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All-singing and dancing stage performances, a feast of new films – they are all featured in our critics’ picks of the best of film, music and theatre. Read on to find out what to see and do this weekend…
THEATRE
SHOW OF THE WEEK
The Picture Of Dorian Gray
Succession’s Sarah Snook stars in this one-woman version of The Picture Of Dorian Gray
Sarah Snook – famous as the flame-haired Shiv Roy in the TV series Succession – is the star of this one-woman version of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture Of Dorian Gray. I feared the worst, not least because Snook is a woman and Dorian Gray isn’t. But how much better she turns out to be than some fashionable male twerp starlet with cheekbones.
Snook is far from snookered by Wilde’s twisted, camp, gothic horror novel. In fact she’s funny, quick and amusing, playing 26 characters – and it’s her beaming personality that makes the play work.
It’s the story of Dorian, who has his portrait painted. He gets his dearest wish, that his looks will never fade, only his portrait. As Dorian abandons himself to vice and murder, his face remains pretty but the painting ages and corrupts, like a putrefying selfie.
This version (Snook is Australian and the show hails from Sydney) exploits a flippancy and fun that never deserted poor Wilde. Not even when he died in a fleapit hotel in Paris – his glorious last words were: ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.’
Snook peoples the fun with lip-smacking caricatures including the sinister Lord Wotton (here mispronounced as ‘What on’). She conjures up an actress, an ancient butler, a clubland bore, a duchess and so on, her wardrobe flitting from the fusty to the outrageous.
It’s almost a movie. You get multiple screens and live feeds with Snook’s face so close up you can see the glue on her sideburns. The camera crew follows her everywhere, even backstage.
All the new-fangled videography is offset by the stately plush of the most beautiful theatre in London. Kip Williams, director and adapter of the book, takes credit for this hip, metrosexual event. If that makes you want to run for the hills, I have to say that it’s a riveting piece of storytelling.
My one complaint is the final 30 minutes, when the pace gets exhausting. It needs trimming. Either that or give us an interval, which the play lacks. But as an evening it’s an astonishing feat, and Snook magics Wilde’s lurid yarn into high-definition life.
Robert Gore-Langton
Theatre Royal Haymarket, London. Until May 11, 1hr 50mins
FOUR OTHER GREAT SHOWS
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Director Eleanor Rhode’s production of Shakespeare’s play about lovers getting their knickers in a twist opens as a TV show in the black-and-white days, when hosts were ill at ease and the picture frequently went on the blink.
Fresh from playing an evil chocolatier in Wonka, Mathew Baynton steals the show
From out of nowhere, exotic flowers bloom and things get psychedelic, magicked up by spritely Puck (Premi Tamang stepping in with tremendous assurance for Rosie Sheehy) who runs a fairy band of bright sparks. Quite literally, in one of several terrific pyrotechnic tricks conjured by illusion director John Bulleid.
Leading the team of squabbling teens is Boadicea Ricketts’s frustrated Helena, a Catherine Tate-style Essex girl. Her pronunciation of ‘Hermia’ rhymes with ‘whatevvaahh’, which is what her expression appears to say.
Quietly stealing the show is Mathew Baynton’s Bottom. Fresh from playing an evil chocolatier in Wonka, he could not be sweeter.
This is a low-key dream, with nothing flash except the lighting. Just a tale well told — and it works a charm.
Georgina Brown
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. Until Mar 30, 2hrs 50mins
Sherlock Holmes And The Whitechapel Fiend
This comedy adventure set in ye olde London town imagines a Sherlock Holmes investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders.
Helen Foster and Philip Pellew in Sherlock Holmes And The Whitechapel Fiend
The talented cast of four — Joseph Chance, Helen Foster, Philip Pellew and Chloe Tannenbaum — play multiple roles and the writers Toby Hulse and Ross Smith weave a suitable knotty tale.
On Jason Denvir’s marvellous set, the actors play with tropes such as breaking the fourth wall and jumping timelines, and portray occupants of 221B Baker Street interchangeably — often within a scene.
