Five of the best ... films
Hereditary (15)
(Ari Aster, 2018, US) 127 mins
Closer to Rosemary’s Baby or The Shining than your standard jump-scare horror, this grim family tale favours a slow release of paranoia and grief, suggesting something nasty in the bloodline. Anchored by a brilliant Toni Collette, it is highly accomplished in terms of artistry and performances but, most importantly, it’s scary as hell.
A Ciambra (15)
(Jonas Carpignano, 2017, Ita/Bra/Ger/Fra/Swe/US) 118 mins
We are embedded with the Romani community of southern Italy for this almost documentary-like drama. It’s a modern landscape of poverty, criminality, tight-knit community and children smoking fags, through which we follow resourceful 14-year-old Pio (Pio Amato), who must step up when his male elders are all jailed.
The Happy Prince (15)
(Rupert Everett, 2018, Ger/Bel/UK/Ita) 105 mins
This is no vanity project. Everett uglifies himself considerably to portray Oscar Wilde in his final years: exiled in Europe and broken by the ravages of prison, public vilification, heartbreak and ill health, casting back to the glory days. Despite his inexperience as a director, Everett as a performer has never been better.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (12A)
(JA Bayona, 2018, US/Spa) 128 mins
It is not exactly a giant leap for dinosaur-kind, but this latest instalment brings the requisite megafauna spectacle with visual panache, as well as putting some eco-themed meat on the prehistoric bones. It also brings the Jurassic livestock closer to home, making for a second half that could almost be a haunted-house movie. Dino-lovers Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard come to the rescue.
McQueen (15)
(Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui, 2018, UK) 111 mins
One of the few designers whose work resonates beyond fashion, Alexander McQueen would make for a fascinating subject purely on the strength of his era-defining works. His personal story is similarly unique: from East End roots to Paris haute couture to his tragic death in 2010, with a host of colourful personalities along the way. This intimate film stitches things together with skill and intelligence.
SR
Five of the best ... rock & pop gigs
Isle of Wight festival
If you ignore the headliners – the Killers (obviously), Kasabian (of course), Liam Gallagher (as you were, etc) – there are some pleasant surprises on the lineup for what used to be known as the summer’s first big festival. Megastar-in-the-making Camila Cabello brings the pop, Van Morrison the chance for a nice sit down and Jessie J a unique blend of music and comedy.
Seaclose Park, Newport, Thursday 21 to 24 June
Krrum
Leeds-based producer, songwriter and full-time beard manicurist Alex Carrie makes slightly sinister dance music that absorbs the harder edges of electronica and pairs them with an unshakeable pop sensibility. These shows are perfectly timed as he has just released his debut album, Honeymoon.
Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, N1, Wednesday 20; Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, Friday 22 June
Monsta X
Despite being slightly in the shade of fellow South Korean seven-piece BTS, who recently scored a US No 1 album, Monsta X aren’t trailing behind when it comes to expertly drilled choreography, throwback boyband melodies and OTT videos (see recent single Jealousy). This one-off London show – made possible by the tenacity of their British fans, or “Monbebes” – is in support of their recent EP, The Connect: Dejavu.
Eventim Apollo, W6, Sunday 17 June
Anna Calvi
Five years after her last album, Twickenham’s own Mercury prize-nominated Anna Calvi will return in late August with Hunter, her self-described “queer and feminist record”, featuring production from Nick Launay (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nick Cave) alongside banging and crashing of various instruments from members of Portishead and the Bad Seeds. Expect raw emotions and some light moshing.
Heaven, WC2, Tuesday 19 June
MC
Jubilee
Composer-improviser Basel Rajoub, a saxophonist who hauntingly fuses the instrument’s western scales with Arabic music’s microtonalities, brings a world-jazz flavour to Jubilee, a multicultural epic featuring dozens of artists from Malian ngoni player Bassekou Kouyaté to Chinese lute virtuoso Wu Man and the US’s prolific Kronos Quartet.
Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Wednesday 20 June
JF
Three of the best ... classical concerts
Oliver Knussen
Oliver Knussen’s connections with the Aldeburgh festival run deep. This year, he conducts two concerts, first taking charge of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Feldman, Copland and the premiere of Philip Cashian’s Piano Concerto (Sat). He will also curate a typical Knussen programme with the Aldeburgh Festival Ensemble (Mon), which includes more Feldman, Nicolaou and two Harrison Birtwistle premieres: a song cycle, Three Songs from The Holy Forest, and Keyboard Engine, commissioned for Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich.
Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Saturday 16; Britten Studio, Saxmundham, Monday 18 June
Scordatura Ensemble
The Amsterdam-based Scordatura Ensemble perform the wonderfully original microtonal music of American experimentalist Harry Partch, using many of the instruments the composer himself designed. They make a rare British appearance with a programme including perhaps his best-known work, Cloud Chamber Music. It forms part of Rose Petal Jam, Scordatura’s year-long exploration of Partch’s early works, including commissions of pieces inspired by his legacy.
