Five of the best ... films

Us (15)

(Jordan Peele, 2019, US) 116 mins

Having knocked everyone’s socks off with groundbreakingly woke horror flick Get Out (as well as producing Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman), Jordan Peele is back with this tremendously unsettling horror-thriller. Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke are the couple-with-kids who head down to the lake for a holiday; what they encounter there is as much a social parable as a shocker.

The White Crow (12A)

(Ralph Fiennes, 2018, UK/Fr) 127 mins

Ralph Fiennes makes his third foray into directing – after his Coriolanus adaptation and The Invisible Woman, about Dickens’s secret lover Nelly Ternan – to take on the subject of Rudolf Nureyev: ballet dancer, ego-tripping hedonist and political hot potato. This is an intelligent and essentially respectful take on one of the key figures of the cold war.

Girl (15)

(Lukas Dhont, 2018, Bel/Neth) 109 mins

Lukas Dhont’s Camera d’Or winner has turned into something of a lightning rod for criticism: its account of a 15-year-old trans ballet dancer has been accused of fetishising its subject, as well as failing to cast a trans actor in the lead. On the other hand, it has been fully endorsed by its inspiration, dancer Nora Monsecour, which should count for a great deal.

Border (15)

(Ali Abbasi, 2019, Swe) 110 mins

This powerful parable of outsiderdom from Iran-born director Ali Abbasi is a tremendous watch. Eva Melander is the social misfit of a customs officer, endowed with an amazing sense of smell but very much not comfortable in her own skin. Her miserable existence is turned around when the unapologetic Vore (Eero Milonoff) – just as much an outsider – ambles into view.

Captain Marvel (12A)

(Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019, US) 124 mins

Marvel’s latest superhero yarn is well on its way to champion blockbuster status; it has very much seen off the trolls and their attempt to wreck its release. Boden and Fleck, arguably Marvel’s oddest choice yet as directors, make the transition from small-scale indies to the big bucks with style, helped along by Oscar winner Brie Larson.

AP

Five of the best ... rock & pop

Childish Gambino

Actor, writer, producer, director and musician Donald Glover returns to his Childish Gambino moniker for two dates at London’s cavernous O2 arena. Originally scheduled for last November in the wake of the chart-dominating This Is America, but cancelled at the last minute due to a foot injury, expect a career-spanning set plus, hopefully, a smattering of new songs.
The O2, SE10, Sunday 24 & Monday 25 March

Panic! At the Disco

With their ludicrous song titles and baroque musical flourishes, Panic! At the Disco were always more than your typical 00s emo band. Now essentially a solo project for frontman Brendon Urie, their pop-leaning High Hopes single was a huge global hit last year, hence this extensive run of arenas.
Glasgow, Sunday 24; Cardiff, Monday 25; Birmingham, Tuesday 26; The O2, SE10, Thursday 28 & Friday 29; touring to 30 March

CupcakKe

Rapper Elizabeth Harris, AKA CupcakKe, has quite a vivid imagination. On her recent album Eden, she refers to her vagina variously as Garfield, a furnace, soup, a keyboard and, most intriguingly, a car parallel parking. It’s this playful imagination that’s attracted the attention of collaborator Charli XCX, while a recent tweet about a studio love-in suggests that Lady Gaga is also a fan.
Glasgow, Wednesday 27; Dublin, Thursday 28; London, Friday 29; touring to 31 March

Grace Carter

Brighton-born Grace Carter’s brand of heart-on-your-sleeve piano pop has so far caught the attention of Dua Lipa and Haim, who both took her out on tour, while industry “experts” voted her third in the BBC Sound of 2019 poll. There is an album due this year, apparently, but for now feel free to wallow in her tear-stained debut single, Silence.
Manchester, Sunday 24; Birmingham, Wednesday 27; London, Thursday 28; Brighton, Friday 29 March

MC

Nigel Kennedy Plays Krzysztof Komeda

Classical violin star Nigel Kennedy first played Ronnie Scott’s with the swing-fiddle maestro Stéphane Grappelli when he was just 14. On this periodic revisit, he devotes his vivacious and sympathetically attuned jazz persona to the music of the late Polish pianist and film score composer Krzysztof Komeda.
Ronnie Scott’s, W1, Monday 25 to Friday 29 March

JF

Three of the best ... classical concerts

The Public Domain

Not a traditional London Symphony Orchestra concert by any means. François-Xavier Roth’s programme begins in the foyer of the Barbican, with the first UK performance of David Lang’s The Public Domain, involving 500 singers, before moving into the auditorium. Even then, things aren’t entirely conventional, for Philippe Manoury’s Ring disperses the orchestra and a huge percussion section around the hall. After that, there is the world premiere of Donghoon Shin’s Kafka’s Dream, commissioned for the LSO, and to cap it all Scriabin’s orgasmic Poem of Ecstasy.
Barbican Hall & Foyer, EC2, Sunday 24 March

Avet Terterian

Kirill Karabits may not include much contemporary music in his Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concerts, but he does introduce composers who are little known in western Europe. The latest is the Third Symphony by the Armenian Avet Terterian, who died in 1994. With roles for two traditional instruments – the duduk and the zurna – it promises everything from microtones to cataclysmic climaxes and clangorous bells.
Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts, Wednesday 27 March

Berenice

This year’s London Handel festival gets under way with a revival of an opera first seen at the Covent Garden Theatre in 1737, and never performed again on that site until now. Directed by Adele Thomas and conducted by Laurence Cummings, it features soprano Claire Booth in the title role of the Egyptian queen, who is in love with a Macedonian prince and defends her right to choose her own husband.
Royal Opera House: Linbury Theatre, WC2, Wednesday 27 March to 7 April

