Five of the best ... films
Booksmart (15)
(Olivia Wilde, 2019, US) 102 mins
Is Beanie Feldstein the Molly Ringwald of 2010s teen movies? That might be pushing it, but after nailing it opposite Greta Gerwig in Lady Bird, here she is in Booksmart, another smart do-over of the genre. Beanie’s Molly and her pal Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) are the ultimate squares who hoodwink the latter’s supportive mum (Lisa Kudrow) and cut loose on their last night at school. Funny stuff. Out on Monday
Rocketman (15)
(Dexter Fletcher, 2019, UK/US) 121 mins
Dexter Fletcher is on the verge of an unparalleled achievement: after being drafted in to finish Bohemian Rhapsody, he has a second 70s rock biopic in cinemas. This Elton John homage cites Elton and his husband David Furnish among its producers, so it can’t exactly deviate from the official line. Taron Egerton dons the specs and costumes.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (U)
(Chris Renaud, Jonathan del Val, 2019, Fra/Jap/US) 86 mins
The first Secret Life of Pets was an entertaining animation on the time-honoured theme of what domesticated animals get up to behind our backs. This second helping replicates the original (though with Patton Oswalt replacing Louis CK as the voice of a jack russell called Max). It packs a lot of adventures in but the genial good humour rises to the top, giving this proper kidult appeal.
Birds of Passage (15)
(Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra, 2018, Col/Den/Mex/Ger/Swe) 126 mins
Embrace of the Serpent director Ciro Guerra teams up with long-time producer Gallego for joint credit on this singular account of the origins of the country-wrecking drug trade in Colombia. More an exercise in dream-fable anthropology than conventional thriller, this goes deeply into the Wayuu culture of Colombia’s remote north-east.
XY Chelsea (15)
(Tim Travers Hawkins, 2019, UK) 92 mins
In a former life as a US army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning was responsible for arguably the most consequential leaks in history in 2010, when military documents found their way to WikiLeaks. There is lots of interesting material here, kicking off with President Obama commuting Manning’s sentence, up to her being threatened with jail again after refusing to testify against Julian Assange.
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Yves Tumor
On last year’s excellent Safe in the Hands of Love album – his third – shape-shifting Tennessee expat Yves Tumor dug even deeper into his grab bag of musical genres, touching on techno, trip-hop and, on the otherwise politically charged Noid, airy cut-and-paste pop. He’s quite the fan of wigs, contact lenses and Halloween-ready makeup; best to leave all expectations at the door.
All Points East, E3, Sunday 26; Scala, N1, Tuesday 28 May
Dido
March’s Still on My Mind album saw the return of the priestess of beige, Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O’Malley Armstrong, after a six-year musical hiatus. Mind you, with her breathy delivery, lyrical cosiness and general cashmere-soft sensibilities, perhaps we could all do with a dash of Dido in our lives just now.
Glasgow, Sunday 26; Dublin, Monday 27; Manchester, Wednesday 29; Roundhouse, NW1, Thursday 30 & Friday 31 May
Connan Mockasin
New Zealand polymath Connan Mockasin has carved out quite the musical journey for himself, from his first band, the Four Skins, to Soft Hair, his meandering collaboration with Sam Eastgate of Late of the Pier, via collaborations with the likes of James Blake. All that, while knocking out psychedelic pop odysseys under his own name. God knows where he’ll go next, but don’t bank on there being choruses.
All Points East, E3, Saturday 25; Leeds, Sunday 26; Manchester, Monday 27; Brighton, Tuesday 30 May
Alice Glass
Glass referred to her self-titled debut EP – her first release after quitting Crystal Castles amid allegations of abuse – as flitting between “being eaten by fire ants” and “being slowly consumed by a snake”. Expect the catharsis behind those songs to hit you with full force in a live environment.
Oslo, E8, Wednesday 29; All Points East, E3, Friday 31 May
MC
Songlines Encounters
The five-day Songlines Encounters festival presents a fittingly culture-fluid opener in the AKA Trio (Thu). Italian guitar virtuoso Antonio Forcione, Senegalese kora maestro Seckou Keita and Brazilian percussionist Adriano Adewale are three improvisers at graceful ease with Bach, blues, west African traditional music, jazz and a lot more. Their empathy is infectious.
Thursday 30 May to Monday 3 June, Kings Place, N1
JF
Three of the best ... classical concerts
Passacaglia on DSCH
Igor Levit has a fondness for the biggest works in the piano repertoire. His performances and recordings of Bach’s Goldberg and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations have had an enormous impact; now Levit turns his attention to another monumental piece, the Passacaglia on DSCH, composed by Ronald Stevenson in the early 1960s. Based on the musical spelling of Shostakovich’s name, it’s the hugely prolific Stevenson’s best-known work, a cornucopia of pianistic techniques and effects, and the kind of piece Levit should bring off superbly.
Wigmore Hall, W1, Monday 27 May
Garsington Opera
A week after Glyndebourne got the summer opera season under way, Garsington joins the splurge with this year’s first pair of productions, both brand new. Paul Curran directs Smetana’s The Bartered Bride with Natalya Romaniw as Mařenka, Brendan Gunnell as Jeník and Jac van Steen conducting. Mozart’s Don Giovanni is staged by Michael Boyd with Garsington’s artistic director Douglas Boyd in the pit and Jonathan McGovern as the Don.
