Five of the best ... films
Isle of Dogs (PG)
(Wes Anderson, 2018, US/Ger) 101 mins
After Fantastic Mr Fox, Anderson doubles down on the stop-motion creature-craft with a story so packed with labour-intensive detail, star voiceovers and eccentric digressions, it’s hard to fathom how he fits it all in. The setting is a retro-future Japan, where a quarantined island of diseased dogs fight for rotten food, human companionship and civic justice.
Ready Player One (12a)
(Steven Spielberg, 2018, US) 140 mins
Spielberg proves he can still create a grand adventure and explore new frontiers: in this case, a virtual reality world where humans escape the dystopian drudge, tick off 80s pop-culture references, and compete in its creator’s high-stakes treasure hunt. Tye Sheridan plays the gamer who could bring the rebellion.
The Square (15)
(Ruben Ostlund, 2017, Swe/Ger/Fra/Den) 151 mins
Is it art or satire? Ostlund’s entertaining film invites us to tell the difference. Centred on a charming, imprudent gallery director (Claes Bang), it’s a series of encounters both absurd and sobering: a phone theft that borders on performance art; an ape impersonator who gets too method; an awkward tryst with a journo (Elisabeth Moss). It all adds up to a provocative interrogation of culture and privilege.
You Were Never Really Here (15)
(Lynne Ramsay, 2017, UK/Fra/US) 95 mins
Joaquin Phoenix is in bad shape physically and psychologically in this fractured thriller, but he’s never been better. He is a freelance loner on a mission to rescue an abducted girl, which takes him down a rabbit hole of political conspiracy and traumatic memories, all powerfully conveyed by Ramsay’s expert construction. It could almost be a Taxi Driver for our times.
Blockers (15)
(Kay Cannon, 2018, US) 102 mins
Why should teens have all the fun? Or, indeed, any fun? Parents John Cena, Leslie Mann and Ike Barinholtz do their best to stop that in this raunchy yet good-natured comedy. Their mission is clear once they learn of their daughters’ prom-night “sex pact” to lose their virginity. Gross-out set pieces and a flow of witty banter keep things moving along.
SR
Five of the best ... rock & pop gigs
Let’s Eat Grandma
While Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth’s 2016 debut I, Gemini flitted frustratingly between Coco Rosie-lite folk and wafty psych-pop, new album I’m All Ears focuses more on pure pop thrills. The Horrors’ Faris Badwan lends his production nous, as does rulebook-shredding electronic pioneer Sophie, whose fingerprints are all over the ecstatic rush of crunchy lead single Hot Pink.
Stereo, Glasgow 4 April; Riverside, Newcastle upon Tyne 5 April; touring to 13 April
Kojo Funds
The so-called king of Afroswing (a mix of dancehall, Afrobeats, new jack swing and R&B; do keep up) plays a one-off London date this week, riding a commercial wave following Finders Keepers, his UK No 8 with Mabel. Current single Check, which samples Craig David and also features Raye, currently sits at 7m YouTube views, so we’re talking real deal here.
Electric Brixton, SW2, 5 April
Eleanor Friedberger
Named after an 80s goth disco night in Athens “where everyone does the chicken dance” that we should absolutely all go to, the Fiery Furnaces co-founder’s new solo album Rebound, her fourth, eschews the full-band set-up of 2016’s New View for something more electronic. Lead single In Between Stars suggests she hasn’t lost any of her melodic idiosyncrasies, so practise your best jerky, shuffling dance moves, please.
Moth Club, E9, 5 April
Panda Bear
Noah Lennox, AKA Panda Bear, AKA one quarter of often-talked-about-but-rarely-enjoyed sonic experimentalists Animal Collective, arrives in the UK in support of recent vinyl-only EP, A Day With the Homies, a collection he described as “something without frills or much embellishment”. If you would rather wait until the full band is back together, Animal Collective return to the UK in June.
Gorilla, Manchester, 2 April; Village Underground, EC2, 3 April
MC
Lizz Wright
Powerful Georgia singer Lizz Wright has become a soul-jazz star for her smoky eloquence in genres from gospel to folk to Broadway balladeering, and a live presence mixing sermonising power and self-effacing charm. This one-off UK show features her Grace album’s expressive covers of Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Nina Simone and more.
Union Chapel, N1, 6 April
Four of the best ... classical concerts
Theodora
After an afternoon performance of James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross, Aldeburgh Music’s Easter celebration ends with Handel’s penultimate dramatic oratorio, Theodora, which has become recognised as one of his supreme achievements. Christian Curnyn conducts the Britten-Pears Baroque Orchestra and singers from the Britten-Pears young artist programme.
Snape Maltings, nr Aldeburgh, 31 March
Tallis Scholars
Peter Phillips and his outstanding vocal group bring variety to the regular diet of Bach at St John’s Holy Week festival, with a programme devoted to choral music from the Spanish golden age. All the usual suspects are represented: Victoria’s Requiem ends the programme, preceded by motets by Francisco Guerrero and Alonso Lobo.
St John’s Smith Square, SW1, 31 March
St Matthew Passion
Tenor Mark Padmore’s multi-tasking has become a regular feature of Easter music. This year, it’s Bach’s St Matthew Passion, in which Padmore both directs the orchestra and chorus – the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its choir – and sings the role of the Evangelist.