Cafe Oto, E8, Monday 18 June
Cave
Three years ago, English National Opera gave the premiere of composer Tansy Davies and librettist Nick Drake’s 9/11 opera, Between Worlds. Their follow-up is a music-theatre piece in collaboration with London Sinfonietta and the Royal Opera House. Cave is a two-hander set in a dystopian future of rising sea levels, in which a grieving man tries to make contact with his lost daughter. Tenor Mark Padmore and contralto Elaine Mitchener are the protagonists.
Printworks, SE16, Wednesday 20 to 23 June
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up
The surrealist imagination of Frida Kahlo expressed itself not just in painting and writing but in the way she lived. She crafted herself as a work of art, then painted the wonder she became. This intimate encounter with the stuff of her self-creation brings together colourful clothes, makeup and even the prosthetic leg she wore.
Victoria & Albert Museum, SW7, Saturday 17 June to 4 November
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo’s giant floating sculpture on the Serpentine lake is guaranteed to be the star art of the summer. It is the latest chapter in one of the most spectacular careers in contemporary art. A simultaneous survey at the Serpentine Gallery shows how Christo and his late collaborator and wife Jeanne-Claude enlarged the idea of art.
Serpentine Gallery, W2, Tuesday 19 June to 9 September
Patrick Heron
Abstract art is not quite the British thing. Compared with such American artists as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock or continental Europeans like Mondrian and Malevich, there is a reluctance or inability by homegrown painters to dive into pure poems of colour. Heron had no such inhibitions. His bright and seductive paintings lack the wildness of Pollock or profundity of Rothko but have a gentle decorative beauty.
Tate St Ives, to 30 September
Astérix in Britain
The plucky Gaul who gets his strength from magic potion and repeatedly beats up whole armies of Romans may seem the quintessence of French nationalism, but he has always found a ready audience in Britain. This exhibition charts the translations of Astérix’s adventures and how funny names in French had to be reinvented in English. It also celebrates René Goscinny, the Jewish co-creator of these great historical comics.
Jewish Museum, NW1, to 30 September
Raqib Shaw
The sensual gossamer vision of this pleasurable painter feasts on art history. Shaw is truly erudite in his exploration of great paintings from the past. Lucas Cranach, Jan Gossaert and Victorian fairy painter Joseph Noel Paton all provide inspiration here. Yet Shaw mixes this European heritage with Asian perspectives in glistening, bizarrely mystical celebrations of colour.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, to 28 October
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Killer Joe
A Stetsoned Orlando Bloom is the titular detective with a murderous sideline in Tracy Letts’s gothic, sometimes violent and laconic tale of dishonour among so-called trailer trash, first seen at the Bush Theatre in 1995 and made into a film in 2011. Bloom’s watchable performance has a hint of Clint, and there’s a new use for a KFC drumstick.
Trafalgar Studios, SW1, to 18 August
Happy Days
Maxine Peake clearly loves to immerse herself in a role and here she is, for a time, literally up to her neck in it, as Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s iconic 1961 piece. Sarah Frankcom has updated Beckett’s existential near-monologue with a revolving mound of earth, webcams and strewn plastic rubbish suggesting ecological concerns.
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, to 23 June
The Jungle
First-time playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson set up the Good Chance theatre company in the refugee camp at Calais. This work, first seen at the Young Vic, is an account of the camp from 2015 until it was bulldozed a year later, and many of the torrid individual tales found within. An inspiring story of human resilience and resourcefulness, it also finds the French and UK governments wanting, Theresa May in particular.
Playhouse Theatre, WC2, Saturday 16 June to 3 November
The Rink
John Kander and Fred Ebb are best known for writing Chicago and Cabaret. This later show may lack those mega-hits’ razzmatazz but the cast deliver in spades. It’s a smaller, more personal, story of an estranged mother and daughter, as the latter returns home to stop their roller venue being demolished. Caroline O’Connor as the tough but tender matriarch Anna is especially strong. It’s the last week: get your skates on.
Southwark Playhouse, SE1, to 23 June
Leave Taking
When the Bush programmed Winsome Pinnock’s pioneering 1988 play about a Jamaican family in London, it couldn’t have known that the Windrush scandal would blow up. Now shocking in its topical nature, it follows the daily struggles of different generations to survive and feel at home. One character remarks of paying £50 to secure his UK citizenship “till them change them mind again”. You couldn’t make it up.
The Bush Theatre, W12, to 30 June
MC
Three of the best ... dance shows
Ann Van den Broek: Loops of Behaviour
It is your last chance to catch the total experience that Flemish choreographer Van den Broek has created especially for the Curve. Inspired by Peter Handke’s play Self-Accusation, it combines live performance, text, sound and video projection to give sensuous form to fugitive emotional states.
Barbican Centre: The Curve, EC2, to Sunday 17 June
Semperoper Ballett
The Dresden-based company makes a rare appearance in the UK with this all-Forsythe triple bill. Aside from the classic In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, Forsythe’s wittily deconstructed ballet style is showcased in Neue Suite and the electrifying Enemy in the Figure. Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Thursday 21 to 23 June
Candoco Dance Company: Dedicated to …
Caroline Bowditch’s new work for the excellent Candoco dancers is a homage to female friendship, choreographing the ways in which women shape and support each other’s lives. There are also dates in August: in Stockton-on-Tees and Salisbury.
mac, Birmingham, Saturday 16 June
JM