Wormsley Estate, nr High Wycombe, Wednesday 29 May to 26 July
Bauci e Filemone & Orfeo
Gluck may have been one of the pivotal figures in opera in the second half of the 18th century but only a handful of his stage works are regularly performed today. Now Classical Opera and the Mozartists are presenting a double bill of two little-known pieces in concert stagings, conducted by Ian Page. First performed in Parma in 1769, both are based upon stories by Ovid; the Orfeo is a shortened version of Gluck’s famous Orfeo ed Euridice.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Wednesday 29 & Friday 31 May
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Lee Krasner
Abstract expressionism, the sublime style that put New York at the forefront of modern art in the 1950s, is sometimes caricatured as macho but the women who pioneered it would disagree. Lee Krasner for one. This is a welcome celebration of a tremendous modern painter too often overshadowed by her husband, a certain Mr Pollock.
Barbican Art Gallery, EC2, Thursday 30 May to 1 September
Alison Watt
The coolly seductive paintings of Scottish artist Alison Watt explore shadows and folds, white linen and bright light. She has evolved a style both abstract and empirical that finds mystery in the everyday, with impressive art-historical echoes of Zurbarán, Leonardo and Morandi. An artist who has forged herself a subtle path between the traditional and modern.
Parafin, W1, to 13 July
Sarah Morris
Skyscraper skylines slipping past a car window, a heart monitor pulsing in a darkened hospital room: uneasy images of modern life haunt Morris’s precisely mapped abstract paintings. Their icy authority perfectly suits White Cube’s big empty spaces. She also shows her latest films, including Abu Dhabi, in which her camera lingers on the geometry of Islamic architecture. A no-nonsense artist of the way things look now.
White Cube Bermondsey, SE1, to 30 June
Cory Arcangel
The digital age has so far produced one great artist. Arcangel is the Marcel Duchamp of the internet; he uses the materials it provides in mind-blowing ways that turn the ridiculous into the sublime, and vice versa. In one work, he edited YouTube videos to get cats to play Schoenberg. Then there’s his novel Working on My Novel, compiled from a Twitter feed in which people report what they’re really doing while “working on my novel”.
Firstsite, Colchester, to 7 July
Georg Baselitz
This German expressionist painter, known for his upside-down works, is also fascinated by printmaking. Baselitz is a leading private collector of German Renaissance woodcuts and keeps alive the tradition of artists for whom ink and paint were equal. Here he shows portraits of artists he identifies with, including Tracey Emin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, revealing the totemic power of the human face.
Alan Cristea Gallery, SW1, to 22 June
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Rutherford and Son
Githa Sowerby’s play premiered in 1912 but it was roundly ignored until a run of feminist-led revivals in the 80s. No prizes for guessing why the play, which rails against the patriarchy, is proving particularly popular once more. Polly Findlay directs Roger Allam as the owner of a glass factory in the north of England who has pushed his workers and family to breaking point.
National Theatre: Lyttelton, SE1, to 3 August
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Banish the mawkish Brad Pitt movie from your mind. Writer and composer Jethro Compton has based his musical on the source material: an F Scott Fitzgerald short story about a man who ages in reverse. It is set in Compton’s home county of Cornwall, with a folksy score and a close-knit cast of five.
Southwark Playhouse, SE1, to 8 June
Blueprint Medea
A modern adaptation of Euripides’s devastating Greek tragedy, in which a scorned wife exacts bloody and heartbreaking revenge. Julia Pascal’s new version draws heavily on interviews with Kurds living in the UK and explores issues around immigration, cultural identity and female autonomy. Medea is now a Kurdish freedom fighter who has managed to escape the Turkish military, only to confront a new battle for her rights in Britain.
Finborough Theatre, SW10, to 8 June
Citysong
Dylan Coburn Gray’s play won the Verity Bargate award for new writing in 2017 and has been lavished in praise. It is a poetical homage to the playwright’s home town, Dublin, and explores three generations of a local family over just one day, with teen discos, late-night taxis, home nurses, seagulls and street noises painting a vivid picture of city life. Think Under Milk Wood, only a bit dirtier and edgier.
Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Saturday 26 May to 8 June; Soho Theatre, W1, 12 June to 6 July
Venice Preserved
The phrase “rarely performed Restoration tragedy” doesn’t set the pulse racing but Thomas Otway’s play, about a corrupt Venice on the verge of implosion, sounds intriguingly intense. It is a cross-class love story that sees an impoverished nobleman and a senator’s daughter caught up in an uprising. Director Prasanna Puwanarajah describes it as a cross between Blade Runner and Gotham.
Royal Shakespeare Theatre: Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon, to 7 September
MG
Three of the best ... dance shows
San Francisco Ballet
The forward-thinking US company brings a host of UK premieres to London, including the glam spectacle of Arthur Pita’s Björk Ballet, a Cathy Marston piece based on Edith Wharton’s novella Ethan Frome, and a chance to see work from Trey McIntyre and Justin Peck. The season opens with Alexei Ratmansky’s Shostakovich Trilogy.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Wednesday 29 May to 8 June
Ockham’s Razor: This Time
There’s a sense of wonder in the work of aerial theatre company Ockham’s Razor, a lovely rapport between the performers as they swing, balance and fly. Its latest show, This Time, is about time and transformation, and features a cast aged from 13 to 60.
Dance City, Newcastle upon Tyne, Saturday 25 & Sunday 26 May; touring to August
Serge Aimé Coulibaly: Kalakuta Republik
A piece that conjures up the energy and anti-establishment spirit of Fela Kuti’s Shrine nightclub in 70s Lagos, examining the life of the Nigerian musician. It’s created by Burkina Faso-born Serge Aimé Coulibaly, who has performed with Les Ballets C de la B.
Barbican Theatre, EC2, Thursday 30 May to 1 June
LW
