Five of the best… films
Late Night (15)
(Nisha Ganatra, 2019, US) 102 mins
Emma Thompson is at her acerbic best as past-her-prime NYC talkshow host Katherine Newbury, who desperately needs to bring her image up to date, and fast, in this familiar but frequently hilarious workplace comedy. Mindy Kaling – who also scripted – co-stars as an aspiring standup whose “diversity hire” causes much panic in the all-white, all-male writers’ room.
Gloria Bell (15)
(Sebastián Lelio, 2018, Chi/US) 102 mins
Following the acclaimed lesbian drama Disobedience last year, Lelio’s remake of his own 2013 arthouse hit Gloria moves the action from Santiago, Chile, to LA. Julianne Moore stars as the title character, a divorcee with two grownup children who stumbles upon a potential new partner at a singles bar, in this brilliantly acted, adult character study.
Halston (12A)
(Frédéric Tcheng, 2019, US) 105 mins
Halston was once the biggest deal in women’s fashion, rising from milliner to the First Lady – he created Jackie O’s pillbox hat – to Saks Fifth Avenue superstar and Studio 54 hellraiser. This doc traces his rise and self-inflicted fall, with testimony from those who were there and – in the case of former party animals Liza Minnelli and Joel Schumacher – possibly not all there.
Kind Hearts and Coronets (U)
(Robert Hamer, 1949, UK) 102 mins
As a clash of class divisions continues to drive wedges in modern British society, there has never been a better time to revisit this jet-black comedy, restored for its 70th birthday. Dennis Price stars as the son of a disgraced aristocrat who takes revenge for his dead mother by murdering her bloodline, all played – even the women – by Alec Guinness.
Booksmart (15)
(Olivia Wilde, 2019, US) 102 mins
Following the likes of Eighth Grade and Support the Girls, Booksmart arrives at a good time for female-fronted indie cinema, with the added bonus of a woman behind the camera. Olivia Wilde’s debut is its own sweet thing: a funny and touching comedy about a pair of graduating high-school girls who realise that studying hard and partying harder aren’t as mutually exclusive as they thought.
DW
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Parklife
Kickstarting the official beginning of the festival season is Manchester’s Parklife, which offers up a properly amazing selection of music’s finest, from Solange to Yaeji to Cardi B via Kaytranada and Christine and the Queens. Or, if none of that floats your boat, you could cry at Mark Ronson’s sad bangers, croon along with Khalid, or go and get a drink while Chase & Status are on.
Heaton Park, Manchester, Saturday 8 & Sunday 9 June
Tame Impala
Four long years have passed since Australian psych rockers Tame Impala released third album Currents. Earlier this year, two new songs – the typically widescreen double whammy of Patience and Borderline – suggested they were about to unleash a follow-up but it’s all gone quiet again. Still, there will be enough here to keep your mind frazzled while we wait.
The O2, SE10, Saturday 8; touring to 26 June
Erykah Badu, Jhené Aiko
After previously playing the return of the hugely influential Long Beach-based R&B festival Smokin’ Grooves in 2018, two of the genre’s more experimental exponents arrive in UK for a co-headline show. It’s not clear who will be doing what and when, or if Aiko and Badu will collaborate, so best just to sit back and let it all wash over you.
The O2, SE10, Sunday 9 June
Backstreet Boys
Proving that you shouldn’t underestimate nostalgia and precision-tooled choreography, ageing boyband the Backstreet Boys scored their first US No 1 album in 19 years in January with DNA. It went Top 10 in the UK too, hence another arena tour. Expect a smattering from that collection but obviously only stand up when it comes to those classic early 00s bops and bangers.
Manchester Arena, Monday 10; The SSE Hydro, Glasgow, Friday 14; touring to 18 June
MC
Tori Freestone Trio
Tori Freestone’s favourite resources – unplugged sax, bass and drums – might be unassuming, but the stories she and her trio tell are vividly eloquent. An alert, uncliched improviser but also a subtle song-cherisher (she’s also a folk violinist), Freestone here tours her new trio album, El Mar de Nubes.
Bristol, Saturday 8; Southampton, Sunday 9; Sheffield, Wednesday 12; Newcastle upon Tyne, Thursday 13; touring to 18 June
JF
Three of the best ... classical concerts
Weimar Berlin: The Sounds of Change
One of the features of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s decade as the principal conductor of the Philharmonia has been themed series. The latest focuses on Germany between the two world wars, particularly Berlin during the Weimar republic. All the usual suspects are represented in the two concerts this week. Salonen conducts the first, with music by Berg, Hindemith, Weill and Shostakovich, while Thursday’s is devoted to a screening of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, with the Philharmonia playing Gottfried Huppertz’s original score.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Sunday 9 & Thursday 13 June
Fantasio
Garsington Opera’s third new show celebrates the bicentenary of the birth of Jacques Offenbach with the first UK staging of his 1872 opéra comique. Fantasio is a typical melange of disguise and thwarted love, with the title role of the dreamer in love with an unattainable princess played by a mezzo-soprano. Here, that’s Hanna Hipp, with Jennifer France as the princess. It is directed by Martin Duncan; Justin Doyle conducts.