It makes a serious point about the line between truth and fiction, and how Victorian penny dreadfuls created the Ripper myth to help sell newspapers.
It’s clever but playfully so, with pleasure to be had in noting the clues laid out. Adam Meggido (an alumnus of the …Goes Wrong farces) directs with pace.
Veronica Lee
Barn Theatre, Cirencester. Until Mar 9, 2hrs 20mins
Just For One Day
The Live Aid musical Just For One Day at London’s Old Vic is no ordinary commemoration of an event 40 years ago. It is a borderline Pentecostal church service, based on testimonies of those who ‘were there’, and singing hymns to ‘Saint’ Bob Geldof himself.
The Live Aid musical Just For One Day is no ordinary commemoration
Unlike the Wembley gig of July 1985 this is a star-free homage. Its most remarkable quality is Matthew Brind’s musical arrangements, which ensure over-familiar chart hits are reborn.
The miracle of what Sir Bob achieved, though, in raising millions for famine-stricken Ethiopia is not to be underestimated. As Geldof, Craige Els is a pleasingly irritable uncle with the rings of Saturn around his eyes.
My favourite character is nonetheless Julie Atherton’s Mrs Thatcher. She’s exactly the grinch this show needs — withholding the 15 per cent VAT levied on Live Aid’s fundraising, and bossily performing The Pretenders’ song Stop Your Sobbing with a hip-hop shuffle in her tweed skirt.
Yes, there are times when they’re overcome by missionary zeal but that doesn’t stop Just For One Day absolutely nuking, erasing and laying waste to all cynicism — to ensure Saint Bob and crew rise again.
Patrick Marmion
The Old Vic, London. Until Mar 30, 2hrs 35mins
The Hills Of California
The playwright Jez Butterworth wrote Jerusalem – perhaps the best play of the century. It was set in the rural badlands of Wiltshire. This new one, The Hills Of California, also directed by Sam Mendes, is located in a sweltering Blackpool boarding house during the heatwave of 1976.
Mum Veronica is determined that her girls will become the next Andrews Sisters
Upstairs, unseen, an old woman is dying of cancer. Downstairs, her grown-up daughters (a fractious bunch brilliantly played by Helena Wilson, Ophelia Lovibond and Leanne Best) are arriving to say farewell, all waiting for their long-lost sister Joan to turn up from California.
In flashbacks the sisters become schoolgirls and we see their super-strict mother, Veronica, in her prime – bracingly played by Laura Donnelly – and determined that her girls will become the next Andrews Sisters. The close-harmony singing is a joy from this troupe of well-drilled youngsters, making the show almost a musical.
When a visiting hot-shot American agent (a sinister Corey Johnson) comes to see the girls sing, their mother makes a choice so brutal you freeze in horror.
It’s a play of beauty, heat and pain, all built on a shattered dream. Mendes coaxes top work from a fine, largely female cast.
Robert Gore-Langton
Harold Pinter Theatre, London. Until June 15, 3hrs
FILM
FILM OF THE WEEK
The Taste Of Things
Cert: 12A, 2hrs 15mins
The only thing chef and gourmand Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) loves more than sharing an eight- course lunch with friends is the beautiful Eugénie (Juliette Binoche)
Let’s begin with some serious advice. Please have something to eat before you go and see The Taste Of Things. If you don’t, I can guarantee you’ll be gnawing hungrily at your knuckles within 15 minutes of Tran Anh Hung’s sumptuous, drool-inducing feast of a film getting under way.
It’s tempting to describe the extended scenes in the kitchen of a gorgeous 19th Century French chateau as ‘food porn’, but that wouldn’t be fair to a picture good enough to win the Vietnamese Hung the best director prize at last year’s Cannes festival.
