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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
Opening Night
What an extraordinary theatrical mash-up Opening Night is. It’s almost as if this studiously obtuse new musical which recently opened in the West End was designed to sabotage its fabulous leading lady, Sheridan Smith.
And yet, if you can’t keep a good woman down, you’ve got no chance whatsoever against Smith’s unstoppable charisma.
Based on a long-forgotten John Cassavetes film of the same title from 1977, it’s about a Broadway actress, Myrtle, having a nervous breakdown after witnessing the death of a young fan outside the theatre. Yet it’s almost as if Ivo Van Hove’s musical resurrection is seeking to give Smith a real-life nervous breakdown of her own – a dangerous game for a woman who has spoken of her own mental health nightmares after falling apart in the musical Funny Girl back in 2016.
There are moments, too, when I was simply in awe of Sheridan Smith’s acting. She has a cheekiness and vulnerability which is as dangerous as it is riveting
The on-stage clutter of a documentary film crew recording rehearsals of the story’s play within the play, ‘The Second Woman’, locks her into a state of febrile isolation, and encourages the actors to ignore the audience and perform to cameras instead.
So, when Smith does finally register us by tossing a hairband into the front row, the effect is electric.
Thank God also for Rufus Wainwright’s music. True, it sometimes dwindles into semi-tonal burbling. But it also explodes with the singer-songwriter’s gift for doomed glory. A spectacular duet with Nicola Hughes as an exasperated writer character even brought to mind the brassy swagger of All That Jazz, the 1979 film starring Roy Scheider.
More than anything though, it’s thanks to the emotional wattage of Smith’s voice that the show really soars. To quote the lyrics of one of her early numbers, she makes ‘magic out of tragic’.
There are moments, too, when I was simply in awe of her acting.
She switches between playing herself, her actress character and the actress’ character in the play within the play – variously pestered by an ex-husband, a current husband, the writer, the director and the ghost of the dead fan.
Stumbling through this psychological armageddon, she has a cheekiness and vulnerability which is as dangerous as it is riveting. Plus, there’s her famous knock-out smile, and the ability to give us four seasons in a single sentence.
All the other characters – bar Shira Haas as the ghost of the dead girl incarnating Myrtle’s death wish – are cardboard cut-outs by comparison. Hadley Fraser as the self-important director does little more than bark orders.
Jos Slovick as the ex-husband tells us ‘big living rooms turn me on’. Benjamin Walker as Myrtle’s incumbent actor husband throws hissy fits in rehearsals. And John Marquez as a sycophantic producer takes the duff-dialogue biscuit with his line: ‘I love you. We all love you. Do you want a cup of tea?’
There are many reasons to be dismayed by this show, but Smith, who at one point is filmed crawling drunk through the street outside, somehow defies Van Hove’s attempt to derail her.
For her magnificent climactic number, the World Is Broken, he even tries to bury her inside a crowd of actors behind a see-through curtain. Here she sings movingly of falling apart, of pulling herself together, and of now being ready for battle.
And what a battle it is for us, too. A pyrrhic victory perhaps, but a victory I wouldn’t want to miss.
Gielgud Theatre, London. Until July 27, 2hrs 30mins
FOUR OTHER SPARKLING SHOWS
MJ The Musical
Christopher Wheeldon’s production of this Michael Jackson musical biopic sets itself up in a rehearsal studio for MJ’s 1992 ‘Dangerous’ world tour. Here, a rookie documentary team cue flashbacks of his life in Lynn Nottage’s rigorously anodyne script.
Myles Frost in the title role seems to take MJ even more seriously than MJ took himself
Her round-up covers run-ins with his bullying father, Joseph, as well as MJ’s travails with painkillers (which eventually killed him) but elsewhere, she tiptoes around controversy over the children who passed through his ‘Neverland’ estate.
Incredibly, Myles Frost in the title role seems to take MJ even more seriously than MJ took himself. But good on him. His nimble performance is astonishing — showing us the birth of that famous vocal yelp, the crotch-clutching hip-pumps and the foot-sliding moonwalk.
Frost even succeeds in eclipsing the scarcely less dazzling body-popping and vocal warbling of Mitchell Zhangazha as Jackson’s awkward teenage self. And Zhangazha’s brother, Ashley, tellingly doubles as Michael’s despotic father and obsequious manager — thereby distilling in one figure MJ’s psychological battles with fear and control.
