Mrs. Potts the Beast furnishings Snow White Snow White Prince The Queen Seven Dwarves Doc The Hunchback Quasimodo Esmeralda Frollo Gargoyles Victor of Notre Dame I Conducting on TV Producers of 'Evening at Pops' must work to 'visualize the music' In London, the theater of Shakespeare is re-created, and brings back the groundlings' By Catherine Foster GLOBE STAFF rJpTJTjTTf Jutting up on the south t'JUiAiii side of the Thames is a startling sight: a white cylinder with Tudor timbers and a thatched roof.

It's Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, or at least the closest reconstruction that scholars, architects, archeologists, builders, and one determined actor could devise. The original Globe was the stage for which Shakespeare created the bloody fields of Agincourt, the forest where fickle lovers chased and eluded each other, and the rooms where countless wooings and betrayals took place. That theater burned down in 1613, after some wadding from a cannon shot off during a production of "Henry VIII" ignited the thatch. Rebuilt after the fire, it flourished until 1642, when the Puritans under Cromwell closed all theaters. Then it was built over and forgotten.

More than 350 years later, the new Globe Theatre has opened its solid oak doors a few hundred yards from the origi-GLOBE, Page N12 By Richard Dyer GLOBE STAFF 1 r4-- "Evening at Pops" re-' turns to the air tomorrow night for its 28th season. The show is one of the longr est-running programs on PBS, right up there with "Sesame Street." Tomorrow night's program (at 8) is called "The American Spirit," and it 1T A 1 ri.t-- PHOTORICHARD KALINA After decades of effort, the new Globe opened June 12. 4 ceieuraies uie release oi uie new Pops CD, "American Visions." Charles Osgood from "CBS Sunday Morn- ing" is on hand as host and Dawn Upshaw sings show 1 it' BRAVE NEW GLOBE It and Kurt Weill. Boston Bal- let dancers present sequences from Agnes de Mille's choreogi-aphy for Co- pland's "Rodeo" and Balan-chine's choreography for Gershwin songs in "Who TV, Page N2 r- Producers William Cosel and Susan Dangel in Symphony Hall. li-i's If.