Five of the best ... films
Border (15)
(Ali Abbasi, 2019, Sweden) 110 mins
This deeply strange film from Iranian-Swedish director Ali Abbasi is renowned for its Cronenberg-ish sex scene, but this is more than a bodyshock horror. A parable of outsiderdom, Border is about a customs officer with a superhuman sense of smell, whose appearance results in emotional and social isolation, until she meets another in the same mould. A real one off.
Girl (15)
(Lukas Dhont, 2018, Bel, Neth) 109 mins
Dhont won the best debut Caméra d’Or for this study of a 15-year-old trans dancer, inspired by the real-life experiences of Nora Monsecour, who has outspokenly defended the film after a barrage of criticism from trans activists, with much of the controversy focusing on the casting of male actor Victor Polster in the lead role.
Captain Marvel (12A)
(Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019, US) 124 mins
The latest offering from the Marvel Cinematic Universe has roared out of the traps, despite the attempts of internet trolls to disrupt it; a massive opening-weekend box office has trumped the neggy reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and similar places. Brie Larson has entirely proved her worth as the hybrid human-alien warrior, fighting with the Kree against shapeshifting baddies the Skrulls.
Foxtrot (15)
(Samuel Maoz, 2017, Isr/Swi/Ger/Fr) 113 mins
Israeli director Maoz, a former tank gunner, has already chronicled his experiences in the award-winning drama Lebanon; here he takes a wider-ranging view of the internal stresses created by the country’s near-permanent state of war readiness. A soldier goes missing while on duty at an isolated checkpoint, but has the army bureaucracy correctly identified him? And what has he been up do anyhow?
The Kindergarten Teacher (12)
(Sara Colangelo, 2018, US) 96 mins
A fine showcase for Maggie Gyllenhaal, with an all-too-rare starring role in a remake of an Israeli film. She plays a pre-schoolers’ educator transfixed by a kid with an apparent gift for stream-of conscious poetry. Gyllenhaal’s performance as an obsessed woman falling apart at the seams is one to admire.
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
NAO
In a right and just world, NAO’s second album Saturn would have been No 1 for at least two months. A glorious fusion of forward-thinking R&B, jazz and, erm, astrology, it was one of 2018’s few proper high points. But slow-burning success stories are still a thing, so fingers crossed that this tour reminds people of one of the UK’s best vocalists.
Manchester, Wednesday 20; Leeds, Thursday 21; Birmingham, Friday 22; touring to 28 March
Sharon Van Etten
A lot changed for Sharon Van Etten between 2014’s raw Are We There and this year’s Remind Me Tomorrow. She became a mother, starred in the batshit Netflix drama The OA and studied for a degree in psychology. The breather’s clearly worked, with Remind Me ... fleshing out her tempestuous rock with corrosive synths.
Birmingham, Thursday 21; Manchester, Friday 22; touring to 27 March
The Internet
It’s a wonder the Internet found time to make their fourth album, last year’s soft-focus R&B opus Hive Mind, now that their members are some of music’s most sought-after collaborators, working with the likes of Solange, Kali Uchis and Blood Orange. But they did, obviously, and have now carved out even more time to tour it. So that’s good.
O2 Academy Brixton, SW9, Thursday 21; Glasgow, SWG3: TV Studio, Friday 22; touring to 27 March
Roses Gabor
Keen to eschew your typical genre divisions, UK singer-songwriter Roses Gabor (pictured, below) classifies the music she makes as “feels”. Vague as that might be, it’s also the perfect description for her excellent debut album, Fantasy & Facts, a lush collection of dreamlike storytelling featuring Sampha and co-production from MNEK.
St Pancras Old Church, NW1, Monday 18 March
MC
Soft Machine
The first night of the seventh Bristol jazz festival weekender embraces Gypsy swing, jazz-funk, French accordion waltzes – and legendary UK fusion pioneers Soft Machine’s brew of 1960s psychedelia and hard-driving jazz. Playing old and new Softs pieces, this gig features three members of the band’s 70s lineup, including irrepressibly imaginative guitarist John Etheridge.
University of Bristol Students’ Union, Friday 22 March
JF
Four of the best ... classical concerts
La Forza Del Destino
If you must hear Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann in Christof Loy’s new Verdi production, be prepared to pay an eye-watering price. But there are plenty of seats left for performances featuring just one, or neither, of the big names; Liudmyla Monastyrska and Yusif Eyvazov are the alternatives.
Royal Opera House, WC2, Thursday 21 to 22 April
Shostakovich
Complementing Birmingham Opera Company’s production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts the CBSO in works composed by Shostakovich around the same time. There’s the First Piano Concerto, a suite from the ballet The Limpid Stream, and the Fifth Symphony, written in response to the authorities’ “just criticism”.
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Saturday 16 March
Brahms and Schumann
As if the opportunity to hear András Schiff as the soloist in both of Brahms’s piano concertos with the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment wasn’t enough of a treat, the first concert (repeated in Basingstoke) also includes Schumann’s Konzertstück, played on the natural instruments for which it was written.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Monday 18 & Tuesday 19; The Anvil, Basingstoke, Wednesday 20 March
Barbara Hannigan
The Barbican’s portrait of the Canadian soprano comes to an end with a concert showcasing her multiple talents. Hannigan conducts Ligeti and Haydn before becoming the soloist in Berg’s Lulu Suite and extracts from Gershwin’s Girl Crazy; she conducts those too, of course.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Sunday 17 March
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Mike Nelson
The atmospheric environments of this artistic storyteller take you on sinister trips into seedy labyrinths. Nelson creates places in the underneath of the imagination, where his audience feels trapped, lost and adrift. Is he trying to disturb us, or to entertain? Either way, this is art with the engrossing power and pleasure of good theatre.
