Five of the best ... films
Colette (15)
(Wash Westmoreland, 2018, UK) 112 mins
Intelligent, committed biopic of the French writer, AKA Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, portrayed by Keira Knightley as a sharp-witted country girl who is forced to fight for her rights in the sleazy atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Paris. Dominic West is on typically exuberant form as her husband, man about town Willy, who takes credit for her writing in an early exercise in literary branding.
The Favourite (15)
(Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018, Ire/UK/US) 119 mins
Entertainingly bonkers account of royal power struggles in the early 18th century, with Golden Globe winning Olivia Colman on rip-roaring form as the needy, petulant Queen Anne, and Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone as, respectively, power broker Sarah Churchill and wannabe newbie Abigail Hill. Deserves every award it is bound to get.
The Front Runner (15)
(Jason Reitman, 2018, US) 113 mins
Understated political drama about a presidential candidate under siege by the press: the candidate is Gary Hart, who was on course to challenge George HW Bush in 1988 before allegations of an affair emerged. Hart is played by that old smoothie Hugh Jackman, and director Jason Reitman resists the temptation to tell a grandstanding story, preferring to concentrate on what the public expects from its politicians, and vice versa.
Stan & Ollie (PG)
(Jon S Baird, 2018, UK/Can/US) 98 mins
A convincing approximation of the celebrated double act, with Steve Coogan as Laurel and John C Reilly as Hardy. This catches them in the early 1950s, on a music hall tour of the UK, a melancholic vision of legends in decline – not dissimilar to the 2017 Gloria Grahame biopic Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. A wistful treatment with low-key charm, evoking a vanished era.
Mary Poppins Returns (U)
(Rob Marshall, 2018, US) 130 mins
Disney’s sequel to its celebrated family hit plays more like a remake: it’s tonally identical to its predecessor, with no discernible difference to the action being set a generation later. The VFX are ritzier, to be sure, and Emily Blunt makes a sterner Poppins than Julie Andrews. Other than that, you basically get what you got in 1964.
AP
Five of the best ... rock & pop
Five Day Forecast
Now in its fifth year, the Five Day Forecast festival – curated by website The Line of Best Fit – has championed the likes of Pale Waves and Grace Carter. This year, its impressive lineup of new talent includes electropop practitioner Emily Burns, PC Music maverick Felicita and Gently Tender, a supergroup of sorts made up of members of Palma Violets and the Big Moon.
The Lexington, N1, Monday 14 to Friday 18 January
The Wave Pictures
Leicestershire’s finest indie ramblers, now celebrating their 20th year, head out on tour in support of last year’s 18th album, Look Inside Your Heart. If you’re questioning their old-school indie credentials then you’ll be happy to hear that 2016’s vinyl-only A Season in Hull was recorded live using just one mic.
Summerhall, Edinburgh, Friday 18 January; touring to 21 February
Ben Howard
Do you want to hear a fun fact about the otherwise not obviously very fun singer-songwriter Ben Howard? Great. Well, in 2014 Howard’s face appeared on the Totnes £10 note, an honour bestowed on the West Country’s most famous residents. Some more facts? Well, Howard has released three albums, won two Brit awards and has a famous fan in the shape of Noah Cyrus. That’s it.
O2 Academy Brixton, SW9, Wednesday 16 to 19; touring to 25 January
Youngr
Asked recently who he’d most like to collaborate with, the YouTube-dominating one-man band and son of Kid Creole, Dario Darnell AKA Youngr, said, erm, Simply Red. Fingers crossed he’ll ditch any planned cover of Something Got Me Started in favour of his usual crowd-pleaser: a joyous live remix of the Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition.
The Deaf Institute, Manchester, Thursday 17; Village Underground, EC2, Friday 18 January
MC
Jorge Rossy Vibes Quintet
Like pianist Brad Mehldau, with whom he played drums for more than a decade, Barcelona-born multi-instrumentalist Jorge Rossy likes reflective jazz with a sting in its tail. Rossy’s vibraphone skills steer this fine Cool School-influenced quintet – deviously serpentine saxist Mark Turner and former Miles Davis drummer Al Foster feature in a classy lineup.
PizzaExpress Jazz Club, N1, Tuesday 15 & Wednesday 16 January
JF
Four of the best ... classical concerts
SoundState
The Southbank Centre’s latest new-music venture involves three of its resident orchestras as well as the superb Ensemble Modern. Flautist Claire Chase and composers Du Yun and Rebecca Saunders are the featured artists, while other premieres include Louis Andriessen, Helen Grime, James Dillon and Dai Fujikura.
Southbank Centre, SE1, Wednesday 16 to 20 January
Queen of Spades
Stefan Herheim’s Tchaikovsky staging, first seen in Amsterdam in 2016, is perhaps the most eagerly anticipated new show in the Royal Opera’s current season. Aleksandrs Antonenko is Gherman, with Antonio Pappano conducting.
Royal Opera House, WC2, Sunday 13 January to 1 February
Mahler and Brahms
Mark Elder is taking his time over his Brahms cycle with the Britten Sinfonia. After conducting the First Symphony 14 months ago, he now moves on to the Second. They are being played alongside Mahler song cycles and 20th-century British music; in this concert the Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen and Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes.
London, Thursday 17; Saffron Walden, Friday 18; Norwich, 19 January
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Thomas Dausgaard conducts the latest free concert for Radio 3’s Hear and Now. As well as the first performance of David Fennessy’s BBC commission The Ground, it includes the local premieres of Per Nørgård’s magnificent Seventh Symphony and Simon Steen-Andersen’s Piano Concerto, with Nicolas Hodges.