No, this feels more like an homage to the country he’s called home for almost 50 years. It’s a love letter to classic French cuisine, to French cinema and, it has to be said, to beautiful French women of a certain age. Yes, the only thing chef and gourmand Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) loves more than sharing an eight- course lunch with friends is the beautiful Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), his right-hand woman in his kitchen. Eugénie has worked for him for 20 years and the pair occasionally share a bed but, hard as he tries, he cannot persuade her to marry him. Until…
Binoche’s presence inevitably serves as a reminder of the similarly appetising Chocolat, but there are also echoes of some of the great food classics of cinema – Babette’s Feast, Eat Drink Man Woman (and its wonderful Hispanic remake, Tortilla Soup) and Like Water For Chocolate. Yes, it slightly outstays its welcome but the final, remarkable, shot will have you drooling once again. Exquisite.
Matthew Bond
FOUR OTHER GREAT FILMS IN CINEMA
The Promised Land
Cert: 15, 2hrs 7mins
In The Promised Land, Mads Mikkelsen plays a newly retired army captain who hopes to win fortune and royal favour by bringing the barren heaths of 18th Century Jutland into agricultural use, a project long favoured by the Danish king.
Mads Mikkelsen plays a newly retired army captain in The Promised Land
What ensues is tense, gritty and really well acted by a cast that, alongside Mikkelsen, includes Amanda Collin as the captain’s uncompromising housekeeper and Simon Bennebjerg as the sadistic nobleman who wants the heath for himself.
Worth tracking down.
Matthew Bond
The Iron Claw
Cert: 15, 2hrs 12mins
The Iron Claw is a compelling biographical film which presents the Von Erichs’ story as an intoxicating cocktail of one part triumph to four parts tragedy.
Harris Dickinson, Zac Efron, Stanley Simons and Jeremy Allen White in The Iron Claw
Set mostly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it focuses on Kevin Von Erich, in which role Zac Efron gives the performance of his career.
Kevin is the oldest surviving son of Fritz (Holt McCallany) and Doris (Maura Tierney). Fritz is a former champion wrestler and his dearest wish is for all his boys to follow him into the ring.
This film is not so much about sport as character, drive, frailties and relationships — those things that make all of us tick. In this particular instance it’s about the bonds of brotherhood, too, as well as toxic fatherhood.
Wonderfully acted across the board, The Iron Claw is a tremendous drama about one benighted family.
Brian Viner
American Fiction
Cert: 15, 1hr 57mins
The absorbing American Fiction contains a mighty performance from Jeffrey Wright, who is up for an Oscar.
Jeffrey Wright delivers a mighty performance in American Fiction
He plays world-weary Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, an African-American professor who can’t find anyone willing to publish his cerebral new book.
Meanwhile, to his disgust, another black author is having huge success with what he considers a cheap novel stuffed with racial stereotypes
So he dashes off a wild parody, intended to send up everything he hates about white perceptions of black people. But guess what? It becomes a huge hit.
Skewers the shallowness of the publishing industry, while being a keenly observed race satire too.
Brian Viner
Migration
Cert: U, 1hr 23mins
Migration is a delightful animated comedy about a family of mallards who head south for the winter from New England, and are guided to Jamaica by a homesick scarlet macaw given a fruity Caribbean accent by Keegan-Michael Key.
A family of mallards head south for the winter from New England
The excellent voice cast also includes Elizabeth Banks, Danny DeVito and David Mitchell (as a New Agey Pekin).
It’s all extremely jaunty and colourful, with some great flights of fancy and smart one-liners to keep adult chaperones happy.
My own chaperones were 11-year-old Aharon and his sister Adi, aged nine, and they both loved it, pronouncing it worthy of four stars. I agree. It’s a charmer.
Brian Viner
MUSIC
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Paloma Faith The Glorification Of Sadness Out now
Ever since Frank Sinatra poured his heart out on Only The Lonely in 1958, the break-up album has been a pop staple. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours remains the pinnacle, but there have been distinguished additions to the genre from Marvin Gaye, Amy Winehouse and Adele.