Tate Britain, SW1, Monday 18 March to 6 October
Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light
The paintings of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida are lush and almost surreal. His intensely coloured scenes make everything look like a dream. Sorolla painted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and his art is easy to class as impressionism. Yet it has a glowing, tropical strangeness all of its own.
National Gallery, WC2, Monday 18 March to 7 July
Martin Parr
As we enter the Brexit endgame, the photographs of Martin Parr put Britishness, in all its awkwardness, comedy and tragedy, on display. Parr’s highly coloured and ironically framed images are essays in instant anthropology. Whether he is photographing food on a plate or the Queen on a royal visit, he captures the symbols that can be expressed in a fry-up or a frock. He couldn’t be anything but a British artist.
National Portrait Gallery, WC2, to 27 May
Anthea Hamilton
We live in prudish times – at least according to Hamilton, whose installation The Prude is an exploration of prissiness and sexual dishonesty. It is inspired by Cecil Vyse in EM Forster’s A Room With a View. The peculiar juxtaposition of times and styles is typical of this clever artist. So is the emphasis on sex. Hamilton has the flamboyant panache of a 1960s pop artist and an irrepressible sense of the odd.
Thomas Dane Gallery, SW1, to 18 May
Hew Locke
Britain’s imperial past and colonial legacy are the themes of Locke’s art of bricolage. Souvenir 1 (pictured) is a bust of Queen Victoria transformed to reveal the true history of her empire. She is covered with gold, bronze and silver medals, and plaques that tell a tale of violence. An African portrait is superimposed on her face. This and other works, new and old, give an overview of Locke’s distinctive, political art.
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, to 2 June
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Downstate
Critics compared Bruce Norris’s Pulitzer-winning satire, Clybourne Park, to “watching a boil being lanced”. His latest play, Downstate, has been called a “great squirmy moral-thrill-ride”. Norris’s plays aren’t easy but they are provocative and often brutally funny. Downstate follows a group of convicted paedophiles, asking what happens to those whom society deems beyond forgiveness?
National Theatre: Dorfman, SE1, to 27 April
The Bay at Nice
Playwright David Hare, actor Penelope Wilton and director Richard Eyre: three theatrical titans reunite to stage a major revival of The Bay at Nice. The play is set in Leningrad, 1956, and also stars W1A star Ophelia Lovibond. Mother and daughter come to blows when their political beliefs and domestic desires collide.
The Menier Chocolate Factory, SE1, to 4 May
Nora: A Doll’s House
The Citizens Women season opens with Stef Smith’s radical reworking of Ibsen’s A Doll House. Smith reframes Nora’s story across three time zones: the fight for women’s suffrage in 1918, the swinging 60s and the present day. The season also includes Cora Bissett’s autobiographical What Girls Are Made Of and Zinnie Harris’s take on John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. All shows will run at Tramway while the Citizens Theatre undergoes redevelopment.
Tramway, Glasgow, to 6 April
The Rubenstein Kiss
James Phillips thinks the timing is plum for a revival of his drama based on the true story of the Jewish couple Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, executed in 1953 for allegedly providing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. “Our current fraught political moment – where so many are trying again to test the limits of political idealism, where we read daily of Russian agents in our country and in the US – seems a perfect time to revive the play.” Agreed.
Southwark Playhouse, SE1, to 13 April
Edmond de Bergerac
Alexis Michalik’s hit play was inspired by Shakespeare in Love. It opened in Paris in 2016 and still plays to packed houses. It’s about Edmond Rostand, who was only 29 when he wrote the classic French comedy, Cyrano de Bergerac. Freddie Fox plays the playwright and is joined by Henry Goodman as a preening superstar, Josie Lawrence as theatrical legend Sarah Bernhardt, and Chizzy Akudolu as faded star Maria.
Birmingham Rep, to 30 March; touring to 4 May
MG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Mark Morris Dance Group: Pepperland
Originally created for the Sgt Pepper album’s 50th anniversary in 2017, Mark Morris’s Pepperland embarks on an extensive UK tour. This is no Beatles jukebox musical, as the US choreographer makes a colourful, witty and entertaining tribute set to a new score by Ethan Iverson, “extrapolated” from the record’s biggest hits.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Wednesday 20 to 23 March, touring to 1 May
Quarantine: Wallflower
Following 90-minute and five-hour versions of Quarantine’s Wallflower, this one goes for the long haul: a mammoth 12-hour performance. It’s a semi-improvised show that asks its performers to remember every time they ever danced. Different every time, Wallflower is funny, poignant, and bound to spark flashbacks.
Findhorn, Friday 22 March
Scottish Dance Theatre: Velvet Petal
A reworked version of Fleur Darkin’s raucous piece. Velvet Petal is inspired by Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids and Robert Mapplethorpe’s flower Polaroids, with music from PJ Harvey, the Cure and LCD Soundsystem.
Newcastle upon Tyne, Saturday 16; London, Wednesday 20 & Thursday 21 March; touring to 13 April
LW
