Nicola Coughlan, 38, Enjoys Hot Tub with Boyfriend Jake Dunn, 25, in Australia
Nicola Coughlan took a dip in a hot tub as she enjoyed a romantic trip to Australia with her boyfriend Jake Dunn. Giving an insight into…
Spectacular stage performances, awesome new albums, a host of fantastic films and stunning art shows – they are all featured in our critics’ picks of the best of theatre, music, film and art.
Our experts have explored all the options for culture vultures to get their teeth into, and decided on the plays, albums and movies that are well worth dedicating your weekend to.
Read on to find out what to see and do…
THEATRE
SHOW OF THE WEEK
Faith Healer
You need an ear for the music of language to be seduced by the Irish playwright Brian Friel. If you are in possession of such a lyrical auricle, the latest iteration of his three-person monologue Faith Healer, starring Declan Conlon, Justine Mitchell (Derry Girls) and Nick Holder, is as hypnotic and resonant as any I’ve seen — or heard.
The tale of itinerant showman Frank Hardy, drifting through Wales, Scotland and Ireland in the Sixties and Seventies, is all the better for being cast without big names. It allows the play to sing without reputations getting in the way. And it allows us to imagine the ‘thick fingers and black nails’ of the men who are Hardy’s nemeses — as well as the car he remembers as being ‘sluggish under their weight’.
Declan Conlon’s Frank Hardy is an evasive, hollowed-out quack with a messiah complex and guilty conscience, who can’t decide if he’s gifted or a fake
Conlon’s Hardy is an evasive, hollowed-out quack with a messiah complex and guilty conscience, who can’t decide if he’s gifted or a fake. Either way, he’s run out of road and in today’s censorious world is a charismatic predator, fostering the dependency of his wife Grace (Mitchell) and the loyalty of his manager Teddy (Holder).
Everything about Hardy is in need of tidying up — except his peaty voice. The faded glory of his black three-piece suit, the forgotten hair and beard sprouting rogue shoots, are all redolent of a man you’d sling 50p for a pint. And yet Conlon’s disreputable mountebank is also at peace with himself after a lifetime eluding his own judgment.
The persistence of Grace’s bitter faith is remarkable, too. Addressing us as if in an AA meeting, she seeks to account for her love of her husband — despite his boorish neglect and her tragic miscarriages. Mitchell’s Omagh brogue is somewhere between a wobble and a crack, and she drops the odd wistful smile into Grace’s heart-stopping confessions.
The show’s biggest surprise, though, is Holder. He plays the normally mousey Teddy as a Falstaffian circus barker — while also whispering his fears and uncertainties about Hardy and Grace, while draining half a dozen bottles of beer.
Director Rachel O’Riordan has created a buzz about Hammersmith’s Lyric which had, for years, been punching below its weight. And although an arty back wall of peeling paint is slightly at odds with the more Presbyterian setting of wooden table and chairs in Colin Richmond’s design, this is a fine and darkly melodious piece of work.
Patrick Marmion
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London. Until April 13, 2hrs 30mins
FOUR OTHER SPARKLING SHOWS
For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy
This is no misery memoir. It’s a vigorous, physical and emotional workout for six black boys as they wrestle with the stereotypes imposed on them by the communities they belong to and the bigoted world beyond.
An astonishing cast, including Mohammed Mansaray, above, give the play their all
Above all, Ryan Calais Cameron’s play (which he also directs) is poetry in motion: sometimes lyrical and tender, always brutally truthful, bursting with music and movement.
It opens to the moody sound of a sax with the boys a tangle of interlocked bodies. From there, back to school, where six-year-old Jet, who worships blond Stephen because he is chased by the girls while the black boys are ignored, asks his mum: ‘Can I please be white…be right… just liked?’
Then to group therapy, where the boys open up about the pressures of institutional racism, gang violence, abusive fathers, of not acting ‘black enough’, of bad-man macho posturing.
And the desire, when the hue gets too heavy, to release themselves from the dishonest versions of themselves they have created.
For all the pain, there’s joy and laughter, silliness even. An astonishing cast, superbly choreographed, give it their all, body and soul, and then some. Stunning.
Georgina Brown
Garrick Theatre, London. Until June 1, 2hrs 35mins
Uncle Vanya
Sir Trevor Nunn, former RSC and National Theatre frontman, has descended on Richmond to re-create Anton Chekhov’s Russian masterpiece, Uncle Vanya, in his own image. To this end, he has cast Ted Lasso’s James Lance (aka Trent Crimm of The Independent) in the title role.