What will be remembered of this show otherwise is Wheeldon’s end-to-end choreography, which is tighter than a g-string on a hippopotamus. It climaxes in a thumping rendition of Thriller, staged as a zombie graveyard shift in a Mexican-style Day Of The Dead circus setting — OTT doesn’t come close. Whatever it covers up, the show has a potent understanding of what MJ meant when he insisted he needed to ‘feel’ his song and dance routines.
Patrick Marmion
Prince Edward Theatre, London. Until December 7, 2hrs 35mins
Red Pitch
Tyrell Williams’s sharp, funny and very touching Red Pitch is about three 16-year-old black kids growing up playing football in their Walworth ‘ends’ (home estate) as they cope with change thanks to try-outs at QPR and the ongoing gentrification of their manor.
Kedar Williams-Stirling and Francis Lovehall are among the dazzling cast in Red Pitch
‘They’re making p’s (£s) out of ends, and if anything they should be putting p’s back into ends,’ says one, in a poetic burst of social criticism.
But the acting dazzles, too. Frances Lovehall oozes pride and pathos as Omz, the kid who looks after his little brother and worries about his 81-year-old grandad. Kedar Williams-Stirling brags improbably as Twix-loving Bilal, while Emeka Sesay as the ambitious and talented goalie, Joey, is the peacekeeper.
Aside from a mini-pitch and low red fence, the boys are all the scenery required in Daniel Bailey’s slick production. They’re constantly on the go with keepie-uppies, krumping (dancing), and very realistic fighting. Swear down, they are all bare sick (very good).
Patrick Marmion
@sohoplace, London. Until May 4, 1hr 30mins
A Taste Of Honey
At Manchester’s Royal Exchange, they’ve thrown everything except the kitchen sink at their feisty revival of Shelagh Delaney’s play A Taste Of Honey.
Jill Halfpenny’s Helen is a mass of contradictions in this long overdue revival
Her 1958 drama about a gobby Salford lass who gets up the duff, courtesy of a young black naval nurse from Cardiff, was looking like something you might find rusting in a corner of a reclamation yard, but it’s been taken back to its Lancashire roots and given a loving refurb.
Best known from the 1961 film, the play was originally hailed as one of the ‘kitchen sink’ social realist dramas that rocked stuffy British theatre in the 1950s.
Emma Baggott’s production ditches the naturalistic trappings and rediscovers the play’s vitality, creating a dreamlike atmosphere with Nishla Smith performing Ewan MacColl’s hymn to Salford’s gasworks, Dirty Old Town, between scenes. This allows us to get down to the tough love and bruising banter between teenage Jo (Rowan Robinson) and her louche mother Helen (Jill Halfpenny).
Halfpenny’s Helen is a mass of contradictions: sexually strident but with no time for newfangled ways.
And Robinson’s Jo is a mesmerising creature whose huge eyes capture innocence, uncertainty, defiance, and a great sense of fun.
Add in David Moorst, as the frank-but-guarded gay friend who supports her during her pregnancy, and Obadiah as Jimmie, the baby daddy, and you’ve got a long overdue restoration of a dusty old classic.
Patrick Marmion
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. Until April 13, 2hrs 50mins
Faith Healer
The latest iteration of Brian Friel’s three-person monologue, starring Declan Conlon, Justine Mitchell (Derry Girls) and Nick Holder, is as hypnotic and resonant as any I’ve seen — or heard.
Declan Conlon’s Frank Hardy is an evasive, hollowed-out quack with a God complex
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.
Conlon’s Hardy is an evasive, hollowed-out quack with a messiah complex and guilty conscience. 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).
The show’s biggest surprise is Holder. He plays the normally mousey Teddy as a Falstaffian circus barker.
Rachel O’Riordan’s production is a fine and darkly melodious piece of work.
Patrick Marmion
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London. Until April 13, 2hrs 30mins
MUSIC
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Sheryl Crow Evolution Out now
After pulling out all the stops on her 2019 release Threads, Sheryl Crow was adamant she’d never make another album. Built around marquee duets with Stevie Nicks, Mavis Staples, Keith Richards and others, Threads had been a mammoth undertaking. If it was to be the last time, she was going out with a bang.
At least that was the plan… but, while focusing on one-off singles might have boosted her streaming figures, Crow is better suited to the longer, deeper format. And when she sent a couple of songs she’d written at home in Nashville to her producer Mike Elizondo, more quickly followed and it became obvious a full-length album, Evolution, was in the offing.
