Five of the best ... films
Captain Marvel (12A)
(Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019, US) 124 mins
Considering its progressive reputation, it is a surprise that Marvel Studios was beaten to making a female superhero movie by DC’s Wonder Woman. But Captain Marvel is here at last, with Oscar winner Brie Larson in the lead as the soldier who is endowed with superpowers. It has attracted moans from the usual suspects, but don’t let that put you off: this is shaping up to be a groundbreaker.
Foxtrot (15)
(Samuel Maoz, 2017, Isr/Swi/Ger/Fr) 113 mins
New from Maoz, whose last film, the single-location tank drama Lebanon, won Venice’s Golden Lion. An intense three-part drama, this darkly absurdist take on the emotional consequences of Israel’s permanent war footing focuses on a conscript named Jonathan Feldman who may or may not have gone missing in action.
The Kindergarten Teacher (12)
(Sara Colangelo, 2018, US) 96 mins
A remake of an Israeli film about a teacher who discovers a five-year-old boy who is apparently a poetry genius, reciting verse in a trance and seemingly channelling it from a higher power. Maggie Gyllenhaal takes the lead role in this version, set in Manhattan, but for once the new treatment doesn’t squander the strength of its source material. Gyllenhaal excels as the raddled pre-school educator, both protective and predatory towards her charge.
Ray & Liz (15)
(Richard Billingham, 2018, UK) 108 mins
Richard Billingham is the acclaimed photographer who made his name in the 1990s with unvarnished pictures of his own family in the West Midlands. He has transferred this hard-realism style on to film: Justin Salinger is his dad, Ray, and Ella Smith his mum, Liz, in this portrait of a family in disintegration.
Heat and Dust (15)
(James Ivory, 1983, UK) 130 mins
Julie Christie is a woman investigating what her great-aunt (played by Greta Scacchi) got up to in the 1920s Raj. The relative, wife of a British administrator, ended up having an affair with a local prince (Shashi Kapoor); the pattern repeats itself when the great-niece develops a liaison with the man she is staying with and, like her forebear, becomes pregnant.
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Drake
Fresh from a US jaunt with Migos, Spotify’s favourite artist Drake pops over to the UK for the Assassination Vacation tour in support of last year’s patchy Scorpion album. Last time he toured here he performed around a massive globe, which, for one night only, didn’t inflate after guest Travis Scott fell down the hole it was meant to emerge from. Fingers crossed for more viral moments this time around.
Manchester Arena Sunday 10 & Monday 11 March; touring to 11 April
Anderson .Paak
If rapper, singer, drummer and funk enthusiast Anderson .Paak’s last album, November’s Oxnard, passed you by then don’t panic; he has another one out next month. Ventura was apparently recorded around the same time as its predecessor, so expect an equally immersive, genre-fusing opus. Keep an ear out for new songs at these shows as well.
Alexandra Palace, N22, Friday 15; touring to 20 March
Nicki Minaj
These are testing times for Nicki Minaj. Last year’s Queen album was a vaguely intriguing mess, while public spats with Cardi B (including an incident with a flying shoe), Pitchfork (over her decision to work with controversial rapper 6ix9ine) and Travis Scott (sour grapes over him beating her to No 1 in the US) pushed the music further down Minaj’s list of priorities. Hopefully this tour can help redress that balance.
The O2, SE10, Monday 11; Birmingham, Thursday 14; touring to 18 March
The Blaze
French cousins Guillaume and Jonathan Alric, AKA the Blaze, have one goal: to make you feel something. Last year’s Dancehall album, while full of plaintive piano lines and slow-burning, this-would-sound-nice-on-a-Sunday-morning beats, works best when enjoyed with the duo’s groundbreaking, cinematic visuals.
Roundhouse, NW1, Tuesday 12 March
MC
Anouar Brahem
The lute-like Tunisian oud does not surface in many jazz lineups, but improviser-composer Anouar Brahem’s are a spellbinding exception. Brahem is joined on his Blue Maqams album’s mix of Arab music and improv by jazz maestros Dave Holland (bass), Django Bates (piano) and Nasheet Waits (drums). Pianist Kit Downes and saxophonist Tom Challenger open the show.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Friday 15 March
JF
Four of the best ... classical concerts
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Shostakovich’s lurid tragedy gets a makeover from Birmingham Opera Company. The location of Graham Vick’s mobile production is a disused ballroom, with set designs by Block9. Chrystal E Williams and Eric Greene star; Alpesh Chauhan conducts the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and a 150-string community chorus.
Tower Ballroom, Birmingham, Saturday 9 to 17 March
Haitink at 90
The London Symphony Orchestra get the honour of celebrating Bernard Haitink’s 90th birthday with the conductor. He is performing the Fourth Symphonies of the two composers with whom he has been mostly closely associated – Bruckner and Mahler – plus Mozart and Dvořák concertos with pianist Till Fellner and violinist Isabelle Faust.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Sunday 10, Thursday 14 & 21 March
Quatuor Bozzini
The Montreal-based new-music specialists make a rare British tour. Their programme includes pieces by fellow Canadians Linda Catlin Smith and Cassandra Miller as well as premieres from John Woolrich and Scott Wilson, alongside repertory works by Haydn and Beethoven.
