A host of fantastic films, great gigs, awesome new albums and spectacular stage performances – they are all featured in our critics’ picks of the best of film, music and theatre.
Our experts have explored all the options for culture vultures to get their teeth into, and decided on the movies, music and plays that are well worth dedicating your weekend to.
Read on to find out what to see and do…
FILM
FILM OF THE WEEK
Back To Black Cert: 15, 2hrs 2mins
In 2015, when I reviewed Asif Kapadia’s powerful documentary about the late Amy Winehouse, I wrote that Amy ‘will be acutely uncomfortable viewing both for her father, Mitch, and for her party-loving husband, Blake Fielder-Civil.’
Both men will be much happier with Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new dramatisation of the same events, Back To Black. Mitch because he’s restored to the role of loving, supportive father and played by Eddie Marsan at his most likeable, and Fielder-Civil because he’s portrayed, not as the man who introduced Amy to hard drugs but as a charming cockney chancer played by handsome Jack O’Connell.
Marisa Abela, who some will recognise from TV’s Industry, plays Amy Winehouse rather brilliantly in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic while Jack O’Connell charms as Amy’s husband Blake
And therein lies both the weakness and the strength of the film: it’s been given something of a ‘Hollywood makeover’, if you can use such a term for a thoroughly British production.
It’s a difficult thing to say but Marisa Abela, who some will recognise from TV’s Industry and who plays Winehouse rather brilliantly, is prettier than Winehouse was in real life, while Lesley Manville is adorable as Amy’s maternal grandmother, Cynthia, a jazz singer herself as well as getting the credit for her granddaughter’s trademark beehive.
But the booze, drugs and bulimia are all still there, along with the unavoidably awful ending. Taylor-Johnson’s creative vision, however, is essentially affectionate and celebratory rather than insightful and revelatory which, given that poor Winehouse has been dead for 13 years, seems not unreasonable. She wants us to like her Amy, and she wants us to like her film. And I did, just as I liked Taylor-Johnson’s not dissimilar treatment of John Lennon, Nowhere Boy, in 2009.
Back To Black may be a bit light on actual black but Abela’s singing (she doesn’t lip-synch) is amazing. It’s refreshing to see the now permanently tragic figure of Winehouse actually having fun, and the music is simply wonderful.
Matthew Bond
FOUR OTHER FAB FILMS STILL IN CINEMAS
Cert: 15, 1hr 49mins
Alex Garland’s Civil War takes the shape of a road movie: a truckful of journalists driving from New York City to Washington, D.C to try and secure the last interview with the president (Nick Offerman) before his government comes crashing down.
Kirsten Dunst is on career-best form as photojournalist Lee in Civil War
They are the veteran hack Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), war correspondent Joel (Wagner Moura), wannabe photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and her idol, Lee (Kirsten Dunst). Four fine performances, though only one weary, wonderful Dunst, who’s on career-best form here.
The landscape they pass through is the stuff of a hundred post-apocalypse flicks except there are no zombies or climate cataclysms here. It’s just politics.
Peter Hoskin
Cert: 18, 2hrs 1min
I’m not wild about the title of Monkey Man, which is taken from Indian mythology, or some aspects of the storytelling, but Dev Patel makes a hugely impressive directorial debut with this, a revenge-based action thriller set in a modern India positively pulsing with life, energy and violence.
Dev Patel makes a hugely impressive directorial debut in Monkey Man
It’s a little derivative, with a screenplay good-humouredly acknowledging a debt to John Wick, but the sheer cinematic swagger is a joy to behold.
Patel also stars as Kid, who scrapes a living as an ineffective wrestler who fights in a monkey mask but dreams, we think, of bettering himself.
But when he lands himself a job at an exclusive club we soon learn that it’s not so much money he’s after as revenge. Be warned, that 18 certificate is fully deserved.
Matthew Bond
Cert: 12A, 1hr 39mins
Carla Nowak is a mild-mannered teacher in a German school. She is also, in The Teachers’ Lounge, one of my favourite characters of the year.
Leonie Benesch is brilliant as Carla Nowak in The Teachers’ Lounge
For what Nowak (brilliantly played by Leonie Benesch) has is determination and belief, particularly when it comes to the children in her care.
Trouble is, not everyone sees things the same way. A series of small, well-intentioned actions on her part soon escalate into something bigger and trickier.
The ending is so abrupt that it feels almost violent, but, regardless, we’ll always have Miss Nowak.