After pulling out all the stops on her 2019 release Threads, Sheryl Crow was adamant she’d never make another album. At least that was the plan…
Crow, 62, was also motivated by a belief that music should come ‘from the soul’ rather than being created through artificial intelligence, a point she makes abundantly clear on the title track, which describes her feelings on hearing an A.I.-generated hit on the airwaves. ‘Turned on the radio and there it was, a song that sounded like something I wrote,’ she sings. ‘The voice and melody were hauntingly so familiar that I thought it was a joke.’
There’s nothing remotely machine-tooled about Evolution, which moves between tender country-soul and upbeat pop on songs inspired by a desire to connect on a simple human level. Crow’s life hasn’t been straightforward, with high-profile broken romances and battles against breast cancer in 2006 and a benign brain tumour in 2011, but most of the new songs are of a sunny, if slightly bruised, disposition.
‘I’m not gonna let a moment slip away,’ she sings on Love Life, a languid strut on which she’s backed by former Prince accomplice Wendy Melvoin’s funky guitar. She’s similarly philosophical on You Can’t Change The Weather, playing a Beatles-like melody on a Wurlitzer electric piano as she suggests that ‘every moment has a brand new start’.
The Wurlitzer surfaces again on Broken Record, a catchy, 1960s-style bubblegum pop tune, while Do It Again is a distant relation of her 1994 hit All I Wanna Do.
String arranger Rob Moose comes to the fore as Evolution moves through the gears. Alarm Clock — in which Sheryl dreams of being served cocktails by Hollywood sex symbol Timothée Chalamet before her sleep is disturbed by her early morning buzzer — features gnarly guitars.
Having set a high bar with Threads, Crow’s reluctance to make another LP was understandable. But with a new wave of female artists — Boygenius, Lorde and Haim — citing her as a role model, she’s timed her unexpected comeback rather well.
Adrian Thrills
FOUR MORE AWESOME ALBUMS
TEXAS & SPOONER OLDHAM: The Muscle Shoals Sessions
Stateside soul music has proved an enduring source of inspiration for Texas and the Glasgow band’s new album reiterates the point.
The Muscle Shoals Sessions was made in the Alabama city of that name with veteran keyboardist Dewey Lindon ‘Spooner’ Oldham Jr. It takes 11 familiar Texas songs and three covers and refashions them in a stripped-down manner.
Oldham, 80, is a guiding light of Southern soul, and his delicate piano work brings out the best in Spiteri, who delivers some of her most audacious performances.
There’s an onus on tracks from the ’90s — Halo is bolstered by simple strings; Sharleen dovetails beautifully with the backing singers on Summer Son.
The covers suit the mood. Would I Lie To You was a 1992 hit for retro-soul duo Charles & Eddie; The Drifters’ Save The Last Dance is joyous. With no new material, this could be viewed as a sidestep. If that’s so, it’s a glorious one.
Adrian Thrills
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
ELBOW: Audio Vertigo
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.
The quintet’s no-nonsense approach is evident again on Audio Vertigo. The sounds here are broad and soulful, taking in not just guitars but also electronic rhythms, funky trombones and detours into lounge jazz.
On Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years Guy Garvey looks in the mirror and dismisses any delusions of grandeur by admitting he’s just a ‘Blackpool rock imposter’.
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 places bearing that name — while also suggesting that such sites should have their own gift shops.
The album ends on a personal note. Garvey is married to actress Rachael Stirling, and closing track From The River offers tenderly sung words of advice to the couple’s six-year-old son.
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
FILM
FILM OF THE WEEK
Mothers’ Instinct Cert: 15, 1hr 34mins
At first glance, Mothers’ Instinct looks like a stylish 1960s prequel to the once hugely popular TV show Desperate Housewives. In fact, it’s a remake of a 2018 Belgian film, itself based on a 2012 novel by Barbara Abel.
But as we watch Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain playing perfect suburban housewives, with their perfect homes, perfect husbands and perfect sons, it’s definitely the desperate ladies of Wisteria Lane that come to mind. Because, as they showed us, no life is ever as perfect as it looks.
There’s no doubt that Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain as neighbours Celine and Alice are pretty much dream casting but they’re just OK in psychological thriller Mothers’ Instinct
So it duly proves here, as a tragic accident suddenly brings the happy round of shared school runs, evening cocktails and surprise birthday parties to an end. One mother is grieving, the other nursing a sense of possibly undeserved guilt. One mother has a history of mental illness, the other is possibly heading that way.
