Five of the best … films
The Souvenir (15)
(Joanna Hogg, 2019, UK/US) 120 mins
A bracing alternative to Julian Fellowes’s green-welly drama of privilege, Joanna Hogg’s films also deal unashamedly with first-world problems – but do so with a cooling level of dispassion that can be an acquired taste. Her latest, and possibly best, stars Honor Swinton Byrne as a film student caught up in a toxic co-dependent relationship with a secretive civil servant (Tom Burke).
Bait (15)
(Mark Jenkin, 2019, UK) 89 mins
With his fifth feature, British director Mark Jenkin emerges from the shadows with a lo-fi indie that marks him as a talent to watch. Bait’s story of inter-class tensions in gentrified Cornwall might be the currency of any social-issues drama, but Jenkin’s stark style – luminous, distressed monochrome celluloid – adds a strange, hypnotic atmosphere.
Pain and Glory (15)
(Pedro Almodóvar, 2019, Spa) 113 mins
An in-depth knowledge of Almodóvar’s output helps to make the most of the director’s most autobiographical film to date, but it’s not entirely necessary. It’s perfectly possible to sit back and enjoy one of Antonio Banderas’s best performances, as a once-great director forced to contemplate past lives and loves as he deals with bad health, depression and addiction.
Memory: The Origins of Alien (15)
(Alexandre O Philippe, 2019, US) 93 mins
This deep-dive into the world of Ridley Scott’s haunted-house-in-space movie is not for novices; a passing acquaintance with the 1979 original won’t be enough to keep up with this fast-moving, digressive doc. The making-of story is quickly dispensed with before Philippe turns his attentions to subtext, making fascinating asides on body horror, insect behaviour and class divisions on board the Nostromo.
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (18)
(Quentin Tarantino, 2019, UK/US/Chi) 161 mins
The film that launched a thousand thinkpieces continues to thwart its critics – Tarantino’s ninth film is now the second biggest global hit of his 27-year career. Granted, some of its stamina is due to the inspired casting of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as a Butch and Sundance-style TV star and stuntman combo, who face extinction in 1969’s hippie Hollywood, and Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, poster girl for the flower children.
DW
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Four Tet
More than 20 years into his career, Kieran Hebden, AKA Four Tet, continues to push and pull at dance music’s boundaries. April’s single Teenage Birdsong found him dipping back into the more blissed-out side of his musical experiments, while his recent production work on Neneh Cherry’s Broken Politics album accentuated a darker hue. Expect a proper feast for the senses.
Fabric, EC1, Sunday 1 September
L Devine
Pop upstart L Devine (her real name, Olivia Devine, was already taken by a porn star), started her career as a seven-year-old punk in a band called the Safety Pins. Eventually she switched to pop, crafting characterful, first-album-era-Charli XCX-esque bops that touch on homophobia (Daughter), a lack of sex (last single Naked Alone) and peer pressure (er, Peer Pressure).
Omeara, SE1, Wednesday 4 September
Serpentwithfeet
Fresh from dueting with Björk every night at her recent New York residency and collaborating with hip-hop rabble Brockhampton, chamber pop experimentalist Josiah Wise recently took a surprising turn by employing the services of will-this-do rent-a-guest Ty Dolla $ign on single Receipts. That the song still fits within Wise’s idiosyncratic musical world is testament to his singular artistry.
EartH, N16, Tuesday 3 September
The Flaming Lips
Conceived as the soundtrack to an “immersive head-trip fantasy experience” devised by eternally grizzled frontman Wayne Coyne, the Flaming Lips’ 15th album, King’s Mouth, continues the band’s tradition for, well, being bonkers, basically. Expect lots of retina-burning visuals and perhaps another outing for Coyne’s recent accessory: the eyepatch.
Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Thursday 5; Manchester Academy, Friday 6; O2 Brixton Academy, SW9, 7 September
MC
Kefaya and Camilla George
November’s mammoth London jazz festival gets a summer heads-up on this day-long Docklands freebie – with former Jazz Jamaica saxophonist Camilla George weaving her postbop, Afrobeat and Caribbean influences into Kefaya’s jazz, dub and Afghan folk mix (4pm), and multi-idiom international sounds from the vivacious Turbans, Cykada, Kinetika Bloco and more.
Royal Albert Dock, E16, Saturday 31 August
JF
Three of the best ... classical concerts
Bernard Haitink
No conductor of our time has been a more important part of London’s musical scene than Bernard Haitink. He was principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam for more than 25 years, but he was also chief conductor of the London Philharmonic, and then musical director of both Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera, while he has also worked with the London Symphony Orchestra. But Haitink’s concert of Beethoven and Bruckner at the Proms this week with the Vienna Philharmonic will be his last here. At the age of 90, he’s retiring; he’ll be sorely missed.
Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Tuesday 3 September
Scoring a Century
One of the finest new British operas of the last half-century was David Blake’s Toussaint in 1977, based on the life of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture. Blake’s most recent opera, 1999’s Scoring a Century, is being staged in London for the first time by British Youth Opera. With a libretto by Keith Warner, it’s a journey across the 20th century as seen through the eyes of the Jedermanns, a pair of “song and dance merchants”. Warner himself directs, and Lionel Friend conducts.
Peacock Theatre, WC2, Saturday 31 August, Wednesday 4, Friday 6 September
Nuages
With works by Szymanowski, Janáček and Tchaikovsky, Ilan Volkov’s programme for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is mostly east European. But he begins with the premiere of Nuages, a Proms commission from Linda Catlin Smith– New York-born but long resident in Canada – whose beautifully conceived, quietly evocative music has gained more and more attention in recent years.
Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Sunday 1 September
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Cézanne at the Whitworth
The intellect and contained passion of Cézanne make him a virtually unequalled artist. The late gallerist Karsten Schubert assembled a superb collection of his works on paper, in a career that also saw him support the likes of Rachel Whiteread, and gifted these treasures to the Whitworth. This is a celebration of genius and generosity.
The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, to 1 March
Cindy Sherman
The artist whose face is everywhere in her work yet somehow invisible is both an extrovert and introvert. Sherman’s use of disguises to reinvent her very being makes her artistic career since the late-1970s one long masquerade, in which she reveals the unstable and invented nature of the human self. Self-portraiture with a vengeance.
National Portrait Gallery, WC2, to 15 September
Ed Ruscha
Pop art and conceptual art were both born in the 1960s and were never far apart, as the long, provocative career of Ed Ruscha proves. Ruscha’s paintings are both masterpieces of deadpan contemporary observation and eerie philosophical questions that echo the surrealist humour of Magritte. This rich Artist Rooms display of his work ranges from book works and text paintings to his 2017 canvas Our Flag, which portrays the stars and stripes torn to shreds.
Tate Modern, SE1, to 1 July
George Stubbs
The great 18th-century British painter George Stubbs was no stranger to Newmarket – some of his most perfect equine portraits are set on the flat expanse of its racecourse. Stubbs’s horses are so real they are surreal, but, as this exhibition shows, he was infinitely more than a sporting artist. He got his knowledge of horses by dissecting them, and his studies of their anatomy are the most beautiful scientific drawings since Leonardo’s.
Palace House, Newmarket, to 28 September
Keith Haring
Pop art was reborn in 80s New York with a new taste of street and club life, and Andy Warhol played godfather to younger artists who emulated his eye for the way we live now. Keith Haring combined cartoon techniques with the scale of painting to celebrate diversity and energy. His blocky style has arguably been more influential on TV animation than it has on the art scene, so it’s nice to see him back in the gallery.
Tate Liverpool, to 10 November
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
The Son
French playwright Florian Zeller continues his triumphant takeover of the London theatre scene. The Son (in a translation by Christopher Hampton) is the final play in Zeller’s trilogy of intense domestic dramas and tackles divorce, depression and teenage life. Amanda Abbington, Laurie Kynaston, John Light and Amaka Okafor are directed by the always-astute Michael Longhurst.
The Duke of York’s, WC2, to 2 November
Typical
Ryan Calais Cameron’s poetic and impassioned monologue draws on the death of Christopher Alder, an ex-serviceman assaulted during a night out in 1998, who was arrested and then died in police custody. Richard Blackwood stars in a stripped-back show that lets the facts speak for themselves. Directed by Anastasia Osei-Kuffour with unflinching purpose.
Soho Theatre: Upstairs, W1, Tuesday 3 to 28 September
Hedda Tessman
The feminist classics are flooding the theatre scene at the moment, but this creative team is particularly tantalising. With Haydn Gwynne in the title role, Henrik Ibsen’s classic play about a cosseted housewife finally breaking free is adapted by Cordelia Lynn, a writer with real vision, and the show is spearheaded by Headlong Theatre alongside Chichester Festival Theatre and the Lowry. They’re bound to create a production that feels charged, unpredictable and undeniably new.
Chichester Festival Theatre: Minerva Theatre, to 28 September
Chiaroscuro
Director Lynette Linton is on a brilliant run right now, following an excellent take on Lynn Nottage’s Sweat at the Donmar and Gielgud. She kicks off her role as artistic director at the Bush with a revival of poet and Scottish makar Jackie Kay’s 1986 play. The work is set at a dinner party but is a far from conventional exploration of queer and black identity, being part play, part gig, and part spoken word.
The Bush Theatre, W12, Saturday 31 August to 5 October
Two Trains Running
Pittsburgh 1969. There’s a controversial new president in the White House, and racial tensions are on the rise. American writer August Wilson’s play focuses on a diner under threat of demolition and paints a vivid portrait of everyday lives at a crossroads. Two Trains Running picked up Tony awards on its Broadway debut in 1992 but is not well-known over here. Nancy Medina directs this major revival.
Royal & Derngate: The Royal, Northampton, Saturday 31 August, touring to 26 October
MG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
The Ailey company is a troupe that reliably brings joy and soul to the stage, as well as badass technique. The New Yorkers offer three different programmes packed with exciting new work, including Rennie Harris’s two-act Lazarus. Plus, as always, every night ends with the classic Revelations, the most-watched piece of contemporary dance ever.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Wednesday 4 to 14 September
Northern Ballet: Three Short Ballets
This triple bill includes Morgann Runacre-Temple’s The Kingdom of Back about Mozart’s overlooked older sister Nannerl, a composer in her own right. Plus there’s David Nixon’s Powerhouse Rhumba and a brand new ballet from Amaury Lebrun.
Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre, Leeds, Thursday 5 to 7 September
Cullberg Ballet: Figure a Sea
Famed choreographer Deborah Hay creates her latest piece to the music of equally pioneering composer Laurie Anderson. Figure a Sea evolved from Hay setting the dancers from Sweden’s Cullberg Ballet a series of “What if?” questions.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Friday 6 September
LW
Composite: Courtesy Cindy Sherman and Metro Pictures; Whitworth Art Gallery; Jason Evans Lights by Squid Soup; Aly Wight; Emma Kauldhar; Sony Pictures
