Five of the best ... films
Jeune Femme (15)
(Léonor Serraille, 2017, Fra) 97 mins
Lovably eccentric or psychologically unstable? Either way, the heroine of this fine Parisian drama is impossible to stop watching. Laetitia Dosch is a revelation as Paula, whom we first meet banging her head against her ex-boyfriend’s door. As she enters her 30s, cast adrift with no prospects to speak of, we’re genuinely concerned for her fate.
Deadpool 2 (15)
(David Leitch, 2018, US) 119 mins
Post-Infinity War, the world might not be ready for another superhero struggle against Josh Brolin, but this Ryan Reynolds-starring sequel delivers in terms of adult-oriented spectacle, pop-culture gags and cartoonishly gory violence. It’s funny without being silly, although the story does skew heavily towards the white males of the ensemble.
Revenge (18)
(Coralie Fargeat, 2017, Fra) 108 mins
Coolly stylised and relentlessly gory, this update of the notoriously dodgy “rape-revenge” genre benefits from a female perspective, even if it is more concerned with visuals than characters. Matilda Lutz plays our victim-turned-avenger, along for the ride on a desert hunting trip and left for dead by her male abusers. They’re destined to have the tables turned and the telescopic sights trained on them.
Tully (15)
(Jason Reitman, 2018, US) 96 mins
A Mary Poppins for our times? Not exactly, but this smart, Diablo Cody-scripted tale gives us the unvarnished truth about modern motherhood, with an added dose of wish fulfilment. The latter comes in the form of Mackenzie Davis’s sunny, too-good-to-be-true young night nanny, who arrives to fix everything for Charlize Theron’s careworn mother of three when her life has become an exhausting treadmill of childcare and chores.
Lean on Pete (15)
(Andrew Haigh, 2017, UK) 121 mins
British film-maker Haigh (45 Years, Weekend) heads to the American west for a tender but unsentimental tale of a boy and his horse that doubles as a survey of the modern landscape, its wide-open vistas and hardscrabble survivors (including Steve Buscemi and Chloë Sevigny).
SR
Five of the best ... rock & pop gigs
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
“What are we consuming? How is it affecting us, why does everything feel so bad?” These were the questions on UMO frontman Ruban Nielson’s brain while recording new album Sex & Food. Fear not, however: the songs are less like a Naomi Klein TED talk and more like bathing in sun-scorched funk, soul and psych.
Roundhouse, NW1, Thursday 22; SWX, Bristol, Friday 25; touring to 27 May
Rina Sawayama
Sawayama’s music is a little studied in its attempt to rouse a strand of tacky nostalgia. But with her futuristic aesthetics (tiny sunglasses) and 90s and 00s chart sound (inspired by producer She’kspere and the turbo hits of Britney and J-Lo), she makes it all feel fun. She and her crop top-wearing dancers provide the ideal antidote to the statuesque Dua Lipa approach to live pop.
The Garage, N5, Friday 25 May
Snail Mail
The term “college rock” gets pinned on any sadsack with issues and a fuzz pedal. But for Lindsey Jordan, an 18-year-old who started writing four years ago – ie before and during college – the label is legit. Weaving melodies sulky and summery, she gets extra points for having been in a Liz Phair covers band.
Manchester, Sun; Bristol, Monday 21 May
Beck, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Back in 2003, Beck was basking in the afterglow of his mellow breakup masterpiece Sea Change, while the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ambushed NYC’s rock resurgence with the frenetic Fever to Tell. The years have passed – and Karen O fans have replaced their overly ambitious raven-black bowlcuts with sensible bobs – but these spearheads of US alt-rock remain as sharp as ever. They perform a co-headline arena date, before Beck plays BBC Music’s Biggest Weekend (Fri) and they reconvene for day three of All Points East, E3 (27 May).
3Arena, Dublin, Wednesday 23 May
HG
A Change Is Gonna Come: Music for Human Rights
Four game-changing women of UK contemporary music – vocal star Anderson, jazz pianist Nikki Yeoh, Jazz re:freshed saxophonist Nubya Garcia and 2009 Mercury-prize winning MC Speech Debelle perform classic civil rights songs and powerful new originals. There’s a third performance in Birmingham on 29 May.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Monday 21; Brighton Dome, Tuesday 22 May
JF
Four of the best ... classical concerts
Glyndebourne festival
A pair of revivals launch the new season. Annilese Miskimmon’s production of Madama Butterfly (Sat & Wed) is new to the festival but was toured in 2016. It’s conducted by Omer Meir Wellber, and is joined by the first revival of Richard Jones’s 2014 Der Rosenkavalier (Sun & Thu), with Rachel Willis-Sørensen as the Marschallin.
Glyndebourne Opera House, nr Lewes to 26 August
Barry and Beethoven
Thomas Adès’s three-year cycle of Beethoven symphonies with the Britten Sinfonia has reached the second tranche and, as before, the symphonies are paired with works by Gerald Barry. In the first programme (Sat, Tue, 27 May), the Fourth and Fifth frame Barry’s Piano Concerto, while the second (Sun & Thu) pairs the Pastoral with The Conquest of Ireland.
Saffron Walden, Saturday 19 & Sunday 20; London, Tuesday 22 & Thursday 23; Norwich, 27 May
Takács Quartet
The Takács Quartet are annual visitors to London, providing regular reminders of what truly great quartet-playing can be. This time, though, they are playing string sextets, joined by violist Louise Williams and cellist Pál Banda for Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, and the second of Brahms’s two sextets, Op 36 in G Major.
