Five of the best ... films
Peterloo (12A)
(Mike Leigh, 2018, UK) 154 mins
Mike Leigh returns to the period film, a format that served him well with Mr Turner and Vera Drake. Here, it’s a dissection of the notorious massacre sparked by a 19th-century rally for voting reform, an atrocity that led directly to the founding of the Guardian. It’s a meaty, wide-ranging epic that is not an easy watch but all the better for that.
Wildlife (12A)
(Paul Dano, 2018, US) 104 mins
Paul Dano has proved his worth as an actor, and now he turns director with this finely honed adaptation of a Richard Ford novel. Co-written by Dano’s partner Zoe Kazan, Wildlife is a study of a disintegrating marriage in 1950s Montana. Carey Mulligan plays a wife and mother who embarks on an affair after her husband absents himself from home in search of work.
Widows (15)
(Steve McQueen, UK/US, 2018) 130 mins
British director Steve McQueen steps away from the arthouse with this tough, enjoyable, nearly-all-female heist flick, adapted from Lynda La Plante’s 80s TV series. McQueen relocates events to modern Chicago, casts a group of top-notch actors (including Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez and Liam Neeson), and overlays the action with socio-political overtones to produce an impressive change of direction.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (12A)
(Morgan Neville, 2018, US) 94 mins
From the Oscar-winning director of 20 Feet from Stardom, a profile of an American institution: Fred Rogers, the ordained Presbyterian minister who was a stalwart of US kids’ TV from the late 1960s to the end of the century. Affectionate, moving and – to UK viewers at least – ineffably strange, it offers an eye-opening portrait of a different time and place: not the least for its footage of an impassioned Rogers convincing a hostile senator of the value of child-centred TV.
Mirai (PG)
(Mamoru Hosoda, 2018, Jap) 98 mins
Mamoru Hosoda is the heir apparent to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli: here he consolidates his reputation for kid-oriented fairytales and fantasy. A four-year-old boy, Kun, is put out when a baby sister arrives; a series of bizarre visitations ensue, including the same sister as a teen, a motorbike-riding grandad, and his mother as a girl.
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Chronixx
Hailed for breathing new life into the roots reggae movement, Chronixx, AKA Jamar McNaughton, has steadily built his reputation outside of his home town of Kingston, Jamaica. Since his first gig – at Usain Bolt’s restaurant, no less – he’s been nominated for a Grammy and a Mobo, as well as collaborating with the likes of Joey Bada$$ and Major Lazer.
Alexandra Palace, N22, Sunday 11 November
Off the Record
Guess what? Festival season is still not officially over. Thankfully, this is a city-based twist on the theme and doesn’t involve actual camping. What it does involve is a host of new acts, including Self Esteem, Olivia Nelson and Pearl City, handpicked by the likes of Everything Everything, Huw Stephens and Scissor Sisters’ Ana Matronic.
Various venues, Manchester, Thursday 15 & Friday 16 November
Interpol
Permanently suited New York-based doom rockers Interpol’s current album Marauder was their highest-charting album in the UK for more than a decade, a surprise given they’ve essentially made the same record six times. Live is where they come into their own, however, with early classics PDA, Obstacle 1 and Slow Hands obvious highlights when paired with oodles of dry ice.
Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Wednesday 14 & Thursday 15; O2 Apollo, Manchester, Friday 16; touring to 20 November
Alice Chater
There was a time, not that long ago, when pop stars wanted to be otherworldly showoffs rather than an average Joe in a hoodie. Newcomer Alice Chater is keen to bring that all back, referencing peak-era Britney and Shakira for inspiration. Not content with having a voice that could strip paint, she is also partial to a ludicrous dance routine, as shown in the video for single, Hourglass.
Thousand Island, N5, Thursday 15 November
MC
Dave Douglas
American trumpeter-composer Dave Douglas, a collaborator with gamechangers from Bill Frisell to Tom Waits and John Zorn, is a fitting freethinker for the EFG London jazz festival’s launch night. Douglas’s adventurous UPLIFT band includes bassist Bill Laswell (producer of Herbie Hancock’s famed Future Shock album) and one-off guitar avantist Mary Halvorson.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Friday 16 November
JF
Three of the best ... classical concerts
The Silver Tassie
The focus of the Barbican’s weekend of events to mark the armistice centenary is a performance of the second opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage, based upon Sean O’Casey’s anti-war play. This concert staging has Ashley Riches as the football-mad Harry Heegan, with Sally Matthews as Susie and John Tomlinson as Croucher. Ryan Wigglesworth conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Saturday 10 November
Cédric Tiberghien
The French pianist’s thoughtfully constructed recital offers a distinctly different kind of armistice weekend concert. Tiberghien has put together a programme of works composed during the first world war, pieces representing some of the modernist strands developing across Europe at that time. There is Scriabin’s obsessive Vers La Flamme, Frank Bridge’s 3 Improvisations for the Left-Hand and Hindemith’s early In Einer Nacht, plus studies by Szymanowski and Debussy.
Wigmore Hall, W1, Saturday 10 November
Huddersfield contemporary music festival
Britain’s most extensive and ambitious new-music festival has its favourites, composers who get a regular platform at Huddersfield but too few performances elsewhere during the year. Some of those – Enno Poppe, Rebecca Saunders, James Dillon – are represented in the 10 days of concerts this year. But among the 15 world premieres and 70 UK ones there is plenty that’s totally new: the composer-in-residence is the Swiss American Christian Marclay, and the opening night includes the UK premiere of his graphic score To Be Continued.
