Five of the best ... films
Phantom Thread (15)
(Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017, US) 130 mins
Another plum role for Daniel Day-Lewis, in a film as elegantly fastidious and gothically imposing as its subject. He plays Reynolds Woodcock, an elite London couturier who likes everything just so, including his women. But this season’s model – smart, resolute Vicky Krieps – has other ideas. As we have come to expect with Anderson, it’s a class act all round.
Early Man (PG)
(Nick Park, 2018, UK/Fra) 89 mins
Good old Aardman brings its homely house style to bear on an amiably daft story of stone-age Britons and the beautiful game. Sports movie veterans will know where things are heading when our none-too-bright heroes (led by Eddie Redmayne) challenge their European invaders to a high-stakes football match but, as ever, the joy is in the details.
Coco (U)
(Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina, 2017, US) 105 mins
As accessible a trip to the afterlife as you could wish for, Pixar’s latest fantasia crosses over to the other side, Mexican-style, as a village kid goes against his music-hating family and accidentally strands himself in the Land of the Dead as a result: a mirror-world of lively talking skeletons, many of whom he’s related to. Full of colour, song, dance, action and authentic cultural detail, it’s altogether life-affirming.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (15)
(Martin McDonagh, 2017, UK/US) 115 mins
Frances McDormand’s campaign for her murdered daughter doesn’t go like she planned, and there’s an unpredictability to McDonagh’s morality tale, which weighs up big questions in a small town. The criticisms of its glib race attitudes are valid, but there is a great deal to recommend, such as its foul-mouthed comedy and seasoned performers (Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell and Peter Dinklage).
Darkest Hour (PG)
(Joe Wright, 2017, UK) 125 mins
Historians will find plenty to quibble with (Winston Churchill taking the tube?), and we’ve all heard this story before. But director Wright’s visual flair animates what could have been a talky political thriller, and Gary Oldman gives the performance of his late career playing Churchill at his most doggedly defiant and drunkenly difficult.
SR
Five of the best ... rock & pop gigs
Kendrick Lamar
The best rapper alive (soz Taylor) brings his Damn tour to the UK. Leaning heavily on last year’s critically adored album of the same name, as well as his canon of classic head-knockers, you can also expect a run-through of his many collaborations. Guests on the US leg have included SZA, J Cole and Chance the Rapper, so keep your eyes peeled.
3Arena, Dublin Wednesday 7; Genting Arena, Birmingham Friday 9; touring to 20 February
PartyNextDoor
Canada’s Jahron Anthony Brathwaite, AKA PartyNextDoor, can do it all: he can sing (that’s him crooning through Zayn’s Still Got Time); he can rap; he can write a banger (Rihanna’s Work); and he can produce if you need him to. If you’re wondering whether he can put on an exciting live show, too, now’s your chance to find out.
Dublin, Sunday 4; Glasgow, Monday 5 ; London, Wednesday 7; Manchester, Thursday 8; touring to 10 February
Jhené Aiko
Last September’s 85-minute long Trip, an undulating, psychedelic song cycle about grief, may have been heavy going but take solace from the fact that these live shows will offer some lighter relief via tracks from 2014’s excellent Souled Out debut and the surprisingly intriguing Twenty88, Aiko’s collaborative album with rent-a-rapper Big Sean. Expect to cry, dance and, like, really feel stuff.
London, Sunday 4 & Monday 5; Glasgow, Wednesday 7; Birmingham, Thursday 8; Manchester, Friday 9 February
Jorja Smith
February is a busy month for golden-voiced R&B newcomer and Drake’s bessie Jorja Smith (pictured, below). Not only is she heading out on her largest headline UK tour, including a night at London’s not-exactly-intimate O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, she’s also performing at the Brits (where she’s this year’s Critics’ Choice) with last year’s winner, Rag’n’Bone Man. Ah well, you can’t win them all.
Edinburgh, Tuesday 6; Sheffield, Wednesday 7; Liverpool, Thursday 8; touring to 15 February
MC
Tim Berne’s Big Satan
Influential New York saxist and composer Tim Berne likes Motown and funk almost as much as flamethrowing free jazz and tightly logical, rhythm-juggling composition. On these dates, Berne’s enthusiasms fiercely fuse, in his exciting Big Satan trio with French guitar wildman Marc Ducret and US drummer Tom Rainey.
mac: Hexagon Theatre, Birmingham, Thursday 8; touring to 10 February
JF
Four of the best ... classical concerts
Un Ballo in Maschera
The centrepiece of Opera North’s spring season is a new production of Verdi’s middle-period masterpiece. Tim Albery’s production opts for the original Swedish-based version of the libretto. Richard Farnes returns to conduct; Rafael Rojas is Gustavus and Phillip Rhodes plays Anckarstroem.
Grand Theatre, Leeds Saturday 3 February to 2 March; touring to 24 March
Jansen/Maisky/Argerich Trio
Although Martha Argerich no longer gives solo recitals, she has continued to play chamber music. Her recital here with violinist Janine Jansen and cellist Mischa Maisky features piano trios by Shostakovich and Mendelssohn, and sonatas by Beethoven and Schumann.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Tuesday 6 February
Carmen
Barrie Kosky made his debut at Covent Garden in 2016 with Shostakovich’s farce The Nose. He’s back there now with a much more serious piece, a version of Carmen including music that is usually omitted. There are two casts, with Jakub Hrůša conducting the first, which features Anna Goryacheva.