The play is about a forlorn estate manager in provincial 19th-century Russia, and it has clearly been a labour of love for Nunn. The result is a period piece in more ways than one: a traditional costume drama, yes — but as Chekhov was performed 30 years or more ago (in Sir Trevor’s middle age).
James Lance plays Vanya with humility as a wry and rueful roué
Happily, that means we are treated to a rigorous and thoughtful performance centred first on a sturdy samovar, and later a circular sofa.
Nor is it too gloomy. Initially, it lets off steam with light comedy as the small family group is visited by Vanya’s rich, famous and ageing brother-in-law — a professorial stick insect who arrives with pretty young wife in tow.
But Nunn’s tightly drilled cast get to blow the lid off their respective pots with tears and declamations when their stewing passions finally boil over.
It can’t be easy for James Lance to look despondent beneath that magnificent mane. Yet he plays Vanya with humility as a wry and rueful roué, wallowing in a lifetime of disappointment.
Even better is Andrew Richardson’s dejected doctor, besotted with the professor’s wife (Lily Sacofsky).
There’s also a great turn from Madeleine Gray as Vanya’s lovelorn niece Sonya, the plain and overlooked daughter of the professor, who pines for the doctor. She bears her burden of unrequited love with the courage of a saint; and delivers a heart-breaking closing hymn to hope and eternity.
Patrick Marmion
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. Until April 13, 2hrs 40mins
Guys & Dolls
Nicholas Hytner’s immersive restaging of Frank Loesser’s glorious musical about illegal gamblers in 1930s New York has just been nominated for an Olivier Award for best musical revival. It’s also had some cast changes.
Owain Arthur gives a comically broad performance as Nathan Detroit
Timmika Ramsay is the new, full-throated and sassy Hot Box singer Miss Adelaide, and Owain Arthur joins the cast as her marriage-averse fiance Nathan Detroit, giving a comically broad performance as he evades both his put-upon gal and the cops while setting up an illicit craps game.
George Ioannides remains as a slick Sky Masterson, with Celinde Schoenmaker continuing as Sarah Brown, the innocent Salvation Army girl who wants to save his soul but ends up being his doll.
While all the principals sing beautifully, particular mention must go to another newbie, Jonathan Andrew Hume as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, who leads the cast in the showstopper Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat, which also — er, nicely-nicely — shows off the choreography by Arlene Phillips and James Cousins on Bunny Christie’s evocative set.
The show has lost some of its fizz in this iteration, particularly the first act.
But it springs back to life in the second and remains a great night at the theatre.
Veronica Lee
Bridge Theatre, London. Until August 31, 2hs 50mins
LAST CHANCE: Starter For Ten
With the roaring success of One Day on Netflix, writer David Nicholls is having quite a year. His 2003 novel Starter For Ten now becomes a musical hit. Nicholls was once a drama student at Bristol, the under-rated film version starring James McAvoy was partly filmed in the city, and the story now finds a Bristol Old Vic audience riotously rooting for Brian, whose childhood dream is to get on University Challenge.
The cast is headed by Mel Giedroyc playing a single mum as well as a steely TV exec
This musicalisation has a book and lyrics by Emma Hall and Charlie Parham (who also directs). The cast is headed by Mel Giedroyc, playing a single mum. Adam Bregman (the McAvoy part) is her scruffy boy ‘Bri’, struggling to get over his father’s death. The clever lad gets into university and falls for the Sloaney Alice (Emily Lane), while his heart really belongs to the radical Rebecca (Eubha Akilade). The show is pretty much in the spirit of the film, only more over the top. Cartoonish, in fact. But it sweetly gets across the emotional clumsiness of student love affairs and the cast gels nicely. Will
Jennings is hilarious as the obnoxious nerd who runs the quiz team, Robert Portal is Bamber Gascoigne in an upholstered wig and a matching purr, and Giedroyc has her work cut out doubling up as a steely Thatcherite TV exec. Brian’s wideboy mate Spencer (Stephenson Ardern-Sodje) proves a class antidote to the university ‘gowns’, though the part is underwritten.
The nostalgia is provided by Hatty Carman and Tom Rasmussen’s music and lyrics, doffing a hat to every 1980s music style going. The second half of the show earns its spurs as a winner with an edge-of-the-seat finale. Is the show daft, and is it entertaining? The correct answer to both is a definite yes.