The latest sovereign of sadness striving to turn grief into glory is Paloma Faith, whose sixth album dissects her nine-year relationship with French-Algerian artist Leyman Lahcine, the father of her two young daughters. The couple separated two years ago and, on the evidence of The Glorification Of Sadness, the wounds are still raw.
Faith, 42, says the LP celebrates her ability to bounce back. But her emotions are clearly still all over the place, and the turmoil has inspired some of the most impassioned performances of her career. With 14 songs and three spoken-word interludes, the album is a little bloated, but no less candid or ferocious for that.
Paloma Faith’s sixth album The Glorification Of Sadness dissects her nine-year relationship with French-Algerian artist Leyman Lahcine, the father of her two young daughters
‘Nobody’s perfect, least of all me,’ she admits on opening track Sweatpants, before pinpointing humdrum domestic reality as a passion killer. ‘Will you still love me when I’m crazy and undone?,’ she demands. ‘When my hair is up, and I’ve got my sweatpants on?’
The bitterness only intensifies on Bad Woman. ‘I hope you find perfection, but I know that’ll never be me,’ she rails.
The romantic strife has prompted a change of gear musically. When she emerged, in the shadow of Amy Winehouse, 15 years ago, the East Londoner was singing retro-soul and jazzy pop. By 2017’s chart-topping The Architect, she had added big ballads. The torch songs remain, but there’s now a shift towards forceful rock, inspired by early experiences of fronting a band.
On Let It Ride, backed by crunching guitars, she advocates a good night out as a remedy for a messy break-up. There’s a searing guitar solo on How You Leave A Man — a strident country-soul number that puts a female twist on the sentiments of Paul Simon’s 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover — and more rock melodrama on Hate When You’re Happy.
Not everything hits the spot. Cry On The Dance Floor is a house music workout that feels out of place, but there’s a strong narrative arc to these songs that climaxes on Already Broken, with Paloma’s faith in romance tentatively restored. ‘I’m falling in slow motion… damaged, but I’m hoping,’ she sings.
She might be broken, but she’s definitely unbowed.
Adrian Thrills
FOUR OTHER GREAT ALBUMS
Zara Larsson: Venus
Zara Larsson’s new album, Venus, is a bid to get back on track, and the 26-year-old has made a few changes to cement her position behind Abba, Robyn and double Eurovision winner Loreen as Sweden’s next big cultural export.
She opens with a banger. ‘You can’t tame the girl ‘cause she runs her own world,’ she sings on Can’t Tame Her, a feminist anthem built around glimmering 1980s keyboards in the style of The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights. It’s a strong start, but also one of several songs drenched in studio trickery. I’d prefer her husky, tremulous voice without the digital enhancement.
Larsson’s clearly hungry to fulfil her early promise. On Venus, she’s getting closer.
Adrian Thrills
The Reytons: Ballad Of A Bystander
Like Wigan band The Lathums, Rotherham quartet The Reytons have stepped into the breach following the Arctic Monkeys’ decision to abandon raucous guitar music in favour of lush ballads and lounge jazz.
The group’s third album is dominated by brusque, punky singalongs that should go down a storm at indie discos. Frontman Jonny Yerrell sings of whiling away hours in shopping arcades and hopping on the 116 bus with his girlfriend. Seven In Search Of Ten, about a Tinder addict with unrealistic expectations, hints at greater nuance.
Adrian Thrills
Madi Diaz: Weird Faith
Harry Styles was so impressed with Madi Diaz when the Pennsylvanian artist supported him in North America that he asked her to join his touring band as a backing singer and guitarist.
This album of well-crafted but distinctly unsentimental love songs shows why he was so keen. Diaz sets her candid words to pretty folk-pop melodies, but there’s bite here, too.
Same Risk begins acoustically before building through strings, while Texan star Kacey Musgraves, who has also toured with Styles, duets with Diaz on powerful country ballad Don’t Do Me Good.
Adrian Thrills
The Last Dinner Party: Prelude To Ecstasy
No new album of 2024 comes with greater expectations than Prelude To Ecstasy. And it’s made by The Last Dinner Party, a band who were unknown this time last year.