Royal Opera House, WC2, Tuesday 6 February to 16 March
Irvine Arditti
Irvine Arditti has been a leading contemporary music specialist for almost 40 years. He’s celebrating his 65th birthday with a pair of solo recitals, both featuring Sciarrino’s Sei Capricci for solo violin. In Leicester, he also plays pieces by Grunewald and Emmerson, while in London he’s the soloist for the Philharmonia in Cattaneo’s Violin Concerto.
De Montfort University: The Gallery, Leicester, Wednesday 7; Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Thursday 8 February
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Ragnar Kjartansson
An organ built in 1774 for the Welsh cultural patron Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn becomes the centrepiece of a performance devised by renowned Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. In The Sky in a Room, a team of organists will play the 1959 Italian pop song Il Cielo In Una Stanza for five hours a day in a gallery filled with 18th-century art.
National Museum Cardiff, Saturday 3 February to 11 March
Ocean Liners: Speed and Style
The strange, lost world of 20th-century Atlantic liners is recreated in a feast of art deco design. Frocks, furniture, posters and photographs recall the upper-decks opulence of these titanic ships, while Stanley Spencer’s paintings of shipbuilding on the Clyde commemorate the workers who built them.
Victoria & Albert Museum, SW7, Saturday 3 February to 17 June
Bridget Riley
The latest works of this octogenarian artist are scintillating miracles of eye-teasing optical magic. Riley returns to the hallucinatory black-and-white style of her famous works from the 1960s in murals and framed paintings that have the scope of Jackson Pollock and the scientific precision of a carefully calculated experiment. She also shows dots of just three colours that mix in your mind like a conceptualist Seurat. A phenomenon.
David Zwirner, W1, to 10 March
Cézanne Portraits
I will say it one last time: don’t miss the final chance to see this outstanding exhibition. Cézanne has been a god of modern culture ever since Picasso revered him in the 1900s, but this superb survey of his anxious, mystifying attempts to understand himself and others reveals the radicalism and courage of his vision all over again. The unease and brilliance of the man who invented modern art blaze out.
National Portrait Gallery, WC2, to 11 February
Charles II : Art & Power
While his decapitated daddy gets a blockbuster at the Royal Academy, this king who spent years in exile before taking the British throne in 1660 is given a smaller but arguably more intelligent examination by the Royal Collection itself. Prints and paintings reveal the scientific strides made in Charles II’s reign as well as the erotic antics of his licentious court, as portrayed by Peter Lely.
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, SW1, to 13 May
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Hamlet
Elsinore is transposed to an African state in Simon Godwin’s vibrant RSC production from 2016. There have been more starry Hamlets recently – Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott and Tom Hiddleston – but Paapa Essiedu’s compelling sulky, sarcastic
boy-prince more than measures up.
The Lowry, Salford Saturday 3; Theatre Royal: The Lyric, Plymouth Tuesday to 10 February; touring to 31 March
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
Anna Deavere Smith’s groundbreaking verbatim theatre piece charted the fallout after the policemen accused of assaulting black taxi driver Rodney King were acquitted. She interviewed many people close to the case. Nina Bowers holds the space, offering a multitude of different voices and vantage points. Timely and still urgent.
Gate Theatre, W11, to 10 February
The Birthday Party
Sixty years young, Pinter’s play –dismissed by critics on its premiere in 1958 – is revealed as no dusty museum piece in Ian Rickson’s astute revival. Instead, it’s funny and frightening, as a rundown seaside boarding house is invaded by two thugs in search of Toby Jones’s birthday boy. A menacingly good evening, with Zoë Wanamaker sublime as the prattling, over-motherly boarding landlady.
The Harold Pinter Theatre, SW1, to 14 April
Heads Up
How will you respond to the end of the world? Will we even notice the moment it arrives or will we have our eyes on our screens, blocking the real world out? Perhaps even watching clips from disaster movies? Kieran Hurley’s one-man show offers Cassandra-like prophecies of catastrophe in a city just like ours. Potent storytelling, awash with sorrow, anxiety, poetry and music.
Dartington Hall, Totnes, Saturday 3; Theatre Royal: Ustinov Studio, Bath, Thursday 8 & Friday 9 February; touring to 1 March
Network
Sold out, but with tickets available via Friday Rush and day seats, Ivo van Hove’s staging of Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 movie script about media truth and lies is a visually dazzling, high-concept show, turning the space into a news studio. It’s hectic and at times almost overwhelming in its controlled chaos, but also damned effective, with Bryan Cranston superb as
the mad-as-hell news anchor.
National Theatre: Lyttelton, SE1, to 24 March
LG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui & Bunkamura Theatre Coccon: Pluto
The excellent Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui returns to his beloved subject of manga in this new dance-theatre piece inspired by the character Astro Boy. Cherkaoui combines actors, dancers, puppetry and special effects to recreate the energy and fantasy of the original comic-book form.
Barbican Theatre, EC2 Thursday 8 to 11 February
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: Viktor
This 1986 work was the first of Bausch’s “travelogue” dances, a portrait of Rome on a set flanked by 20ft walls of mud. The dancers act out their fantasies, compulsions and desires, creating a classic Bausch tapestry of brutal black comedy and whimsical beauty.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Thursday 8 to 11 February
Umanoove: The Knot
Didy Veldman’s latest work for the Ipswich venue explores the place of marriage in present-day western society: playing with the rituals, the social expectations and the myth of happy-ever-after endings peddled by religion and popular culture.
DanceEast, Ipswich, Friday 9; touring to 14 Feb
JM