Robert Gore-Langton
Bristol Old Vic. Until March 30, 2hrs 30mins
MUSIC
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
ELBOW Audio Vertigo Out now
Elbow have become something of a national treasure. Since their formation 27 years ago in Bury, Greater Manchester, they have made the heart-warming singalong their stock in trade. They played their biggest hit, One Day Like This, at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012 and again at Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022.
The quintet’s no-nonsense approach is evident again on Audio Vertigo, their tenth studio album and the first since they made 2021’s Flying Dream 1 in home studios and a deserted Brighton theatre in lockdown. ‘Hallelujah, buy us a pint!’ sings frontman Guy Garvey on Knife Fight, determined to spread good cheer whatever the circumstances.
But they are happy to take risks, too, and the ‘vertigo’ in the album title is a reflection of a desire to stretch themselves musically. The sounds here are broad and soulful, taking in not just guitars but also electronic rhythms, funky trombones and detours into lounge jazz.
Elbow frontman Guy Garvey jokes that their new album, Audio Vertigo, is an album of ‘gnarly, seedy grooves’, but that’s doing it a disservice
Garvey jokes that this is an album of ‘gnarly, seedy grooves’, but that’s doing it a disservice. There are indeed rough and ready rock numbers, but there’s plenty more besides.
There’s nothing as memorable as One Day Like This, even though that orchestral epic actually took more than three minutes to reach its sweeping, Hey Jude-like climax. Instead, with its varied rhythms expertly fashioned by keyboardist (and producer) Craig Potter and drummer Alex Reeves, Audio Vertigo reveals its melodic strengths stealthily.
On Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years — energised by Reeves’s hip-hop-inspired drumming — Garvey looks in the mirror and dismisses any delusions of grandeur by admitting he’s just a ‘Blackpool rock imposter’. His faith in music is strong, though, and he’s bullish about that on Balu, which is a misspelling of The Jungle Book’s sleepy brown bear Baloo. ‘There’s nothing amiss that can’t be fixed by a bottle of fire and a band,’ he sings.
He tackles unexpected topics, too. On Lovers’ Leap, he cheerily raises doubts as to whether any star-crossed couples really did plunge to their deaths from the bridges and cliffs bearing that name — while also suggesting that such sites should have their own gift shops.
Knife Fight, powered by Mark Potter’s bluesy guitar, is an account of a real-life Istanbul street scuffle that ended with both combatants leaving in tandem, bloodied but laughing.
Audio Vertigo ends on a personal note. Garvey is married to Diana Rigg’s actress daughter Rachael Stirling, and closing track From The River offers tenderly sung words of advice to the couple’s six-year-old son, Jack.
Adrian Thrills
FOUR MORE AWESOME ALBUMS
KACEY MUSGRAVES: Deeper Well
Deeper Well maintains Kacey Musgraves’ admirable habit of doing something fresh with each release.
The onus this time is on soft vocal harmonies and lush acoustic arrangements.
Its New York backdrop is apparent on Nothing To Be Scared Of, set on Manhattan’s West Side. The city is in the frame again on Too Good To Be True.
Her songs grow more stripped-back as the album develops, but her voice retains its powerful, creamy timbre.
Adrian Thrills
CAITY BASER: Still Learning
Southampton-born Baser lost out to The Last Dinner Party after being nominated for the Rising Star award at the BRITs, but this 13-song ‘mixtape’ confirms her arrival as a brash new presence in British pop.
‘You say I’m trouble, well I say that I’m fun,’ she sings on I’m A Problem, setting the tone for a cheeky, chatty release. The 21-year-old lambasts empty-headed suitors on Pretty Boys and offers a pep-talk to a broken-hearted pal on the jazzy Showgirl. Animated, irreverent — and on the road this month — she’s an ideal Generation Z pop star.
Adrian Thrills
WAXAHATCHEE: Tigers Blood
Worried that her excellent 2020 album Saint Cloud might be seen as a fluke, Katie Crutchfield wrote this sequel while on tour with Sheryl Crow. On the evidence of her Dylan-esque lyrics and country-flavoured rock, those fears were misplaced.
Taking her stage name from a creek by her childhood home in Alabama, she tells of a road trip to ‘the only lake in Kansas’ on Lone Star Lake, while 365 focuses on her decision to get sober after issues with alcohol. ‘If you fly up beyond the cosmos, it’s a long way to fall back down,’ she sings. Tigers Blood makes for a blissfully soft landing.