Wormsley Estate, nr High Wycombe, Friday 14 June to 20 July
Il Paria
Opera Rara’s raison d’etre is to revive forgotten 19th-century operas and its latest project is a work by Donizetti. Despite some dramatic flaws, 1829’s Il Paria (The Outcast) was regarded as the composer’s finest achievement up to that point, but it was never really successful and Donizetti recycled some of its music in other operas. Albina Shagimuratova and Celso Albelo lead the cast as Mark Elder conducts the Britten Sinfonia in a concert performance.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Saturday 8 June
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Keith Haring
New York City in the 1980s was a huge canvas for Keith Haring, who created his own graphic language of simplified human figures bopping in a nightclub that never closed and used it in everything from street art to canvases and posters. His pop cartoons have influenced animation from The Simpsons to Rick and Morty. His optimism lifts you up.
Tate Liverpool, Friday 14 June to 10 November
Kiss My Genders
Art that challenges fixed and binary identities and explores new ways of seeing our carnality comes to the Hayward in a summer of sexual subversion. Artists in this gender-fluid blockbuster include Joan Jett Blakk, Catherine Opie, Planningtorock, Athi-Patra Ruga and Del LaGrace Volcano.
Hayward Gallery, SE1, Wednesday 12 June to 8 September
Bartolomé Bermejo
A red-eyed devil cowers at the feet of a Christian warrior in Bermejo’s powerful painting St Michael Triumphs Over the Devil. This vision of holy war was painted in Spain in 1468 during a century of Christian “reconquest”. Jews came under increasing pressure to convert while the Muslim Spanish kingdom Al-Andalus was defeated. Bermejo’s art shows the making of this new imperial, Christian Spain.
The National Gallery, WC2, Wednesday 12 June to 29 September
Summer Exhibition 2019
The RA’s annual exhibition of the good, the bad and, who knows, perhaps even the beautiful, got a lift last year when Grayson Perry turned it into a psychological carnival. The latest instalment continues that contemporary edge with Mat Collishaw, Polly Morgan and more creating a “menagerie” of perverted nature, and such stalwarts as Anselm Kiefer and Tracey Emin showing among less famous names.
Royal Academy of Arts, W1, Monday 10 June to 12 August
NOW: Anya Gallaccio
Gallaccio uses the stuff of nature to make sculptures, bringing flowers, trees, wax and ice into the gallery. She is a very 21st-century exponent of an organic and ecological style of art-making that started with Italy’s arte povera movement in the 1960s. This survey of the current art scene also points to images of natural processes in the works of Roger Hiorns and Charles Avery.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, to 22 September
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Sweat
Book your tickets pronto: Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer prize-winning play, directed by Lynette Linton, transfers to the West End for 50 performances only. Set in Pennsylvania between 2000 and 2008, Sweat explores the impact of deindustrialisation on factory worker friends, with a cast that includes Martha Plimpton. The play is based on two years of interviews and rings loud and true.
Gielgud Theatre, W1, to 20 July
Bitter Wheat
Who’s up for the world premiere of a David Mamet play about a depraved, Harvey Weinstein-esque Hollywood mogul? It doesn’t sound hugely appealing, I’ll admit, but Mamet’s scabrous wit could work really well in this context. The big draw, of course, is John Malkovich, returning to the West End after a 30-year break. Mamet himself directs.
Garrick Theatre, WC2, to 21 September
Plenty
David Hare’s play is a bit like Hedda Gabler: the Second World War Years. The action revolves around Susan Traherne, a former secret agent who can’t find her place in a peaceful England; a world without danger, purpose or, for most of the women in Britain, meaningful employment. Rachael Stirling plays the title role. It’s a gargantuan part, previously taken by the likes of Cate Blanchett, Rachel Weisz and Meryl Streep.
Chichester Festival Theatre, to 29 June
The Pope
In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI resigned – an unprecedented move that shocked the world. The surprise replacement for the arch-conservative? Cardinal Bergoglio, a tango-dancing, football-loving reformer. What drove this changing of the guard and what might it mean for the future of the church? James Dacre directs Anton Lesser and Nicholas Woodeson in a new play from Anthony McCarten, writer of the film Bohemian Rhapsody.
Royal & Derngate: The Royal, Northampton, Saturday 8 to 22 June
Hobson’s Choice
Harold Brighouse’s popular comedy has been brightly adapted by Tanika Gupta. The action has been shifted to 1980s Manchester and its Ugandan-Asian community. Henry Hobson the shoemaker is now Hari the tailor (Tony Jayawardena) but the nuts and bolts of the story stay the same. Hari is behind the times. Hari doesn’t understand this new generation. Is Hari about to push his daughters one step too far?
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, to 6 July
MG
Three of the best ... dance shows
Birmingham Royal Ballet: [Un]leashed
The ballet world has stepped up in the last decade, as the outcry about its lack of female choreographers has gathered momentum. Here, Birmingham Royal Ballet does its bit for gender balance with a triple bill that includes homegrown talent Ruth Brill, alongside Didy Veldman and Jessica Lang.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Wednesday 12 to 15; Sadler’s Wells, EC1 25 & 26 June
No Woman’s Land
Spanish choreographer Avatâra Ayuso creates an unusual duet, performing with Inuk elder Naulaq LeDrew. The pair explore stories of their lives, homelands – the sunny Mediterranean and the frozen Canadian Arctic – and their experiences of migration. Part of Border Crossings’ Origins festival.
The Place, WC1, Friday 14 to 15 June
Margot Fonteyn: A Celebration
Britain’s most adored ballerina, the artist formerly known as Peggy Hookham, would have celebrated her 100th birthday last month. The Royal Ballet pays tribute to its prima ballerina assoluta with extracts from some of the roles Fonteyn made famous.
Royal Opera House, WC2, Saturday 8 June
LW
Main composite image: Eone; Andrew Ross; Johan Persson; Film Magic; © Keith Haring Foundation
