LEAD: There was a standing ovation when ''Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge'' closed at the Kennedy Center Opera House on Saturday night, Jan. 20. While standing ovations are now more the rule than the exception in American theaters - where audiences often want to salute their own good taste as much as the performers on stage - why ''Annie 2''?

  For Troubled Tryouts, Few Happy Endings

LEAD: The road to adaptations is paved with good intentions, just as the road leading away is a vale of dashed hopes - the disappointment of readers for whom no cast or single interpretation can match the ideal images in the mind; the disillusionment of authors standing by the wayside clutching checks and crying Foul!

IS IT TIME TO TRUST HOLLYWOOD?

LEAD: The sun came out on Monday morning, Nov. 6, 1989, and so did the reporters and television news crews, for the first day of rehearsal of ''Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge.'' The $7 million musical continuation of ''Annie,'' which was one of the most successful shows in Broadway history, had been announced with much hoopla in

How 'Annie 2' Skidded Off a Bumpy Road To Broadway

LEAD: Seven will get you five that nothing since Prohibition has occasioned as much American lawlessness as the invention of the Super Bowl.

Bettors Yawning

LEAD: A TWO-YEAR slump in property values has pushed down home prices in the New York region and mortgage interest rates also have fallen, but the reductions show little sign of attracting the huge numbers of buyers who were locked out of the region's giddy real estate market in the mid-80's.

Buyers Hang Back in Muddled Market

LEAD: On stage in ''Grand Hotel'' she leads with her chin, while her shoulders curl with vulnerability. Her eyes droop with the seductive soft-focus of an ingenue sophisticated beyond her years. She is the young ''typing person'' who takes the name ''Flaemmchen,'' or ''Little Flame,'' in the hope it will identify her as a future screen star.

From Parsippany to Broadway

LEAD: Arrival of the President's budget on Capitol Hill creates what is charitably known as the Congressional budget process. In truth it is less a process than a Rube Goldberg nightmare of unrealistic deadlines, overlapping jurisdictions and competing mandates involving every committee in Congress. The numbers, contradictory and ever changing, will be irrelevant by September, when the decisions that matter are made.

  The Process That Ate Washington

LEAD: WANTING only to work on the water like generations before them, baymen on the Island's East End have banded together against regulations they hold responsible for threatening to end their traditional way of life.

Water Rules Pit Baymen Against State

LEAD: In the dingy gray of a Moscow winter morning, the new McDonald's restaurant is an otherworldly presence, huge and sleek and lighting up Pushkin Square with a red and yellow Technicolor glow.

Of Famous Arches, Beeg Meks and Rubles

LEAD: On warm 1950's summer nights on Columbia Avenue in Jersey City, where idle teen-agers argued on street corners over Willie, Mickey and the Duke, Paul Tagliabue's father used to take a couple of brooms and hand them to the youngsters.

  TAGLIABUE SWEEPS INTO ACTION

LEAD: Like Blanche DuBois, the American capital system now finds itself dependent on the kindness - or at least the money - of strangers.

  The Big Quandary Over Interest Rates

LEAD:    DEVICES AND DESIRES    By P. D. James.    433 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $19.95.

A DETECTIVE IN SPITE OF HIMSELF

LEAD: Angered that his troops were not firing on demonstrators, Nicolae Ceausescu threatened on Dec. 17 to execute two of his top ministers, according to testimony read today in the first public trial of members of the ousted government.

UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST: Rumania;   CEAUSESCU'S AIDES RECALL LAST DAYS

LEAD: Alarms shrieked through the headquarters of Genentech Inc. here one Friday morning last month, sending hundreds of employees scurrying to the parking lot.

Taking the Crucial Next Step at Genentech

LEAD: The South East Bronx Community Organization, a private, nonprofit developer, began construction last week on St. Mary's Park Homes, a $20 million affordable-housing project that will create 112 town houses between East 144th and East 146th Streets, off Willis and Brook Avenues, in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx.

POSTINGS: Rising in Mott Haven;   112 Affordable Two-Family Town Houses

LEAD: The Super Bowl matches the two conference champions, supposedly the two best teams in the National Football League. But in recent years most of these championship games have been runaways, and Super Bowl XXIV in the Louisiana Superdome Sunday could be the same.

  Big Game Shapes Up As a Big Mismatch

LEAD: Many of the 1,600 delegates at a Communist Party congress severely criticized their party today and moved toward dissolving it and replacing it with a new left-of-center political grouping.

UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST: Poland;   Calling Party Too Weak to Go On, Polish Communists Act to Disband

LEAD: As hundreds of communities struggle to check the spread of homelessness, an ambitious program to steer Louisville's homeless into jobs and stable lives has shown some real success. But success comes in tiny steps, and at the same time, failure abounds.

In Small Steps, Program Puts Homeless Into Jobs

LEAD: FIFTH GRADERS at the North Stratfield Elementary School in Fairfield are combining geography lessons with wordplay to learn about Connecticut. In the process, they are learning to work in teams and, the pupils say, having fun.

When a Map Becomes a Board Game

LEAD: About half the $36 billion in deficit reduction that President Bush will propose in the budget he sends to Congress on Monday would come out of domestic programs, including some efforts in education, housing, transportation and health.

DOMESTIC EFFORTS BEAR TOP BURDEN IN BUSH'S BUDGET

LEAD: JOHN B. MARGENOT Jr., the First Selectman in Greenwich, has a favorite line about the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting. ''I often say that if we held an R.T.M. meeting in a boat, it would probably capsize, so many people would be going from one side to the other,'' he said.

Government By the People, Lots of Them

LEAD: Someone else always goes to Disney World.

  Elway Gets a 3d Chance

LEAD: When it appeared in the early 80's that sliver buildings would dominate the landscape, the owner of 1451 Lexington Avenue was poised to lead the march into the future. As things turned out, new owners decided to lead a march back to the past.

POSTINGS: Four on Lexington;   Deslivering Saves a Brownstone Row

LEAD: Gradually over the last several weeks, the basic elements of the budget President Bush will send Congress tomorrow have seeped out.

  Numbers Tomorrow, To Be Followed By Heavy Politics

LEAD: Like many hotels in northern New Jersey, the Raritan Holiday Inn at Raritan Center business park competes for guests in an overbuilt hotel market where local occupancy hovers around 60 percent.

January 28, 1990

Headlines from January 28, 1990

For Troubled Tryouts, Few Happy Endings

IS IT TIME TO TRUST HOLLYWOOD?

How 'Annie 2' Skidded Off a Bumpy Road To Broadway

Bettors Yawning

Buyers Hang Back in Muddled Market

Billboard 200

...But Seriously

Forever Your Girl

Girl You Know It's True

Storm Front

Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814

Historical Context for January 28, 1990