Various venues, Friday 16 to 25 November
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Moments of Silence
One hundred years after the first world war ended we still remember it with silence. This exhibition by the Olivier award-winning 59 Productions explores the history of that ritual. In a dozen recordings of the two-minute silence, several made around the country last November, the terrible absence of the war dead echoes as it always will.
Imperial War Museum, SE1, to 31 March
Martin Parr: Return to Manchester
The Surrey-born Parr has been fascinated by Manchester since studying there in the early 1970s. This exhibition brings together four decades of his photographs of the city’s people, places and things. A newly commissioned body of work brings the story up to date with portraits of its diversity.
Manchester Art Gallery, Friday 9 November to 22 April
Hannah Perry
Modern life keeps getting faster. In the 19th century, Manet portrayed an urban world of nocturnal reflections spinning round his barmaid. Today, she would be lost in a matrix of online information. Hannah Perry takes up the story with a show full of reflections and rush. A 360-degree film projection surrounds you with speed and motion. The shocking, distorted flow of image and sound is nothing if not of our time.
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, Saturday 10 November to 27 January
Artes Mundi 8
This biennial prize for international art certainly makes you appreciate the strength of the British art world. Anna Boghiguian’s mish-mash exploring the Welsh steel industry, for example, lacks the punch of a Grayson Perry or Jeremy Deller. Still, Trevor Paglen’s spooky surveillance images capture the madness of the Trump age, while Moroccan film-maker Bouchra Khalili’s documentary about the Black Panthers has Godard-like power.
National Museum Cardiff, to 24 February
The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture
Two of the 90s’ Young British Artists compete with newer names for this respected prize. Mona Hatoum’s fascination with the borders between inner and outer experience can make for electrifying art. Cerith Wyn Evans veers between the throwaway and profound. But is “sculpture” a useful word for their work? Perhaps it better fits the younger hopefuls: Michael Dean (work pictured), Magali Reus and Phillip Lai.
The Hepworth, Wakefield, to 20 January
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Hadestown
A new take on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and their descent into the underworld, US singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s show is set to run on Broadway next year. Based on her album, which mixes American folk with New Orleans jazz, it sees hell as the industrial landscape of Hadestown and the lyre-playing Orpheus as a songwriter.
National Theatre: Olivier, SE1, to 26 January
Rocky Shock Horror
Another adults-only musical mash-up from the Wardrobe Theatre, which brought you Goldilock, Stock & Three Smoking Bears, Reservoir Mogs and Muppits Die Hard. It is 1976 and small-time boxer Rocky Featherboa faces the fight of his life, in which song and dance are as vital as a good left hook.
Tobacco Factory, Bristol, Monday 12 to 17 November; touring to 26 January
Heart of Darkness
Gender-swapping in productions is all the rage and here it’s in an unlikely vehicle, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, the tale of lies and greed and one man’s journey up the Congo river into the centre of Africa. This production by Imitating the Dog reimagines the story as a black woman’s trail through war-torn Europe, encountering a devastated continent, raising themes of gender, race, exploitation, violence and nationalism.
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Friday 16 & 17; Birmingham Rep, 20 to 24 November; touring 5 March to 11 May
How to Catch a Krampus
Fast out of the Christmas blocks is How to Catch a Krampus from the drag collective Sink the Pink. Drag great Lavinia Co-op features in Ginger Johnson’s alternative, horror-based offering, based on Victorian melodrama and the myth of the krampus (a horned east European beast). Depicting the exploits of a medium and con artist, the show is described as Sweeney Todd meets The Wicker Man.
Pleasance Theatre, N7, Tuesday 13 November to 23 December
Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales
This London Bridge venue has four seasonal shows running at Christmas but the main one comes from Philip Pullman, the author of His Dark Materials. He takes the familiar tales – Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood – and makes them even grimmer and more moralistic for audiences aged eight and up. Direction is by Kirsty Housley, who was recently the dramaturg on the big hit Misty with Arinzé Kene.
Unicorn Theatre, SE1, Tuesday 13 November to 6 January
MC
Three of the best ... dance shows
Mark Morris Dance Group & Silkroad Ensemble: Layla and Majnun
The most famously musical US choreographer collaborates with one of that country’s most famous musicians, Yo-Yo Ma, and his Silkroad Ensemble, a collective of players from various traditions. Here they tell the ancient Persian love story of Layla and Majnun, “the Romeo and Juliet of the East”, as Byron called it.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Tuesday 13 to 17 November
Scottee: Fat Blokes
Performance artist Scottee masterminds a dance-ish cabaret celebrating bountiful male bodies, a “fat rebellion” no less. It is an angry, anarchic, joyful and poignant show, created with four non-professional performers and choreographer Lea Anderson.
London, Saturday 10 & Sunday 11; Brighton, Wednesday 14; Liverpool, 17 November
Scottish Ensemble & Andersson Dance: Prelude – Skydiving from a Dream
A music and dance collaboration where both sides seem like equal partners, as the Scottish Ensemble play Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue and more while Orjan Andersson’s dancers weave their way between the notes.
Glasgow, Saturday 10; Dundee, Tuesday 13; Inverness, Thursday 15 November
LW
Main comp image: David Lindsay; Wade Hudson; Paul Blakemore