Class dismissed.
Peter Hoskin
Cert: 15, 2hrs
The First Omen, notionally a prequel to The Omen (1976), stands on its own as a gripping horror film that unfolds like a thriller, and contains a superb central performance by the 24-year-old English actress Nell Tiger Free.
The First Omen contains a superb central performance by Nell Tiger Free
She plays a young American nun who in 1971 arrives to work at an orphanage in Rome, and there uncovers some deeply sinister goings on. A powerful cabal of clerics has decided that the only way to stop secularism is to bring the masses back to the church through fear, so naturally they plot a way of birthing the Antichrist. It’s a nuttily compelling premise which Arkasha Stevenson’s film realises splendidly.
Charles Dance has a pre-titles cameo, Ralph Ineson is excellent as an excommunicated Irish priest, and the Eternal City of 50-odd years ago is convincingly re-created. I found it harder to believe in Bill Nighy as a creepy cardinal, but you can’t have everything.
Brian Viner
MUSIC
GIG OF THE WEEK
Lulu
Many singers make their name with their first album. Lulu managed it with her first word. It was quite a modest word – ‘Well’ – but on her debut single, Shout, she turned it into a blast, stretching it to more than ten syllables, filling it with fun and freedom.
And she was only 15. Now she’s 75 and doing a farewell tour. It’s half greatest hits, half autobiography.
Many singers make their name with their first album. Lulu managed it at 15 with her first word: ‘well’. Now she’s 75 and doing a farewell tour that’s half greatest hits, half autobiography
‘I’m the weirdest person,’ she tells a packed house. She doesn’t convince you of that – as lifelong celebrities go, she seems relatively grounded – but she has certainly had a curious career.
The hits have nothing in common bar her mighty voice. From the Eurovision bubblegum of Boom Bang-a-Bang to the blazing warmth of Bob Seger’s We’ve Got Tonight, from David Bowie on form with The Man Who Sold The World to John Barry having a rare Bond off-day with The Man With The Golden Gun, an evening with Lulu is a lucky dip.
She makes it work by turning it into a TV show, full of endearing stories and evocative clips of herself and her famous friends. She does virtual duets with Bowie and Tina Turner, for whom Lulu co-wrote a minor classic, I Don’t Wanna Fight.
Best of all, she sings along with a duet she once did with her late ex-husband, Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees. As they sing together, there’s so much love in their eyes that you feel duets should be de rigueur for divorcing couples.
Introducing Relight My Fire, Lulu talks about her fondness for ‘the boys’ of Take That. And suddenly here they are, strolling on to sing it. Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen end up on their knees, bowing down before Lulu. ‘They’re family,’ she says, and you almost believe her because their signature tone – cheesy but jokey – chimes with hers.
When she leaves the stage there’s a heartfelt standing ovation. Then she trots back on and ends up where she began, with Shout. You wonder if she’ll delegate the opening note to her powerful backing singer, her sister Edwina (65), but no, Lulu does it herself, in style. She goes out with a bang. And a boom.
Tim de Lisle
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. Touring until Wednesday. Although the shows are mostly sold out, there are waiting lists available
FOUR AWESOME ALBUMS OUT NOW
Manchester veterans James’s 18th studio effort adds fresh layers to a sound first honed in the 1980s, when their local peers were New Order, The Smiths and The Fall.
Like Simple Minds, another act still going strong after breaking through in the 1980s, James have been refreshed by adding a female vocalist. Chloe Alper is a foil to Tim Booth in much the same way Sarah Brown complements Jim Kerr in Simple Minds.
Booth remains a compelling lyricist. Mobile God is penned from the perspective of a smartphone, while album closer Folks is a wry contemplation of mortality. It would be a perfect farewell… were it not for the fact that there’s still plenty of life left in James.
Adrian Thrills
The album of the week comes from Lucy Woodward.
She’s been a member of a witty trio, The Goods, and a backing vocalist for Rod Stewart.
Her latest solo album is a winner, full of jazzy rhythms and pop-soul hooks, piercing thoughts and soaring vocals.
Tim de Lisle
The fast-rising Leeds quartet are often bracketed alongside a new wave of punky guitar bands, but the pigeonholing does them a disservice.
There are some abrasive rock numbers on this highly promising debut, but also detours into delicate indie-pop and brooding balladry.
