Judith Mackrell, Bloomsbury Ballerina: Lydia Lopokova, Imperial Dancer and Mrs. John Maynard Keynes (Phoenix, $14.95 paper). She was a star of the Ballets Russes whose long list of lovers included Igor Stravinsky and Heywood Broun. He was a world-famous economist, a member of the Bloomsbury circle, and a confirmed homosexual. They were, in short, the least likely of couples–but they fell in love, married, and lived happily ever after, much to the dismay of Keynes’ viciously snobbish friends, Virginia Woolf foremost among them. Their story had previously been told in bits and pieces, but Judith Mackrell, the dance critic of the Guardian, has now given us an impeccably well-written book that pulls a half-forgotten ballerina out of the memory hole and restores her to her proper place among the key figures of twentieth-century ballet. Lopokova’s marriage to Keynes turns out to have been a full-fledged romance on both sides, and Mackrell describes it with sympathy and candor. Rarely have I read a better dance biography–or a more touching love story (TT).

Van Cliburn in Moscow, Vol. 1 (VAI). The long, barren years of Van Cliburn’s retirement from the concert hall have largely blotted out the memory of the young virtuoso who stunned the world by winning the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition at the height of the Cold War. Few people under the age of fifty know that he was–for a time–one of the finest pianists of the twentieth century. This disc, the first of five drawn from Russian videotapes of concerts given by Cliburn in his prime years, contains 1962 performances of Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto and Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto accompanied by Kiril Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic, plus two encores, Chopin’s F Minor Fantasie and the Liszt Twelfth Hungarian Rhapsody, a Cliburn warhorse that the pianist never got around to recording commercially. All are played with the expansive yet firmly disciplined romanticism that can also be heard on his best studio recordings. An unforgettable document of a great artist who lost his way in mid-career and spent the rest of his life wandering in the wilderness of celebrity (TT).

The Norman Conquests (Circle in the Square, 235 W. 50, closes July 25). Alan Ayckbourn’s 1973 comic triptych–three farces about adultery and its discontents, set on the same weekend in different rooms of the same house–is a jolting combination of laugh-till-you-choke lunacy and deep melancholy. This long-awaited Broadway revival by London’s Old Vic does it full justice. The three plays can be seen individually and in any order, but the best way to see them is in a single day-long sitting. Specially priced marathon performances of “Table Manners,” “Living Together,” and “Round and Round the Garden” take place each Saturday and on May 17 and June 28. Break the piggy bank and go while you can (TT).

Michael Gorra (ed.), The Portable Conrad (Penguin, $18 paper). I blush to admit that I failed to notice when the much-loved old Viking Portable Conrad edited by Morton Dauwen Zabel in 1947 was replaced two years ago by this updated and expanded edition, which covers much of the same ground but adds The Secret Agent. Not only is that a highly significant improvement, but Michael Gorra’s introductory essay might just be the best short discussion of Conrad and his work ever to see print. Among other good things, it strikes a perfect balance between aesthetic and political considerations, doing full justice to both sides of the coin (Gorra’s comparison of Conrad to Cézanne was so startlingly apposite that it took my breath away). Even if everything in this seven-hundred-page volume is already on your bookshelf–as well it should be–you owe it to yourself to read Gorra’s essay, which can also be found here. It’s a model of lucidity and concision (TT).

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Criterion Collection, out May 19). Peter Yates’ near-forgotten 1974 film version of George V. Higgins’ harder-than-hardboiled novel about a washed-up small-time Boston hood has finally made it to DVD. Everything about this movie is memorable, but it’s Robert Mitchum’s performance in the title role that makes The Friends of Eddie Coyle a classic. One of the greatest film actors of the postwar era, Mitchum got even better as he got older, but only two or three the movies that he made in the last quarter-century of his life came close to tapping his immense potential. This is the best of them, a little masterpiece of disillusion that is more than worthy of the man who made Out of the Past, The Night of the Hunter, and Cape Fear (TT).

Bruce Boyd Raeburn, New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History (University of Michigan Press, $26.95 paper). A fascinating, exceptionally well-written study of the origins of American jazz criticism and scholarship, both of which turn out to be rooted in the emergence in the early Thirties of the idea of “authenticity” as a criterion for excellence in jazz. Raeburn, the curator of Tulane University’s Hogan Jazz Archive, has probed deeply into the work of the enthusiastic amateur scholars who first sought to document the beginnings of jazz in New Orleans, and his thoughtful account of what they wrought is destined to become one of the standard works in the field (TT).

Anne Sofie von Otter Sings Bach (DGG). Arias and ensembles from the B Minor Mass, Magnificat, St. Matthew Passion, and eight cantatas, elegantly sung by the greatest mezzo-soprano of our time (no fooling!) and incisively accompanied by Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Concerto Copenhagen, a fine period-instrument ensemble whose work is inexplicably new to me. It’s been quite a few years since I last heard von Otter in person, and I’m glad to report that she still sounds marvelous (TT).

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Belasco, 111 W. 44, closes June 14). A magnificent production of one of August Wilson’s strongest plays, performed by an ensemble cast devoid of weak links. Bartlett Sher’s expressionist-flavored staging breaks with the naturalistic style that has dominated Wilson revivals in recent years, not always to ideal effect–the set is a bit fancy–but never in such a way as to obscure the extraordinary quality of the acting. You’ll hate yourself if you miss this one (TT).