Adrian Thrills
NORAH JONES: Visions
Jones has always been more enterprising than her demure image suggests, and she continues to spring surprises. Her ninth solo album, made with soul saxophonist and drummer Leon Michels, puts dinner-party jazz on the back burner in favour of funky R&B and raw country.
She’s a versatile instrumentalist, too, at home on the piano and twangy, Nashville-style guitar.
If 2020’s Pick Me Up Off The Floor, made in lockdown, was her mid-life crisis album, she’s now far more philosophical (on That’s Life) and even celebratory (on I Just Wanna Dance). A refreshing return.
Adrian Thrills
FILM
FILM OF THE WEEK
The Beautiful Game Cert: 12, 2hrs 5mins
With a screenplay by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, writer of Goodbye Christopher Robin, and a central performance from Bill Nighy, The Beautiful Game was always likely to be emotionally charged.
And so it proves as we watch Nighy, admittedly slightly unlikely casting as former football scout Mal, putting together an England team for the Homeless World Cup.
Although Bill Nighy is slightly unlikely casting as football scout Mal, The Beautiful Game – about the Homeless World Cup – will have you dabbing at your eyes by the end
And yes, it really does exist: contested every year, and you do have to be homeless to play. Vinny (Micheal Ward), Mal’s last-minute addition to the team, may be living in his car but he can really play…
This is a film all about second halves and second chances, and while energy levels do drop a little when the football starts (four-a-side is not the most cinematic of sports) Nighy’s laid-back charm, some fine ensemble acting and oodles of basic humanity will have you dabbing at your eyes by the end.
Matthew Bond
FOUR OTHER FAB FILMS STILL IN CINEMAS
Drive-Away Dolls
Cert: 15, 1hr 24mins
Weighing in at a succinct 84 minutes, Drive-Away Dolls does not hang about. Within moments, it has comprehensively set out its cinematic stall.
Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan star in Drive-Away Dolls
And what well-crafted fun it all turns out to be, as director and co-writer Ethan Coen takes a break from making films with brother Joel and instead creatively partners up with his wife (Ethan’s, not Joel’s), Tricia Cooke.
What ensues is like a freewheeling cross between Thelma & Louise and the Coens’ own No Country For Old Men, with two young women – promiscuous, motor-mouthed Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and buttoned-up, Henry James-reading Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) embarking on an impromptu road trip from Philadelphia to Tallahassee in Florida.
Jamie needs to remove herself from a difficult break-up, while Marian wants to reassess her life and possibly end a long sexual drought. But their respective plans are forcibly put on hold when they discover that the car they are supposed to be delivering contains a hat box and an executive briefcase, and that a pair of bickering bad guys are suddenly after them.
Yes, the basic plot is familiar – that’s clearly deliberate – but the execution is highly enjoyable, with Qualley having a ball as the loquacious Jamie and cameos from the likes of Bill Camp, Colman Domingo, Matt Damon and an uncredited Miley Cyrus adding to the considerable fun.
Matthew Bond
The New Boy
Cert: 12A, 1hr 36mins
A film that sees an apparently orphaned Aboriginal boy being forcibly taken in by a children’s home run by nuns in the 1940s sounds like we’re all set for a misery-fest.
Cate Blanchett hugely watchable as Sister Eileen in The New Boy
But The New Boy is far stranger, more mystical, even magical than that, with Cate Blanchett hugely watchable as the practical, no-nonsense Sister Eileen and young Aswan Reid superb as the new boy of the title.
Sister Eileen, it turns out, is hiding a secret – that the priest who headed the rural children’s home has died. But the new boy is hiding a bigger secret…
Matthew Bond
Dune: Part Two
Cert: 12A, 2hrs 46mins
Having seen Dune: Part Two twice now, the muted response that followed its premiere is totally understandable. Not only is it even longer than 2021’s first instalment, but it bravely ends, yes, with umpteen bangs and a couple of important whimpers, but also with all sorts of untidy loose ends. A Hollywood ending this is not.
Timothée Chalamet is back as Paul Atreides in the visually stunning Dune: Part Two
Until that subdued ending it is quite magnificent. Visually, it provides a stunning spectacle with an immaculate sound design, and Hans Zimmer’s thrilling score only adds to the pleasure.