Wigmore Hall, W1, Saturday 19 & Monday 21
Das Lied von der Erde
Chamber-orchestra arrangements of Mahler’s valedictory song-symphony have become fashionable in recent years. The Royal Northern Sinfonia has opted for one by the pianist-composer Iain Farrington that requires 16 players.
Sage Gateshead, Thursday 24 May
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Egon Schiele
The sensual Austrian genius whose drawings often cross the lines between art and erotica and back again subverts expectations, taste and morality as boldly today as he did in his lifetime. Schiele died 100 years ago of the influenza that swept a war-wounded world. He left a sensational body of art that proves him one of the last century’s supreme talents.
Tate Liverpool Thursday 24 May to 23 September
The Roman Dead
If you suspect the TV drama Britannia may be a very slightly fanciful account of Roman Britain, here is a chance to see that lost world for real, from the bones of ancient people to the jewels, glassware and games buried beside them. The remains and skeletons of 30 people are on display in this eerie encounter with the past.
Museum of London Docklands, E14, Friday 25 May to 28 October
Killed Negatives
How is history assembled? Who chooses what is remembered, and why? This is a rare chance to see the making of modern memory in action. The 1930s pictures of rural poverty in the US that photographers including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange took for the Farm Security Adminstration have helped to shape how the Great Depression is seen. Yet their pictures were edited by the FSA to tell a particular story. What were its criteria?
Whitechapel Gallery, E1, to 26 August
Teeth
Artists have put sharks in art galleries. They have plunged the unwary into darkness in unsettling installations and even displayed the human dead. Yet surely nothing is as scary as the story of dentistry. This exhibition shows how people have suffered toothache and sought a cure in all places and times. Modern dentures are displayed alongside ancient amulets to ward off oral agony and drills to chill your heart. One to put you off the sweeties.
Wellcome Collection, NW1, to 16 September
Francesca Woodman
The gothic vision of this tragically short-lived photographer suited Providence, Rhode Island, where she studied art and which is also associated with Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft. Woodman’s black-and-white pictures portray her haunted self, often glimpsed at disconcerting angles in empty, atmospheric old rooms. She uses the camera to tell stories that are not finished, yet whose ghostly vibrations linger in the imagination.
Tate Liverpool, Thursday 24 May to 23 September
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Othello
Gemma Bodinetz scores full marks for boldness in this revival, which casts Golda Rosheuvel as a female, lesbian Othello, underscoring male attitudes and misogyny towards women. The production is uneven but the central conceit is neatly handled, with Rosheuvel on top form as a woman negotiating power in a man’s world.
Everyman Theatre, Liverpool to 10 July
Mayfly
Very funny and very sad, Joe White’s debut play, set in a tiny Shropshire village, is something special: a delicate examination of grief in the wake of tragedy and a reminder of how easily life – and hope – can be snuffed out. Directed by Guy Jones, it’s unassuming and truthful, and exquisitely acted by the likes of Niky Wardley and Simon Scardifield. A real pleasure.
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, to 26 May
A Streetcar Named Desire
Kelly Gough, sister of Denise, is a very fine Blanche in Chelsea Walker’s intriguing revival of Tennessee Williams’s play. Gough is initially the reason to keep watching a production that can seem rather ordinary, but then Walker offers a sharp change of gear that makes you reassess what has gone before, stripping away the artifice of theatre to show that it is not just Blanche but all women who are the victims when men like Stanley Kowalski triumph.
Theatr Clwyd, Mold, to 2 June
The Writer
It is always fascinating when a play really divides the critics, and Ella Hickson’s story about a female writer negotiating the perils and pitfalls of a theatre culture dominated by men has done just that. It’s a play of real passion that works through form as much as argument as it dissects the nature of creativity; the challenges faced by women as they make art; the male gaze; gender and power. An all-female creative team – director Blanche McIntyre and designer Anna Fleishle – ensure that this provocative evening really sings.
Almeida Theatre, N1, to 26 May
The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart
After the mighty Black Watch, David Grieg’s play with live music, directed with real vim by Wils Wilson, must be the most successful National Theatre of Scotland production of all time. It’s a sly little charmer as it tells the story of buttoned-up academic Prudencia who discovers that the devil has all the best tunes. Edinburgh, Saturday 19; Bunessan, Isle of Mull, Wednesday 23; Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Thursday 24; Oban, Friday 25 May
LG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Rambert: Life Is a Dream
Kim Brandstrup choreographs this hugely promising full-length narrative for Rambert. With film by the astounding Quay Brothers and a score by Witold Lutosławski, it’s a contemporary reimagining of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s 17th-century play, layering fantastical stories of madness, travel, reconciliation and revenge.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1 Tuesday 22 to 26 May
Lear
The 83-year-old dancer Valda Setterfield stars as King Lear in John Scott’s radical dance production of Shakespeare’s tragedy. The three daughters are performed by virtuosic male dancers in a quartet distilling the dynamics of madness, love and power.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Sunday 20 May
Fauna
Five performers cherry-picked from the international circus world combine their skills in a work where each embodies a distinct animalistic character and personality trait, exploring atavistic forces of courtship, conflict and play.
Theatre Royal, Brighton, Saturday 19 May
JM