The Anvil, Basingstoke, 31 March
Mass
The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain join forces with the Chineke! Junior Orchestra and singers and dancers from a range of London schools and colleges to perform Leonard Bernstein’s unclassifiable, evening-long piece: part opera, part oratorio, part sheer pantomime. Marin Alsop conducts and the Celebrant is Paolo Szot.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, 6 & 7 April
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Designed to Impress
One student who was inspired by the Fitzwilliam’s collection of prints was Charles Darwin. He spent hours looking at them and it made him fall in love with art. They might seem dowdy compared with the gallery’s paintings by Titian, Rubens and Cézanne. Yet the power of Rembrandt’s etchings and Dürer’s forceful woodcuts make this a monochrome treasury.
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, to 2 September
The Classical Now
Yves Klein’s Blue Venus is an ancient statue whose sensuality is enhanced by covering it in his trademark blue pigment. It looks like a dream of an undersea goddess, a statue from a wreck. This is just one of the ways artists including Picasso, Lichtenstein, Marc Quinn and Damien Hirst interpret the classics in this epic update of the antique.
King’s College, WC2 to 28 April
Egypt Uncovered: Belzoni and the Tomb of Pharaoh Seti I
Giovanni Battista Belzoni was an early 19th-century circus strongman before he became one of the first Europeans to excavate ancient Egypt. His finds included Seti I’s tomb and the British Museum’s huge head of Rameses II; his transfers of wall paintings are eerie wonders.
Sir John Soane’s Museum, WC2, to 15 April
Gideon Rubin
In 1938 Sigmund Freud became one of the 20th century’s most celebrated refugees, as the unification of Austria with Nazi Germany was marked by outbursts of antisemitism in Vienna. Freud escaped to London, although he would die the following year. Rubin has collected images from the Nazi era and painted over faces and Nazi banners in an exhibition about migration and memory entitled Black Book, evoking the Europe from which Freud fled.
Freud Museum, NW3, to 15 April
Fate Unknown
At the end of the second world war, the horror of Nazi genocide started to become known. Yet millions of people remained unaccounted for. Had they died in camps or were they shot in east European forests? Had some survived? This exhibition traces the search for the missing in a Europe of bomb-blasted ruins, and how researchers tried to discover the terrible truths of stolen lives. Yet the exact fate of many Nazi victims is still unknown.
The Wiener Library, WC1, to 30 May
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Rhinoceros
Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist farce was written as a parable about the rise of the far right he had seen 30 years earlier. Premiered at Edinburgh last summer, Zinnie Harris’s smart new version – a Scottish-Turkish collaboration – has a cartoonish rambunctiousness as the inhabitants of a small town turn into rhinos, and the comic and sinister walk hand in hand.
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh to 7 April
The Duchess of Malfi
There is largely an all-female creative team behind Maria Aberg’s revival of John Webster’s feverish Jacobean revenge tragedy, which boasts severed hands, lycanthropy and madness. But there are also subtleties in a production that puts Joan Iyiola’s duchess centre stage.
Royal Shakespeare Theatre: Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon, to 3 August
The Damned United
Brian Clough’s doomed reign as manager of Leeds United in 1974 lasted a bare 44 days but there is longevity to Red Ladder’s production, adapted by Anders Lustgarten from David Peace’s book. It creates the atmosphere of a football match to tell a story of sporting rivalry, male friendship, loyalty and – most of all – obsession.
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, to 7 April
Séance
Binaural technology is currently having its moment in theatre. Complicite’s The Encounter heads back to the Barbican next month, and here is another chance to experience Glen Neath and David Rosenberg’s clever, creepy little 15-minute show. Ushered into a container, you take your seat, put on a pair of headphones and are then plunged into complete darkness. But are the monsters conjured of our own making or do they really exist? Smart work, like a 21st-century Victorian sideshow.
Almeida Theatre, N1, 3 to 6 April
The Cherry Orchard
There is delicacy and directness in Michael Boyd’s staging of Chekhov’s drama about personal uncertainty and societal change. Rory Mullarkey’s zippy translation makes the play seem sharply contemporary and funny, but there is also real emotion. Kirsty Bushell makes for a very fine Ranevskaya, keeping disaster at bay with a painted smile. Clever, too, in the way it dissolves the line between theatre and reality.
Bristol Old Vic, to 7 April; Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 19 April to 19 May
LG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Scottish Ballet: Highland Fling
Matthew Bourne’s funny, funky take on La Sylphide makes a welcome return in a staging by Etta Murfitt. Telling the story of hard-drinking James and the new-age fairy with whom he falls in love, it translates the world of 19th-century Romanticism to a contemporary Scotland of drug-induced fantasies and crime.
Theatre Royal, Glasgow 4 to 7 April; touring to 4 May
Royal Ballet: Manon
Kenneth MacMillan’s morality tale set in 18th-century Paris remains one of the most popular story ballets in the repertory and will be danced this season by some stellar casts. Guests Vladimir Shklyarov and Roberto Bolle feature alongside Natalia Osipova, Marianela Nuñez and others.
Royal Opera House, WC2, to 16 May
DeNada Dance Theatre: Toro – Beauty and the Bull
Carlos Pons Guerra has a flamboyantly distinctive voice as a choreographer – pungent, sensual and rude. In Toro, he relocates the classic story of Beauty and the Beast to a South American circus.
The Lowry: Quays Theatre, Salford, 1 April; touring to 27 April
JM