At first I wasn’t sure about the album: the band’s signature tune, Nothing Matters, is so luminous that the other 11 tracks are like little sisters struggling to be heard at the table.
But then the best albums tend to be the ones that grow on you. Side one of the LP will soon be an old friend, making you laugh and think and empathise.
And if side two is a touch heavy-handed – more like Queen before they discovered pop – that’s forgivable on a first album. It doesn’t have to be consistent if it’s thrilling in parts.
Tim de Lisle
AND THE BEST OF THE REST
COMEDY: Frank Skinner: 30 Years Of Dirt
There’s a career trajectory with comedians that runs something like this: early stand-up career (five to ten years), commercial TV success at height of fame (15-25 years), return to live comedy in declining years (ten to 20 years, depending on life expectancy).
At 67, Frank Skinner is very much in that final stage. TV has long since passed him by, and so he has returned to the stage to do what he does best – telling gags.
At 67, Frank Skinner is very much in that final stage of his career. TV has long since passed him by, so he has returned to the stage to do what he does best – telling gags
It’s hard to think of another comic more at ease with his audience. Pacing the stage in a professorial manner, he’s clearly loving this late resurgence, taking in a two-week West End run followed by three months on the road.
With Skinner there are no surprises. You know what you’re going to get, and that is actual jokes from an old-school club comic, the likes of whom are dying out. He’s a consummate comedy craftsman – one man and his mic, no frills but plenty of thrills. As the show’s title references, Skinner was once a dispenser of eye-watering filth. These days he attempts to keep it relatively clean, acknowledging that ‘you can’t say anything now… I miss racism!’ But try as he might, he’s unable to resist the lure of the knob gag… and the show is all the better for it. He describes his love of a dirty joke as ‘like an illness’ and, true to form, he throws in a Phillip Schofield gag here, some of his finest filthy fillers there.
The gag-packed 90-minute set is loosely a career retrospective, taking in his Catholicism (‘Deal with it!’), his love of football and a smattering of celebrity anecdotes, including a cringing encounter with lyricist Sir Tim Rice. He refers to himself as ‘a once great comedian’ but he’s fooling no one with that double bluff.
You know you’re knocking on a bit when your routine includes a joke about the Red Arrows, but on this evidence, Skinner’s not reaching for the pipe and slippers just yet.
Mark Wareham
Gielgud Theatre, London. Touring until June 9
ART: Holbein At The Tudor Court
Henry VIII and Hans Holbein made a decent match. The former was seeking a first-rate artist to glorify his rule, while the latter was seeking a potent patron to give him work.
Born in Bavaria at the end of the 15th Century, Holbein made his name in the Swiss city of Basel before heading to England in 1526, where he was welcomed by Sir Thomas More (who would soon become Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor).
A rare contemporary portrait of Anne Boleyn by Hans Holbein is one of the highlights in this exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace
It was through More that Holbein met the elite of the Tudor court and, most importantly, the king. Up until his death in 1543, the artist depicted pretty much all the big players of the day, from Thomas Cromwell to Jane Seymour, as is made clear in this exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery in London.
This was a time of deadly intrigue, when the likes of More, Cromwell and many others lost their heads. One reason that Holbein kept his – despite what might have seemed split loyalties between different court members – was his greatness as a portraitist.
This show focuses on the preparatory drawings he did for his paintings, rather than the paintings themselves. However, it’s no lesser experience for that. Holbein brought a naturalism to British art that it had never had before.
In a rare contemporary portrait of Anne Boleyn, the ill-fated queen wears an informal gown and a linen cap, into which her hair is unglamorously tucked. Seen in profile, she has a double chin and is lost in thought – not exactly the power-hungry temptress of popular imagination. (The finished painting no longer exists.)
This is a fine show, allowing us to get up close and personal with famous figures from the most infamous reign in British history.
Alastair Smart
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London. Until April 14
