Five of the best ... films
Zama (15)
(Lucrecia Martel, 2017, Arg) 115 mins
There is little to compare to this disorienting, captivating, almost hallucinatory study of South American colonialism, following an 18th-century official (Daniel Giménez Cacho) languishing at a remote outpost. He dreams of returning to Spain but is instead propelled through a series of humiliations and defeats that only take him further off the map.
Solo: A Star Wars Story (12A)
(Ron Howard, 2018, US) 135 mins
Nobody had a good feeling about this new Star Wars spin-off, what with its troubled production history, but it turns out to be a great ride. It’s packed with chases, heists, battle action and likable characters, with Alden Ehrenreich as the junior space cowboy himself. Despite the inevitability of the plot, there’s still novelty and surprise.
Jeune Femme (15)
(Léonor Seraille, 2017, Fra) 97 mins
This artful but unpretentious French drama gives us a fascinating study of a character who doesn’t fit easily into societal moulds. Laetitia Dosch gives an energetic, empathic performance as Paula, whose behaviour wavers between “lovable free spirit” and “first signs of a breakdown”. Broke and broken-hearted in Paris, she is just about getting by on her wits and limited charm.
The Breadwinner (12A)
(Nora Twomey) (Ire/Can/Lux) 94 mins
This Oscar-nominated animation goes where the big-budget studio movies surely never would: to 1990s Afghanistan and life under the Taliban. When 11-year-old Parvana’s father is imprisoned and her family are left without an earner under the regime’s patriarchal strictures, she decides to disguise herself as a boy. Made with sensitivity and imagination, it’s a marvellous mix of realism and escapism.
Deadpool 2 (15)
(David Leitch, 2018, US) 119 mins
It is not going to win any new converts, but fans will be satisfied with this superhero sequel’s torrent of pop culture-savvy, rival-franchise-baiting, foul-mouthed comedy, along with the cartoonishly violent action allowed by its 15 certificate. Ryan Reynolds’s indestructible smart-ass has plenty to deal with here, and there is a new heroine in the form of Domino (Zazie Beetz, pictured right).
SR
Five of the best ... rock & pop gigs
Raye
Croydon singer Raye cut her teeth in writing camps for the likes of Rihanna, where she found a friend in fellow future pop inventor Charli XCX. An omnipresent force in the charts since, she has flexed her mellifluous dancehall, R&B and rap vocals on collaborations with the new gen of Brit talent: Ray BLK, Mabel, Stefflon Don, plus that guy Jax Jones.
Village Underground, EC2, Thursday 31 May
Field Day
After the industrial onslaught of Aphex Twin’s 2017 headline set, this year’s festival focuses on R&B, hip-hop, jazz and Gilles Peterson-affiliated jazz noodlings. Highlights include megastar-in-the-making Manc rapper IAMDDB; hip-hop great Madlib; Pied Piper of alt-rap and emo, Princess Nokia; and Her Royal Highness of neo-soul, Erykah Badu.
Brockwell Park, SE24, Friday 1 & 2 June
LCD Soundsystem
LCD are back! Just after the last time! And the time before that when they said they were definitely not coming back but came back anyway! Like a faulty device that works better after it’s been switched off and on for a bit, the NYC indie-disco stalwarts return for a series of shows following their 2017 album, the quietly hedonistic American Dream.
SWG3: Galvanizers Yard, Glasgow, Sunday 27 & Monday 28 May
Deerhunter
It’s three years since the strange ambient glow of these Atlantans’ Fading Frontier album, and the NME news story-worthy gig during which frontman Bradford Cox went on a rant about Billy Corgan’s (now refuted) diva demands. Alongside their fuzzed-out melancholy you’ll find gawky funk, hiccuping synths and, hopefully, more legally dubious indie goss as they play Manchester’s Strange Waves with Unknown Mortal Orchestra, plus a solo show.
Albert Hall, Manchester, Saturday 26; Concorde 2, Brighton, Sunday 27 August
HG
3MA
The late world-music guru Charlie Gillett hailed astonishing African string trio 3MA (pictured) as three virtuosi “listening to each other with ears wide open”. Playing oud, kora and the valiha, they bring spontaneity and haunting melody to their UK premiere, opening the Songlines Encounters festival.
King’s Place, N1, Thursday 31 May
JF
Four of the best ... classical concerts
Berliner Philharmoniker
No one could accuse the Berlin Philharmonic of underplaying the end of Simon Rattle’s reign as the orchestra’s chief conductor. After releasing a lavish set of discs documenting their final Asian tour together, these final London appearances include UK premieres of works by Hans Abrahamsen and Jörg Widmann, and symphonies by Bruckner, Lutosławski and Brahms.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Thursday 31 May & Friday 1 June
Lili Boulanger
For almost a century the legacy of Lili Boulanger, who died in 1918 at the age of 24, has been overshadowed by that of her sister Nadia, who became one of the century’s most influential composition teachers. But now the quality of Lili’s own music is being recognised. Here, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the CBSO pair her D’Un Matin De Printemps with Mahler and Debussy.
Colston Hall, Bristol, Tuesday 29 May
New Music for Leo Hepner
The late Leo Hepner was an industrial chemist and also a generous supporter of new music, starting a summer school for young composers. His legacy is celebrated in this concert by the Arditti Quartet. It includes new pieces by Tom Coult, Charlotte Bray and Milica Djordjević, alongside more established works.