Singer Lily Fontaine is quietly charismatic, her conversational lyrics addressing intolerance on the powerful Albert Road and her own chronic indecision on Mastermind Specialism, where she likens herself to a hesitant bride and a child who jumps off a playground slide halfway down the chute.
Adrian Thrills
Now for something completely different – the new album from Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, fresh from his success with the all-star version of Going Home.
One Deep River is a modest treat, full of thoughtful riffs and wry observations. At 74, Knopfler knows how to turn a murmur into a memorable ballad.
Tim de Lisle
THEATRE
SHOW OF THE WEEK
Underdog: The Other Other Bronte
There are plenty of meta moments in Underdog: The Other Other Bronte. It is 1837 and at the parsonage in the Yorkshire village of Haworth, aspiring writer Charlotte Bronte (Gemma Whelan), older sister of Emily (Adele James) and Anne (Rhiannon Clements), is reading her reply from the poet laureate Robert Southey, to whom she has sent her poems, asking his opinion of them.
Southey is not encouraging. ‘Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be,’ he writes. ‘He’s a bellend!’ declares Emily.
The lives of Emily (Adele James), Charlotte (Gemma Whelan), and Anne Bronte (Rhiannon Clements) receive a racy retelling in Sarah Gordon’s hilarious but ultimately moving comedy
Sarah Gordon’s hilarious but ultimately moving comedy about the Brontes is a racy retelling of the sisters’ struggle to become recognised authors. Charlotte is determined to be as famous and lauded as the likes of Southey, but her ambition results in her overshadowing Anne, the full extent of whose talent was not acknowledged until long after her premature death.
The banter between the rival siblings is very sharp, there are some brilliant bits of business and much fun is poked at the prissy male critics horrified that such radical, fierce novels as Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall were written by women.
But Gordon also invites us to think seriously about how our view of these literary giants has been shaped, and about their battle to succeed in a profession dominated by men.
Incidentally, Charlotte really did write to Southey – an audacious move for the 20-year-old daughter of a country clergyman.
At the start of Underdog, Whelan wanders through the audience asking people their favourite Bronte novel. Everyone has an answer. How many people could even name a Southey poem?
Neil Armstrong
Dorfman Theatre, London. Until May 25, 2hrs 15mins
FOUR OTHER SPARKLING SHOWS
Ushers invite us to write a secret on a card and place it in a glass bowl. ‘Prepare to be delighted, astounded and amazed!’ booms a disembodied voice.
Prepare to be delighted and amazed at Mind Mangler Keith (Henry Lewis)
A big, shambling bloke with a bushy beard peers at the audience. ‘Think of a colour,’ challenges our host, holding an orange. Such is the mysterious suggestive power of self-aggrandising wannabe mentalist Keith (Henry Lewis), aka Mind Mangler.
Silly stand-up meets merry magic in the latest show from the troupe of Magic-Goes-Wrong veterans.
Keith is a joker. But is he actually more than that? He claims he can ‘smell’ a person’s profession. ‘You at the back, in the dark?’ he sniffs. ‘You’re a theatre usher.’
Not quite Derren Brown, then, but hilarious. Newly divorced Keith’s life is a shambles, off-stage as well as on. Overhead is a locked case, ‘suspended’… just as he is, from the Magic Circle, and he’s banking on someone finding the code which he has lost, along with his car keys.
He is travelling hopefully. International stardom beckons, or so he boasts, after an approach from ‘legendary’ producer Bob Kojak, who has booked him to do a tour of Vegas.
Wholly unsupported by his incompetent stooge (Jonathan Sayer, who is helpfully wearing a T-shirt labelled ‘Audience Member’), Keith hopelessly and obviously blunders his way through dodgy magic tricks. Everything that could possibly go wrong, does.
Keith cues a drum roll and an owl hoots. He gets locked in his vanishing cabinet. ‘Is there anybody there?’ he asks the Ouija board. ‘No,’ comes the reply.
While his spoon refuses to bend, every other metal object on the stage bows.
Then comes the big reveal as brilliantly inept Keith turns miraculous mind-reader, exposing the secret of a random punter.
Prepare to be delighted, astounded and amazed.
Georgina Brown
Apollo Theatre, London. Until April 28m, then touring until June 16. 2hrs
The Divine Mrs S is about the actress Sarah Siddons (1755-1831). ‘Mrs Siddons’ was a great star of her day but there is still no biography of her, so this new backstage comedy is very welcome.
