Five of the best ... films
The Square (15)
(Ruben Ostlund, 2017, Swe/Ger/Fra/Den) 151 mins
High culture comes in for a kicking in this sly satire, following a Stockholm gallery director through a series of first-world/art-world crises. There are moments of social discomfort and farce (not least an ape impersonator who goes full method), in a film with much to say about culture, privilege and liberal guilt.
You Were Never Really Here (15)
(Lynne Ramsay, 2017, UK/Fra/US) 90 mins
This intense movie from the Scottish film-maker might be a Taxi Driver for our times. Joaquin Phoenix plays a freelance retriever of abducted children, whose new assignment sucks him into the depths of his own psychological torment. Rendered with artistry and economy, it’s an unforgettable experience.
Sweet Country (15)
(Warwick Thornton, 2017, Aus) 113 mins
Australia’s not-so-historic legacy of racist oppression is revisited in this “western”, which tracks an outback manhunt with striking imagery and understated storytelling. On the run are an Indigenous Australian farmhand (Hamilton Morris) and his wife, the former wanted for shooting dead an abusive “whitefella” in self-defence. Concepts of justice are relative in this lawless, almost abstract landscape.
A Fantastic Woman (15)
(Sebastián Lelio, 2017, Chi/Ger/Spa/US) 104 mins
Daniela Vega carries a remarkable (recently Oscar-winning) modern-day melodrama that renders a Santiago trans woman’s plight with sensitive restraint and the odd surreal flourish. Compounding her grief over the death of her long-term partner are his grasping family and the authorities, most of whom view her with suspicion or outright hostility. She’s the model of dignified resolve – up to a point.
Gook (15)
(Justin Chon, 2017, US) 95 mins
Set during the post-Rodney King LA riots of the 90s, this black-and-white indie feels like something that could have been made at the time – in a Clerks-meets-Do the Right Thing way. Our central characters are two Korean-American brothers who run a shoe shop, aided by an 11-year-old black girl. Confrontation is on the cards, but there’s time for goofing around, too.
SR
Five of the best ... rock & pop gigs
Fever Ray
A boundary-crushing queer electronica star, and one of the few artists who could make the line “I want to run my fingers up your pussy” sound playful rather than pervy, former Knife member Fever Ray is rather memorable. And, of course, a talent, to boot; after a nine-year break from the biz, she recently returned with acclaimed album Plunge.
Troxy, E1 Tuesday 20; Albert Hall, Manchester Wednesday 21 March
Young Fathers
The Mercury-winning Scottish hip-hop trio continue to tread a singular path without being self-indulgent. Following a prominent spot on the Trainspotting T2 soundtrack last year (Danny Boyle described their tracks as “my heartbeat for the film”), they recently released their third album, Cocoa Sugar.
Birmingham, Tuesday 20; London, Wednesday 21; Bristol, Thursday 22; Manchester; Friday 23; touring to 28 March
Dream Wife
This grunge-pop trio started life as a performance art project, but when your social commentary is this sharp, why not go the whole hog and make it into a real, nouveau-riot grrrl band? From the #MeToo-themed message of Somebody to the Spice Girls-sampling snarl of FUU and the invigorating, Strokes-ish Fire, the Brighton band’s debut album is sure to make for a varied, confident live show.
Bristol, Tuesday 20; London, Wednesday 21; Glasgow, Friday 23
Chic ft Nile Rodgers
A disco pioneer-turned-pop fairy godfather, Nile Rodgers (pictured, below) has an appeal that doesn’t seem to dim. And, having pepped up everyone from Daft Punk to Madonna, Bowie to Diana Ross, he has the kind of CV most producers could only dream of. Get ready for Good Times as he and Chic play the Royal Albert Hall for the first time in support of Teenage Cancer Trust.
Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Wednesday 21 March
HJD
Electric Lady Big Band
Imaginative Bristol guitarist-arranger Denny Ilett unveils his new big band, including trumpeter Laura Jurd and saxophonist Iain Ballamy, in a spectacular reinvention of Jimi Hendrix’s 1968 classic Electric Ladyland. Launched on Sunday at Bristol’s annual jazz festival, the band also visits Ronnie Scott’s, where Hendrix played his last gig in 1970.
Colston Hall, Bristol, Sunday 18; Ronnie Scott’s, W1, Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 March
JF
Four of the best ... classical concerts
Debussy festival
The CBSO and BCMG are spreading their centenary tribute to Debussy across two weekends. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will conduct five orchestral concerts, placing the composer’s works alongside modernist pieces influenced by him. BCMG’s first programme (Sun) features Boulez and Murail; its second (25 Mar) includes premieres of four works written as tributes.
Symphony Hall, Birmingham Saturday 17, Sunday 18, 24 & 25 March
Ensemble Intercontemporain
The leading French new-music group have become regular visitors to the Wigmore, often introducing composers whose music is very rarely heard in London. Their latest concert includes the world premiere of Blaise Ubaldini’s wind quintet, In the Backyard, alongside music by Birtwistle, Carter, Holliger and Cage.
Wigmore Hall, W1, Monday 19 March
Voices of the Revolution
Vladimir Ashkenazy takes charge of the Philharmonia’s concerts marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution. The first programme concentrates on music written to reflect the radical energy of the new Soviet Union: Mosolov’s The Iron Foundry, Glière’s The Red Poppy and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3.