It resumes more or less where the first ended, after the bloody battle for Arrakis, which saw the cruel Baron Harkonnen back in charge of the only planet to have ‘spice’ – a powerful hallucinogen to some, the valuable key to interstellar travel to others.
The climactic battle saw the departure of several key characters, but here their place is capably taken by notable new arrivals – Christopher Walken as the Emperor, Florence Pugh as his daughter and Elvis star Austin Butler as the terrifying Feyd-Rautha, deranged nephew of Harkonnen.
But driving our story of power and prophecy are the central trio of Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Rebecca Ferguson as his pregnant and increasingly mystical mother, and Zendaya as Chani, the Fremen freedom fighter.
I doubt we’ll see a better science-fiction film this year. It’s just a shame about that ending.
Matthew Bond
Cppa 71 
Cert: PG, 1hr 30mins
I never knew there was a women’s football World Cup in 1971, when over 100,000 people crammed into Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium to watch Mexico and Denmark in the final, a year after the infinitely more celebrated men’s final took place in the same arena.
Inger Pedersen of Denmark lifts the trophy after the final of the World Cup in 1971
Outrageously, it has been all but expunged from the history books but this terrific documentary sets the record straight, with previously suppressed footage of the tournament, plus interviews with those who took part.
Brian Viner
ART
SHOW OF THE WEEK
Yoko Ono: Music Of The Mind
Yoko Ono has had a complex relationship with the British public. Some still blame her for the break-up of the world’s greatest rock group 50-plus years ago – and maybe that’s part of the reason why it has taken her so long to have a career retrospective at a big London art venue. She is 91, and the retrospective in question has just opened at Tate Modern.
Though best known as a Beatle wife/widow, Ono has been an artist since the 1950s, working innovatively in the fields of performance and conceptual art. In 1964’s unsettling Cut Piece (a video of which is on view), she sat on a stage and invited audience members to take a pair of scissors and cut away at her clothes. How far will they go, one wonders, and how far will Ono let them?
In 1964’s unsettling Cut Piece (a video of which is on view), Yoko Ono sat on a stage and invited audience members to take a pair of scissors and cut away at her clothes
Her art has always involved public participation. John Lennon fell for her after climbing a stepladder at an exhibition, looking through a magnifying glass hanging from the ceiling, and reading the word ‘Yes’ inscribed on it. Where the average gallery-goer would once have sniffed at participation, audiences nowadays have caught up with Ono’s ideas.
In the current show, people can be seen climbing into sacks, hammering nails into a canvas, playing chess on all-white boards and writing notes to their mother.
We’re also invited to stop and imagine various scenarios – such as ‘one thousand suns in the sky at the same time’. This all may sound twee. But if art is meant to take us out of the monotony of our everyday habits and make us look at the world differently, Ono has few peers. This show should finally gain her the respect she deserves. Imagine that.
Alastair Smart
Tate Modern, London. Until September 1
TWO MORE STUNNING SHOWS
ENDING SOON: 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 and, from his arrival in England in 1526 to his death in 1543, the Holbein depicted pretty much all the big players of the day.
A rare contemporary portrait of Anne Boleyn is one of the highlights of this show
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. 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.)
A fine show, allowing us to get up close and personal with the biggest figures from Britain’s most infamous reign.
Alastair Smart
The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London. Until April 14
The Moonwalkers
Only 12 people have ever walked on the Moon – most famously, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who, in the former’s immortal words, took ‘one small step for man [and] one giant leap for mankind’, with the first lunar landing in July 1969.
Tom Hanks has co-written and narrated this thrilling immersive exhibition
The experience of the dozen Moonwalkers (across six different missions up to 1972) is thrillingly recaptured in an immersive show at Lightroom in London.
It has been co-written and narrated by Tom Hanks – who knows the subject matter as star of the 1995 film Apollo 13, about the failed lunar mission.
Thanks to high-tech sound and visuals – with multiple scenes projected at once onto the walls, ceiling and floor – the visitor takes a would-be voyage of one’s own.
The rush of a lift-off from the Kennedy Space Center is truly memorable. As is the section where we seem to be setting foot on the Moon itself, with lunar soil beneath our feet.
(The show relies heavily on original Nasa footage – some of it familiar, albeit now richer, clearer and more potent than you’ve ever experienced it before.)
At a time when the world is ravaged by war, and politics in the UK is wretched, this show offers visitors a much-needed boost: a reminder of one of the greatest ever feats of human achievement.
Alastair Smart
Lightroom, London. Until October 13