Rachael Stirling plays Sarah Siddons with terrific vim in this welcome comedy
She is played with terrific vim by Rachael Stirling, in what at times seems like a Georgian version of Noises Off.
Siddons’ deep talent – we get a hint of her famous Lady Macbeth – is offset by her controlling brother, John Philip Kemble, a shouting ham actor played by Dominic Rowan with Ernie Wise levels of pretentiousness.
Then there’s an oily critic (Gareth Snook), Patti, a Barnsley girl who becomes Mrs S’s confidante (played by Anushka Chakravarti), and Eva Feiler as a young playwright called Baillie, who has to conceal her identity as a woman.
April De Angelis’s comedy has a wide feminist angle – the theatre is, after all, still a man’s world. But it’s an evening generously laden with jokes.
Even if you find these jokes over the top (though I didn’t), in Rachael Stirling’s genuinely moving portrait of the actress and survivor it’s a pleasure to meet the remarkable Mrs S.
Robert Gore-Langton
Hampstead Theatre, London. Until April 27, 2hrs 20mins
Long Day’s Journey Into Night is the mother of all family-row plays. Every box set and modern broken-family drama owes it a debt. That includes Succession, whose star, Brian Cox, a limber 77, now returns to the West End stage in this American classic set on one day in 1912.
L-R: Laurie Kynaston, Brian Cox, Patricia Clarkson and Daryl McCormack
Cox plays James Tyrone, a has-been actor, a miser, a bully and an alcoholic. Both his sons have crawled inside a bottle of whisky to escape his withering tongue. Then there’s his poor wife, Mary, a hopeless dope addict.
There’s not a dud part in the play. The sons are terrific: Daryl McCormack exerts a futile charm as the whoring barfly son Jamie (a part that was memorably played by the unknown Kevin Spacey in the 1980s, when Jack Lemmon played Tyrone in London) and Laurie Kynaston is the sweet, tubercular Edmund, a coughing poet.
Cox is at his best when he’s all crestfallen and on the verge of making up with these boys before a new blast of invective ruins it. For sheer presence, he is matched by screen star Patricia Clarkson, beautiful as the away-with-the-fairies Mary, her mind lost in a mist of sorrows, always aching for her next fix.
Louisa Harland (Derry Girls and Renegade Nell) as the sly Irish maid provides some much-needed laughs.
It could have done with a less bleak design – it’s all bare boards, and the sound of foghorns booming becomes its own lament for this ruined family.
But it would be wrong not to issue a customer warning. The evening is long, wordy and the second half is gruelling. At times I wanted to sneak out and massage my poor bottom.
It doesn’t help that it’s directed by Jeremy Herrin with a hint of slavishness. But what an impressive great beast this play is, ripped from the gut of a writer who based Tyrone on his own ghastly father.
Watching these fine actors bring to life a family wrecked by addiction, their love for one another corroded by hatred, is sad but also weirdly uplifting. One’s own family issues don’t seem so bad after watching this lot.
Robert Gore-Langton
Wyndham’s Theatre, London. Until June 8, 3hrs 20mins
According to Larkin, sexual intercourse began in 1963, but by then Harold Pinter’s characters were already adept at playing the games that make and break intimate relationships. As proved in Lindsay Posner’s expertly performed double-bill of early Sixties miniatures.
Claudie Blakley and David Morrissey in Harold Pinter’s The Lover
‘Is your lover coming today?’ David Morrissey’s respectable city gent, Richard, casually asks his wife Sarah as he goes off to work in The Lover. The joke is that it is Richard who returns as Max for some afternoon delight.
For Sarah (Claudie Blakley) this is a ‘beautifully balanced’ arrangement. But Hubby finds the fantasy bleeding messily into his domestic life and wants it to stop.
In the final image, Sarah kneels above her husband. In charge once again? I think so. But in Pinter ambiguity is everything.
In The Collection, the betrayal is for real. Or is it? We shall never know what actually happened at the bash when Bill (Elliot Barnes-Worrell) met Stella (Blakley). Bill’s older lover (Morrissey) is suspicious that his toy-boy may be playing away with a woman. But he is much more agitated to see Stella’s hubby (Mathew Horne) flirting with insolent Bill.
Much more than a period piece, the consistent unpredictability and deliciously slippery tone make this a tense, timeless, if disturbing, delight.
Georgina Brown
Ustinov Studio, Bath. Until April 20, 2hs