The Anvil, Basingstoke, Wednesday 21; Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Thursday 22 March
Ariadne auf Naxos
After a few years in the doldrums, Scottish Opera is reasserting itself as a company of real significance. Now comes a new staging of Strauss’s multilayered comedy, directed by Antony McDonald and starring Mardi Byers and Kor-Jan Dusseljee.
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Thursday 22 to 28 March; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 5 & 7 April
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
America’s Cool Modernism
Modernism was made for the United States: the skyscraper cities were its destined home. While European artists dreamed of utopia, Americans could just look out of the window to see strange new realities. Edward Hopper’s spooky urban spaces and Charles Demuth’s masterpiece I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (pictured) star in this survey of jazz-age art.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Friday 23 March to 22 July
Anthea Hamilton
This surrealist, whose architectural sculpture of a giant bum stole the show at 2016’s Turner prize show, is back with more fantastical ideas. Expect big boots, rude furniture and general imaginative mayhem from a subversive who is unfazed by today’s increasingly stringent moral codes. A liberating visionary, guaranteed to raise a smile.
Tate Britain, SW1, Thursday 22 to 7 October
A Revolutionary Legacy
Two centuries ago, Haitian leader Toussaint L’Ouverture defied Napoleon, making him a hero of resistance ever since. This engaging display includes radical art from William Blake’s America to a portrait by Jacob Lawrence (pictured). As Wordsworth put it in his poem To Toussaint L’Ouverture: “There’s not a breathing of the common wind/ That will forget thee … Thy friends are exultations, agonies,/ And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”
British Museum, WC1, to 22 April
Francis Bacon
The fierce, unforgiving vision of Francis Bacon burns like a laser through modern art. His hellish visions of popes in glass booths and bodies struggling in strangely decorated airless rooms influenced everything from Hannibal Lecter’s glass-fronted prison cell to Damien Hirst’s vitrines to the portraiture of his friend Lucian Freud. This display is a chance to fathom the power and originality of an artistic great.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, to 30 May
Another Kind of Life
Casa Susanna was a safe resort for heterosexual cross-dressers in New York State in the 1950s and early 60s. Just over 10 years ago, a cache of photographs taken there turned up at a Manhattan flea market. These haunting pictures (above) are among the documents of alternative cultures and subversive ways of life in this exhibition, featuring people who make their own identities, often using photography as an aid.
Barbican Art Gallery, EC2, to 27 May
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Nina: A Story About Me and Nina Simone
Josette Bushell-Mingo is superb in a solo show that takes its inspiration from the songs and activism of Nina Simone. Threading together biography and autobiography, this is a searing evening full of justifiable anger, as she considers the continuing struggle to make Black Lives Matter and ensure voices are heard and change is made.
Unity Theatre, Liverpool, Saturday 17 to 24 March
The Grinning Man
It may be based on a novel by Victor Hugo, but don’t go expecting Les Misérables from this musical about a man who had his face slashed from ear to ear when he was a boy. Created by writer Carl Grose, composers Tim Phillips and Marc Teitler and director Tom Morris, it is macabre, utterly distinctive and surreally entertaining.
Trafalgar Studios, SW1, to 14 April
Joan
This show keeps on touring and deservedly so. Lucy J Skilbeck’s sleeper hit scrutinises the Joan of Arc story and packages it in a hugely enjoyable cabaret-style evening that combines audience participation with lyrical writing. Drag king champion Lucy Jane Parkinson is a joy as the medieval gender warrior.
Broadwell Memorial Hall, nr Coleford, Friday 23 March; touring to 1 June
Brighton Rock
Bryony Lavery’s Frozen, currently in the West End, is a play about good and evil, and although her latest appears very different it covers similar territory. It’s a pared-back adaptation of Graham Greene’s 1938 thriller novel about death, damnation and redemption. In Brighton, teenage gang leader Pinkie marries waitress Rose, the only witness to a murder he committed. Esther Richardson’s production for Pilot Theatre captures the run-down seediness of the seaside town and boasts a fine ensemble.
Mercury Theatre, Colchester, Saturday 17; Hull Truck Theatre, Tuesday 20 to 24 March; touring to 26 May
Girl from the North Country
There is only one week left to catch this unique show, in which Conor McPherson entwines the songs of Bob Dylan with real delicacy to tell the story of the residents of a boarding house in a small US town in the shadow of the Great Depression. Fantastic performances, particularly from Shirley Henderson and Sheila Atim, make this a spine-tingling experience, releasing all the drama in the songs.
Noël Coward Theatre, WC2, to 24 March
LG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Richard Alston Dance Company: Mid Century Modern
Alston looks back over five decades of dance-making, revisiting key works such as the witty luminous solo Dutiful Ducks, and Proverb, created for the 70th birthday of composer Steve Reich. Completing this fine retrospective is a new solo, set to Debussy’s flute piece Syrinx and created for Vidya Patel.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1 Friday 23 & 24 March
Rambert
Ben Duke’s funny and searing Goat forms a welcome addition to Rambert’s touring repertory, seen in this programme with the pure dance piece Symbiosis and a guest appearance from Julie Cunningham & Company in To Be Me, set to the rhythms of poet Kate Tempest.
Theatre Royal, Brighton, Wednesday 21 to 24 March
Les Ballets C de la B: Requiem Pour L
Director Alain Platel collaborates with composer Fabrizio Cassol on this multicultural reinvention of Mozart’s Requiem, using movement and film to construct a ritual ceremony of mourning that veers into a celebration of life.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 March
JM