City Halls, Glasgow, Saturday 12 January
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
Beatrice Gibson
Trump’s inauguration and a 1929 film script by avant-garde icon Gertrude Stein feature in two new free-wheeling, collaborative films by Beatrice Gibson. Poetry, feminism and community are underlying themes. The exhibition is called Crone Music, awakening memories of persecuted witches and putting her art in the big picture of feminist history.
Camden Arts Centre, NW3, Friday 18 January to 31 March
Bridget Riley
It is a big year for Bridget Riley, with a major retrospective in October at the Hayward Gallery. She starts with a new abstract painting, Messengers, at the National Gallery and this intelligent artist is bound to strike up subtle relationships with the collection. Her work investigates the nature of perception and is one of the glories of British modern art.
The National Gallery, WC2, from Thursday 17 January
Rachel Kneebone
A column of flesh flows in the middle of the V&A’s courtyard of Renaissance sculpture. Except it is not flesh, it’s porcelain. Kneebone has modelled hosts of nudes in white-glazed hardened clay in a cascade of eroticism and suffering that recalls Rodin’s sculptural ensemble The Gates of Hell. Kneebone shows her seductive inferno among the sensual statues of Giambologna and Vincenzo de Rossi.
Victoria & Albert Museum, SW7, to 14 January 2021
Klimt/Schiele
An exhibition of sumptuously carnal drawings. Gustav Klimt created fantastic dream images in Freud’s Vienna at the start of the 20th century. His sketches and designs for these works are masterpieces in themselves with a curvaceous, loving line that makes the women he portrays powerful and charismatic. His younger friend Schiele takes that same eroticism into an expressionist arena of isolation, anxiety and desperate intimacy.
Royal Academy of Arts, W1, to 3 February
Robert Mapplethorpe
This Artist Rooms exhibition offers a raw and provocative encounter with Mapplethorpe’s dark beauty. This Caravaggio-esque photographer of flesh and flowers changed the very idea of the camera as an artistic tool in 1980s New York when Cindy Sherman and Andres Serrano were also pushing its boundaries. For him, photography is not a factual record but a means of self-expression. Desire and feeling blaze in his images.
The Atkinson, Southport, to 23 March
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
Our Lady of Kibeho
Katori Hall’s drama is set in Rwanda in 1981. A young girl claims to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary, who warns her of dire times for her country, and is scorned by her contemporaries – but then others start to see the vision, too. This 2014 play, staged here by the R&D’s artistic director James Dacre, provides an insight into one of Africa’s most shocking episodes of genocide.
Royal & Derngate: The Royal, Northampton, Saturday 12 January to 2 February
Club Mex
It sounds like a Wham! single but is actually an “immersive” musical/clubbing experience set in a holiday resort nightclub. Written by John-Victor and Tamar Broadbent, and from the same production team behind the hit musical Six, this coming-of-age comedy set in Cancún puts the audience at the heart of the action – on the dancefloor.
Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester, Thursday 17 January to 10 February
Leave to Remain
Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke (pictured, with director Robby Graham) is one of the team behind this production involving music and movement. The story – by Matt Jones, who has also written for Mr Selfridge and Doctor Who – is about a gay couple who find their future thrown a curveball when one of their visas comes up for renewal. One way around the problem is marriage, but to do that means facing up to their families and their past.
Lyric Hammersmith, W6, Friday 18 January to 16 February
Violet
Composer Jeanine Tesori had a good 2018: her Fun Home was staged at the Young Vic and Caroline, Or Change (written with Tony Kushner) has just transferred to the West End with five-star reviews. Tony-nominated musical Violet – penned with Brian Crawley – is based on a short story, The Ugliest Pilgrim, by Doris Betts, in which a facially disfigured young woman in 1964 North Carolina embarks on a life-changing journey across the US.
Charing Cross Theatre, WC2, Monday 14 January to 6 April
Stop and Search
Stop and search has always been a controversial policing tactic, not least for its targeting of certain ethnic groups, but with knife crime and terrorism on the increase it’s back on the political agenda. Irish-Nigerian poet Gabriel Gbadamosi widens the debate on the issue in his play by focusing on three stories: a young man crossing Europe, two police officers on a surveillance case, and a passenger in a taxi cab.
Arcola Theatre, E8, to 9 February
MC
Three of the best ... dance shows
Strictly Come Dancing: The Live Tour
Transport yourself back to the pre-Strictly era and it’s mind-jangling to think that ballroom dancing could pack out arenas nationwide. But here we are, limbering up for the 12th Strictly Come Dancing live tour. Former champ Ore Oduba hosts, with the spangle-clad celebs including Dr Ranj Singh, Stacey Dooley, Joe Sugg and Ashley Roberts.
Arena Birmingham, Friday 18 to 21 January; touring to 10 February
TRIO ConcertDance
This is the stunning Indian summer of ballerina Alessandra Ferri’s career. Having retired in 2007, she returned six years later and now, aged 55, is showing just how eloquent an older dancer can be. She performs with Herman Cornejo and pianist Bruce Levingston.
Royal Opera House: Linbury Theatre, WC2, Thursday 17 to 27 January
Resolution 2019
Eighty-one artists perform over six weeks in the annual festival of new dance. These are early-career choreographers and the standard varies wildly, but many big names started out at Resolution and you get some gems, plus a barometer of where dance might be going.
The Place, WC1, to 23 February
LW
• This article was corrected on 12 January 2019. Gary Hart was on course to challenge George HW Bush for the US presidency in 1988, not Ronald Reagan as stated in an earlier version.
Main composite: © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation/Tate and National Galleries of Scotland; Allstar/Walt Disney; Josh Bird