There’s no doubt that Hathaway and Chastain as neighbours Celine and Alice are pretty much dream casting, and with hair, make-up and wardrobe making the most of the early 1960s setting, for a little while it looks like we might be in for the sort of sensitive exploration of grief and loss that Todd Haynes, director of both Far From Heaven and Carol, might have given us.
But slowly and with a slightly disappointing inevitability, we slip into the familiar and melodramatic territory of the psychological thriller, which is a bit odd as Hathaway has just been in the not wholly dissimilar Eileen.
It’s still watchable but also a shame as, while Hathaway and Chastain are just OK here and will no doubt make better films in the future, the terrific performance of Eamon Patrick O’Connell as young Theo is somewhat wasted.
Matthew Bond
FOUR OTHER FAB FILMS TO SEE IN CINEMAS
Robot Dreams
Cert: PG, 1hr 42mins
There are no humans in Robot Dreams. The animation, exquisitely written and directed by Pablo Berger, is set in New York City in the 1980s, a seedy metropolis populated entirely by animals.
Robot Dreams is exquisitely written and directed by Pablo Berge
Our hero is a lonely dog, who finds companionship in a mail-order robot, which he builds from a kit.
Joyously funny, achingly sad, gorgeously observed, it’s a (dialogue-free) delight from beginning to end.
But note that the two-dimensional animation is deliberately basic, evocative of early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. This lovely film is more likely to appeal to nostalgic grown-ups than sophisticated kids, raised on Pixar movies. Happy Easter!
Brian Viner
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 Lavender Hill Mob/Mary Poppins
Charles Crichton’s 1951 classic The Lavender Hill Mob (Cert: U, 1hr 18mins) might not be the greatest of the Ealing comedies but it is a joy all the same.
Alec Guinness (above, with Stanley Holloway) is at the top of his game here
It gives us the great Alec Guinness at the top of his game, in this case playing a humble bank clerk who masterminds a gold-bullion heist. Happily, it is being re-released in cinemas today.
If you’ve never seen it on the silver screen then give yourself an Easter weekend treat. Or if you prefer, wallow in the 60th-anniversary re-release of another timeless gem, the delightful fantasy Mary Poppins (Cert: PG, 2hrs 19mins).
Brian Viner
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
ART
SHOW OF THE WEEK
Sargent And Fashion
In late Victorian and Edwardian times, few things were more fashionable than a portrait by John Singer Sargent. High-society types even used to buy their clothing based on how it might look in his pictures. That said, the artist often rejected what his sitters wore initially, instead choosing a new outfit for them.
Such was the fate of the artist-writer W. Graham Robertson, whom Sargent dressed in a Chesterfield overcoat on one hot day in 1894. ‘The coat is the picture,’ Robertson was told, after he’d had the temerity to complain he was hot. The resulting portrait is now part of a Tate Britain show about the expat American artist’s relationship with fashion.
Sargent had early success in Paris, until his portrait Madame X, above, caused such a stir – due to a salaciously dropped shoulder strap, later moved – that he moved to London
Sargent had early success in Paris, until his portrait Madame X – of the socialite Virginie Gautreau – caused such a stir that he moved to London. (The issue was a diamond strap on Gautreau’s low-cut dress, which fell salaciously off her right shoulder. Sargent eventually repositioned the strap to a more ‘appropriate’ place.)
Some of the portraits in Sargent And Fashion are displayed alongside the actual items of clothing that the subjects wore for them. So visitors will see, for example, La Carmencita – an 1890 picture of the Spanish dancer Carmen Dauset Moreno – beside the sparkling yellow costume she wore for her sitting.
The novelist D.H. Lawrence claimed that Sargent’s portraits were ‘nothing but yards and yards of satin from the most expensive shops [with] some pretty head propped up on the top’. That’s a little unfair, as we encounter faces with a range of features here – such as Moreno’s haughtily arched eyebrows.
There’s no doubt, however, that fashion was Sargent’s thing. He dressed to impress – and succeeded sumptuously.
Alastair Smart
Tate Britain, London. Until July 7
TWO MORE STUNNING SHOWS
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 Beatles 50-plus years ago – and maybe that’s partly why it has taken so long for her to have a retrospective at a big London art venue.
A video of Yoko Ono’s unsettling Cut Piece from 1964 is on view in this show
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 cut away at her clothes with scissors. How far will they go, one wonders, and how far will Ono let them?
Her art has always involved public participation. 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. Maybe now she’ll finally earn the respect she deserves. Imagine that.
Alastair Smart
Tate Modern, London. Until September 1
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