Purcell Room, SE1, Tuesday 29 May
Candide
This is the last year in which Iford Arts will present its summer opera season in the Peto Garden at Iford Manor. There are three productions, the first of which is Opera della Luna’s staging of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta, directed by Jeff Clarke and conducted by Oliver Gooch.
Iford Manor, Bradford-on-Avon, Saturday 26, Tuesday 29, Wednesday 30 May & Friday 1 June
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Tacita Dean: Landscape
Do you like photography or prefer painting? Tacita Dean fuses both, straddling what are often seen as opposite ends of the creative spectrum. She also mixes words and images to evoke history, memory, place and tradition. This is the third part of a trilogy that also takes in shows at the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery (both WC2, to Monday 28 May).
The Royal Academy of Arts, W1, to 12 August
Phyllida Barlow
The excellent Jupiter Artland fills the grounds of a stately home outside Edinburgh with sculptures by artists from Pablo Bronstein to Andy Goldsworthy. A wooded setting adds to the surprise of its engaging installations. Barlow, who recently represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, has created a new work among the trees to mark its 10th anniversary.
Jupiter Artland, near Edinburgh, to 30 September
Julian Schnabel
It has been a long time since Julian Schnabel looked like the future of painting. In the 1980s, this bold and splashy New York artist was acclaimed – and denounced – for his free and louche expressionist daubs. Then fashions changed. With Basquiat and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, he has since proved he’s got real talent for film-making. Here he is, however, back in the studio, hurling Pollock-like splashes of paint at 18th-century prints.
Pace London, W1, to 22 June
Boris Mikhailov
The critic and thinker Susan Sontag argued that photography has to turn morbid, even cruel, in order to be taken seriously as art. She was thinking of Diane Arbus but the same might be claimed of Russian photographer Mikhailov. Are his pictures of Russia’s outcasts compassionate or exploitative? In reality, they reflect a very Russian empathy for “underground people” and holy fools, echoing the novels of Dostoevsky. A fistful of reality.
Sprovieri, W1, to 23 June
Edward Stott
This British painter, who died a century ago, created scenes that would make perfect jackets for Thomas Hardy novels. He learned from French impressionism to tint his realist eye for nature and people with a glowing light that lifts his paintings into melancholic poetry. Perhaps his greatest strength is his compassion for the rural poor on the eve of the modern age.
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, Saturday 26 May to 16 September
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Random/Generations
“Death never used to be for the young,” says the bereaved sister in Random, part of a magnificent double bill from Debbie Tucker Green. The girl’s brother has been knifed to death in south London. In the Caryl Churchill-esque Generations, death also takes the youngest first. Both plays were written a decade ago, but they still hum and buzz.
Chichester Festival Theatre: Minerva, to 2 June
Three Sisters, After Chekhov
RashDash give Chekhov a poke as they strip off, button up and rearrange a play we thought we knew into one that reflects our experiences of the world today. This is smart stuff from one of theatre’s most arresting young companies and provides a hilarious evening asking the question: who decides what is good art?
The Yard, E9, to 9 June; touring to 16 June
Brief Encounter
Director Emma Rice may have proved too radical for the Globe, but she gives the audience what they want and more in this gorgeous staging of the 1945 movie classic in a cinema auditorium. Neatly playing on the differences between the two mediums, Rice’s production is self-aware but also meltingly tender, as it charts an impossible love affair between a couple married to other people. Not a replication of the film, more a total theatrical reinvention.
Empire Haymarket, W1, to 9 September
Education, Education, Education
This show from the Wardrobe Ensemble proves that you can examine the state of the nation with as much beady-eyed sharpness via comedy and devised theatre as with the scripted play. Looking back to the arrival of Tony Blair as PM in 1997 and what it might mean for one struggling comprehensive, this hugely enjoyable evening is no nostalgia exercise: it’s a look at how we fail the future.
Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Tuesday 29 May to 2 June; touring to 8 June
Love from a Stranger
It is shocking that Agatha Christie is still our most-produced female playwright. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy this gripping psychological thriller. It’s as creaky as the old house where the newly married Cecily Harrington goes to live with the stranger who swept her off her feet, but Lucy Bailey’s production plays it for all it’s worth, while subverting the traditional narrative of woman as victim.
Theatre Royal, Plymouth, Tuesday 29 May to 2 June; touring to 1 July
LG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Akram Khan: Xenos
The magisterial Khan bows out of his dancing career with this new solo in which he inhabits the role of a shell-shocked Indian soldier forced to fight for Britain in the first world war. In a work that is set to visit Edinburgh and Leicester in August, Khan summons a world in crisis, caught between present and past, myth and technology.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Tuesday 29 May to 9 June
Birmingham International Dance Festival
A truly cosmopolitan range of styles come to Brum this year, with a return to the stage by Portuguese avant-gardist Rui Horta; hip-hop from Holland; experiments in VR; Compagnie Didier Théron’s inflatable spectacle and more.
Various venues, Friday 1 to 23 June
A Night With Thick and Tight
Eleanor Perry and Daniel Hay-Gordon conjure blissfully mish-mashed characters in their new triple bill, including Julie Cunningham’s take on queer dadaist heroines Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore.
Marlborough Theatre, Brighton, Tuesday 29 & Wednesday 30 May; touring to 23 June
JM
