CLASSICAL MUSIC Hong Kong Philharmonic. Sunday, 8pm, Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall, $240, $150, $90, $65, students $40, Urbtix. Having done sterling service with an extraordinary range of world-class soloists throughout the Arts Festival, the Hong Kong Philharmonic finally gets its moment in the spotlight, along with guest conductor Christian Badea and organist Gillian Weir, who will perform on the Hong Kong premiere of Guilmant's Symphony No 1. That performance is bookended by Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini Overture and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 5. Josef Fung. Friday, 8pm, City Hall, $80, $50, Urbtix. Classical guitar recital with a difference from Josef Fung, a noted composer and guitarist who studied under John Williams. Fung tours extensively in China - in August he will become the first guitarist ever to give a formal recital in Tibet - and is the founder and director of the Chinese Virtuosi, an ensemble of mainland Chinese musicians playing mostly traditional Chinese instruments. This recital will include his own composition Moment, Leo Brouwer's Elogio de la Danza, Bach's Chaconne and Yuquijiro Yocoh's Variations on a Japanese Traditional, Sakura as well as pieces by Nikita Koshkin, Toru Takemitsu, Issac Albeniz and Castelnuovo Tedesco. An East-West mixture indeed. But the highlight if only for the title, is likely to be the Hong Kong premiere of Chiel Meijering's A Sexshop in the Desert. MUSIC Georgie Fame. From Tuesday, 9.30pm, Jazz Club, California Entertainment Building, Lan Kwai Fong, $250, reservations 2834-8477. The welcome return of Georgie Fame is a highly appropriate residency to mark the reopening of the refurbished Jazz Club, and an encouraging sign that the music that gives the venue its name will remain on its agenda for some of the time at least. Fame and Hong Kong audiences traditionally get along very well and since his career is currently on a roll with his recent collaboration with occasional boss Van Morrison, How Long Has This Been Going On, nestling at the top of the Billboard jazz chart, a good night out is more or less guaranteed. Over the years Fame has come to hate playing The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde, but he is generally gentleman enough to do it anyway. Otherwise, expect his own unique mix of R & B, blues, jazz standards and inventive 'vocalese' renditions of classic instrumental solos. A 60s survivor who gets better with the years. He comes up with something different every time. CINEMA La Lectrice. Wednesday, 7.30pm, Space Museum Lecture Hall, $35, Urbtix. A bizarre little film from French director Michel Deville, in French with English subtitles. Miou Miou stars as a young woman whose great love in life is devouring books - so much so that she turns reading them into a profession. As a lectrice she visits the homes of an odd cast of characters to each of whom she reads a text, selected because of its relevance in some oblique way to the listener. It's an unlikely premise for a film, and probably couldn't have been made anywhere but in France, but Deville makes it work and Miou Miou is engaging as the obsessive Marie. La Dolce Vita. Saturday 2.30pm, Hong Kong Arts Centre Lim Por Yen Film Theatre, $50 Urbtix. Fellini's 1960 masterpiece is being screened as part of a tribute to Marcello Mastroianni. This film explored the decadence of Rome during that period with the director's characteristic mixture of relish and disgust. Sequences which were regarded as shocking at the time now look relatively tame, but they remain striking. The best known are the statue of Christ being flown over the city and the inevitable orgy. Famously, Fellini reconstructed the Via Veneto in the studio out at Cinecitta rather than shoot on location, blurring the line between fantasy and reality in the film still further. One of the great movies of the era. EXHIBITIONS Outside the White Cube, daily, Wan Chai. Wan Chai has been called a lot of things over the years by a lot of people, but never before, to the best of my knowledge, an art gallery. Until the end of the month a group of artists from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan will be creating and displaying art in a motley assortment of Wan Chai locations including footbridges, restaurants and MTR stations. The idea is that instead of experiencing art in an environment devoted to it - the white cube of the title is a museum although I've never seen one in that combination of colour and shape - people will react to it differently if it is strategically placed in locations where they can't avoid tripping over it. Experimental, I believe, is the word. THEATRE Beyond the Fringe 96. Tuesday to Thursday, 7.30 pm, Fringe Club Theatre, $125, members and students 100. A revival of the classic sketches by Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore which launched the 1960s British satire boom. Spare Parts Unlimited presents excerpts from the two shows, which were massive hits in both New York and London. Highlights include the one-legged man auditioning for the role of Tarzan, and Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook's spoof of Shakespeare's Richard the Third - 'Now is steel 'twixt gut and bladder interposed'. Magnificent stuff, if a little dated in parts. It will be interesting to see how this company has tinkered with it in the interests of more contemporary references. The Prolapse Brothers Show. Thursday and Friday, 9.30pm, Fringe Club Theatre, $70, members and students $55. Only those over 18 will be admitted to these two performances by a duo from the London Comedy Club. The Prolapse Brothers perform songs based on the premise that 'life is no bed of roses but rather full of pricks' which gives you a fairly good idea of the tenor of the material. The subject matter is sex, death and domestic appliances. Everybody has to have a hobby, I suppose.