Southampton, Sunday 10; London, Tuesday 12; Birmingham, Wednesday 13 March
Kátya Kabanová
Scottish Opera unveils Stephen Lawless’s production of Janáček’s fiercely concentrated tragedy, updated to the 1970s. In the third staging from a British company so far this year, Laura Wilde sings the title role, with Patricia Bardon as her monstrous mother-in-law.
Glasgow, Tuesday 12 to 16; Edinburgh, 21 & 23 March
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
The German Revolution
Painting and print-making have been equals in northern European art since the age of Dürer. This exhibition explores how expressionists including Munch and Schiele rediscovered the German woodcut tradition to create forceful images. Deliberately primitive, the expressionist print is a blast of deep-graven intensity.
Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow to 25 August
Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
Artists protest against Brexit and wonder if it’s worth staying in Britain after 29 March. Susan Stockwell shows a green woollen map of Britain collapsing in a mess, while Michael Landy exhibits contemptuous red-and-white paintings that include a man pissing near a Brexit idyll of rustic England.
Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, NW8, to 13 April
Henry Moore
The famous modernist British sculptor comes to the Wallace Collection with its rooms full of rococo furnishings and Renaissance bronzes. Moore’s Helmet Heads are defensive and visceral images of the threatened and vulnerable modern self. Perhaps the closest things to them in this museum’s collection are its medieval suits of armour. A surreal setting for surrealist art.
Wallace Collection, W1, to 23 June
John Bellany and Alan Davie
Damien Hirst’s gallery has never looked more impressive than it does hung with the fiery abstracts of Alan Davie. In dreary 50s Britain, this young artist and jazzer was throwing and smearing paint in homage to Jackson Pollock, in what may the only true abstract expressionist canvases Britain produced. His mighty epics overpower the figurative art of John Bellany in this eccentric trip down the byways of British art history.
Newport Street Gallery, SE11, to 1 September
El Anatsui
This shaper of shimmering sheets of found stuff has become one of the most recognisable artists of our time. El Anatsui makes billowing, epic surfaces that resemble rugs, robes, flags and paintings. This art is rooted in modern African life where reusing what you find is a strategy of survival as well as creativity. El Anatsui takes it to sublime heights, evoking collagists from Kurt Schwitters to Robert Rauschenberg.
October Gallery, WC1, to 6 April
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Emilia
Emilia was a smash hit at The Globe last summer, and struck a chord amid the #MeToo movement. It is a passionate and unruly play from Morgan Lloyd Malcolm about the groundbreaking poet Emilia Bassano. Some history books suggest that Bassano was the Dark Lady of William Shakespeare’s sonnets but Emilia – here played by three actresses – begs to differ …
Vaudeville Theatre, WC2 to 15 June
Blood Knot
Blood Knot, like many of Athol Fugard’s celebrated works, explores apartheid through a personal lens. It is about two brothers with the same mother but different fathers, different skin colours and very different experiences of living in apartheid-era South Africa. It is directed by Matthew Xia, who seems to relish tackling knotty political plays.
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, to 20 April
Richard II
The first show in a cycle of history plays at the Globe, which will re-examine the bard’s relationship with Britain. Adjoa Andoh stars and co-directs alongside Lynette Linton, and the entire company is made up of women of colour. Andoh explains: “For once, we thought we’d tell the story of England with the people who are generally thought to be at the bottom of the building heap, which is people of colour and women.”
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre: Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, SE1, to 21 April
Barber Shop Chronicles
Inua Ellams is a poet, graphic artist and playwright and his vivid writing always hums with life and purpose. Barber Shop Chronicles sold out at the National in 2017, toured the globe and now triumphantly returns home. It stars an all-black and all-male cast and is set in a series of barber shops, across six countries and two continents, over the space of a single day.
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, to 23 March; touring to 25 August
God of Chaos
Internet censorship: absolutely necessary but, also, next to impossible. Who decides the rules and how does one enforce them? Phil Porter’s thorny and funny new play is set at a social media company, where a group of moderators find themselves pulled into the online world they are trying to mediate. David Mercatali – a subtle and intelligent theatre-maker – directs.
Theatre Royal: The Drum, Plymouth, to 23 March
MG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Context festival
A rare chance to see the brilliant Mariinsky ballerina Diana Vishneva perform in the UK. Now 42 and clearly looking at the next chapter of her career, Vishneva has curated a programme of Russian contemporary ballet, including excerpts from Kirill Serebrennikov’s biographical work Nureyev, being danced outside Russia for the first time.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1 Tuesday 12 March
Northern Ballet: Victoria
Cathy Marston has just won a national dance award for her inspired approach to storytelling on stage. It’s a good time, then, to check out her latest work for Northern Ballet, based on the life and diaries of Queen Victoria.
The Grand Theatre & Opera House, Leeds, Saturday 9 to 16 March; touring to 1 June
Russell Maliphant & Vangelis: The Thread
The Chariots of Fire composer provides the soundtrack for this fusing of Greek social dance and contemporary dance by Russell Maliphant. Traditional stepping and circle dances merge into mesmerising modern fluidity in this classy culture clash.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Friday 15 to 17 March
LW