AC

Five of the best ... exhibitions

Van Gogh and Britain

Before Vincent van Gogh became an artist, he worked in London for the art dealer Goupil et Fils. It turned out to be a tempestuous time during which he fell in (unrequited) love, abandoned the art trade, worked as a teacher and a missionary and became a fan of Charles Dickens. How does his time in Britain echo in his work?
Tate Britain, SW1, Wednesday 27 March to 11 August

Akram Zaatari

This acclaimed Lebanese artist uses video and photography to question and subvert the ways Arab men are represented in the west. His attack on orientalism finds an ally online; in his video The Script, he restages YouTube clips of men praying in spite of interruptions; in Dance To the End of Love he explores constructions of masculinity.
Modern Art Oxford, Saturday 23 March to 12 May

Susan Derges

Greenwich is a microcosm of British history, from the Tudors who had a palace here to Nelson’s navy and the merchant shipping of empire. One of its most symbol-packed treasures is the Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I. The painting, which boasts of Britain’s defeat of Spain, has inspired Susan Derges to create photo-based works playing on the image of the moon, associated in the Elizabethan age with the virgin goddess Diana and hence the Virgin Queen herself.
The Queen’s House, SE10, to 5 January

Jeremy Deller

British history has been Deller’s theme ever since he got the Williams Fairey Brass Band to play acid house anthems and drew a diagram that connected this quirky sound with Margaret Thatcher and the miners’ strike. Since then, he has restaged the battle of Orgreave and brought first world war soldiers back to life. Here he returns to the period in which he was becoming an adult in a project that promises An Incomplete History of Britain, 1984-1992.
Modern Institute, Glasgow, to 11 May

Senga Nengudi

US sculptor Nengudi started her career in the 60s and has been at the heart of avant-garde experiments in New York and Los Angeles for half a century. In a series of sculptures called RSVP, she fills pairs of tights with sand and stretches them in space to create frail, tender images of the human body. In other works she explores the power of the spiritual and ritualistic.
The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, to 26 May

JJ

Five of the best ... theatre shows

Fiddler on the Roof

Trevor Nunn’s revival of Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s musical was so great the critics ran out of puns (“This fiddler raises the roof!”). Its antisemitic rumblings feel horribly relevant right now and Bock’s score is packed with rousing songs (If I Were a Rich Man; Sunrise, Sunset) that hum with joyous melancholy. Andy Nyman and Judy Kuhn reprise their roles in this Menier transfer.
Playhouse Theatre, WC2, to 15 June

Grief Is the Thing With Feathers

Max Porter’s award-winning novel was a delicate construction: a fragile and lyrical tale about a family dealing with grief. Luckily, the theatrical wunderteam of actor Cillian Murphy and writer Enda Walsh are behind its stage adaptation. When these two collaborate, strange and wonderful things happen.
Barbican Theatre, EC2, Monday 25 March to 13 April

Kunene and the King

Antony Sher and John Kani are huge theatrical talents, and both were born in South Africa. The two starred in Janice Honeyman’s African version of The Tempest in 2009, with Sher as Prospero and Kani as his monster slave Caliban. Now this powerhouse of a creative trio reunite for the world premiere of Kani’s latest play, which is about a white South African Shakespearean actor and his black South African carer.
Royal Shakespeare Theatre: Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, to 23 April

Dear Europe

You might not have noticed, but the Brexit clock is ticking. At the time of going to press, the UK is set to leave the EU at 11pm on Friday. So, for that very night, the National Theatre of Scotland has pulled together a stupendously inventive group of theatre-makers to create a series of films, solo-shows, gigs – plus a “sci-fi jailbreak musical” – to explore Scotland’s relationship with Europe. Gary McNair hosts.
SWG3: Galvanizers, Glasgow, Friday 29 March

The Phlebotomist

Ella Road’s debut play has just been nominated for an Olivier award. Impressive. Sam Yates’s sparky production opened in Hampstead’s studio space last year and now transfers upstairs, where it will have a little more space to breathe. It’s a frightening play set in a bleak future, where a person’s genetic coding determines everything – from online dating success to job possibilities and mortgage deals. Jade Anouka stars.
Hampstead Theatre, NW3, to 20 April

MG

Three of the best ... dance shows

Luca Silvestrini’s Protein: Border Tales

The countdown to Brexit is upon us, and what better way to mark it than with a one-off performance of Protein’s Border Tales, a piece of pointed dance-music-theatre about migration, stereotypes and multiculturalism. The piece was developed in 2013 through research with refugees in Europe and Italian choreographer Silvestrini’s own experiences.
The Lowry, Salford, Friday 29 March

BalletLORENT: After Dark

Liv Lorent’s company put on an intimate cabaret, inviting audiences on to the stage, which is turned into a low-lit bar. Dancers move among the crowd, performing extracts from Lorent’s works, pushing themselves to physical and emotional limits.
Theatre Royal, Newcastle upon Tyne, Thursday 28 to 30 March

Royal Ballet: Romeo and Juliet

Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet is one of the cornerstones of the Royal Ballet repertoire, full of drama and passion. This season sees debuts from young talents including Anna Rose O’Sullivan, Marcelino Sambé and Cesar Corrales.
Royal Opera House, WC2, Tuesday 26 March to 11 June

LW

Main comp image: National Galleries of Scotland; Tim Walker; Scott Garfitt/Rex/Shutterstock; Universal Pictures; Luke Waddington