Daily News from New York, New York • 55

a a i. A ri ll f) a V4s 'Garden' parity By DAVID HINCKLEY DAILY NEWS FEATURE WRITER fficially, they can't call it "Woodstock" anymore, but every year, thousands of people who found a unique spirit in the original 1969 Aquarian Exposition at Yasgur's Farm in Bethel, N.Y., make a pilgrimage back to that site on the anniversary weekend in mid-August. This year, there will be two day-long shows waiting for them, under the name "A Day in the Garden." Tomorrow, there will be a country show headlined by Randy Travis and Reba McEntire. Sunday is a Woodstock reunion bill with at least eight artists from the 1969 festival: David Crosby with his new band CPR, Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Johnny Winter, Melanie, Country Joe McDonald, Leslie West of Mountain and Rick Danko and Garth Hudson of The Band. Yasgur's Farm is now an official concert venue, not a home for dairy cattle, and this is the second year that GF Entertainment has presented "A Day in the Garden." With or without a formal show, however, thousands of fans have gone back there almost every Au- gust since 1969.

An in-ground commemorative plaque was installed several years ago. Tomorrow's show begins at noon, with various country artists playing through the afternoon, then Travis and McEntire in the evening. The show wraps up at 11. Tickets are $25 in advance, available at Ticketmaster, or $35 onsite. Sunday's show begins at 1 1 a.m.

and also runs until 1 1 at night. Tickets are 19.69. These shows are unrelated to the official Woodstock III that took place in Rome last month. The events aren't designed to compete with each other, since, both in artists and scale, they are entirely different kinds of shows. jr1 rjxv-; ir .7 4' Zach Grenier confronts Judith Ivey in "Voices in the Dark." ran ullnraers cSea Ivey's Voices in the Dark' takes same old psycho path 4 I tion.

Instead of the old conflict of good and evil, Pielmeier seems to be entering a dark territory where no one is normal. With Christopher Ashley's crisp direction and committed performances from the cast, it looks like "Voices in the Dark" might beat the odds. But slowly and relentlessly, the old cliches return. Pielmeier dips again and again into the shallow bag of hoary theatrical tricks. The cabin is cut off by a storm.

The lights go out. Figures appear at the window. The apparent interest in psychology and the media is reduced to the voice of a psycho on the phone. VOICES IN THE DARK. By John Pielmeier.

With Judith Ivey, Raphael Sbarge, Peter Bartlett, John Ahlin, Zach Grenier. Sets by David Gallo and Laura Helpern. Directed by Christopher Ashley. At the Longacre, 220 W. 48th St.

Tickets, $35-60, (212) 236200. These days, in the theater, a good pyscho-path is hard to find. George Orwell once wrote a famous essay on "The Decline of the English Murder." Someone should now write an essay on "The Decline of the Theatrical Maniac." In the age of Hannibal Lecter, the killers who used to scare theater audiences look very tame. The slick, fast, complex plots of KATHY WILLENS DAILY NEWS iRichie Havens is one of the original Woodstock performers returning this year. Rigs: Keepers of '60s flame And the maniac, when he finally appears, is just a familiar ragbag of pop psychology and lurid poses.

Instead of insight, we get a tired replay of old fallacies about schizophrenia. In order to be scared, we must first be surprised. Pielmeier runs out of surprises at the crucial moment. The final conflict is deftly arranged by fight director B.H. Barry.

But the drama is so flat by then that the violence is too cartoonish to be really scary. The pity is that Judith Ivey and her fellow actors can do no more at this most movie thrillers make the slow mechanics of drama look clunky. Recent Broadway revivals of old chillers underlined the point. "Night Must Fall" was merely dull. In "Wait Until Dark," the only terror was Quentin Tarantino's awful acting.

So the big question for John Pielmeier's new thriller, "Voices in the Dark," is whether it can give new life to violent death on the stage. At first, the signs are promising. F1NTAN OTOOLE 4 The Fugs were sometimes known more for their message and enthusiasm than their musical skills, but time has had a beneficial effect. "We're actually a pretty tight band now," says lead singer Ed Sanders, a poet, author and longtime owner of the Peace Eye bookstore in the East Village. "Plus, we don't have the problem we had in the '60s, with junkies always stealing our equipment." David Hinckley The Fugs are at the Byrdc-liffe Performance Barn in Woodstock, N.Y., tonight-Sun, at 8 p.m.

Tickets: $20. Info: (914) 679-2969. Back in the late '60s, even after most of Greenwich Village had become a tourist attraction, it was still possible to find pockets like the Players Theater, a tiny joint where a truly crazed band called the Fugs set guerrilla theater to music in numbers like "Kill for Peace" and "Group Grope." They also sang the wistful ballad "Morning, Morning" and the classic city anthem "Slum Goddess From the Lower East Side." The '60s counterculture has taken some shots over the last 30 years. But the Fugs are still with us, and regrouping this weekend for shows in Woodstock, N.Y. stage than display their technical excellence and their honest commitment to the work.

Opportunities for real acting have been left far behind. And so, for all its early promise, "Voices in the Dark" merely confirms that the old-style theatrical thriller has been cruelly done to death by the onslaught of movie madmen. If it is to return from the grave, it will have to scare us, not with funny voices and butcher knives, but with the dark corners of the mind. "Voices in the Dark" is set up on the strange frontier where "Frasier" meets "Deliverance." The heroine is a famous radio psychologist, played by the wonderful Judith Ivey, who ends up in a cabin in the Adirondacks surrounded by eerie half-witted locals. Instead of the usual quivering victim, Ivey gives us a strong, tough survivor.

In an arresting opening, Pielmeier introduces some hard-eged themes child abuse and media exploita-.