Film

Priscilla  

A sugared kiss of girlhood infatuation, desire, and entrapment, Sofia Coppola’s adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me follows the relationship between the 14-year-old Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) and 24-year-old Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi). It’s a perfect encapsulation of the gilded-cage themes Coppola has long been fascinated by (see also Marie Antoinette and Lost in Translation).

Beautifully poetic and focused not on the musical career of The King but on the identifiable psychological abuse he inflicted on his young wife, Priscilla is a not-to-be-missed examination of the feminine perspective on the “great man”. Christina Newland 

5 January 

Film

Poor Things  

Yorgos Lanthimos reaches the peak of his impressive career so far with Poor Things, the riotously weird story of a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) living in a sort of steampunk version of the 19th century, who has created a reanimated woman from a corpse. Said corpse, Bella (Emma Stone), has the mind of a toddler but the urges of a grown woman, and soon, she wants to explore the world, find independence, and learn about her body on her own terms. With its strange, sexually explicit, anarchic quality, it is both one of the funniest films I’ve seen recently and a radically feminist allegory. CN 

12 January 

Opera

Elektra 

Royal Opera House, London  

Start 2024 off with a bang with Richard Strauss’s Elektra, in a major new production from the Royal Opera. The children of the murdered King Agamemnon take bloody revenge on their unfaithful mother in this white-hot family tragedy – Succession with the dial set to “scorch”.

Christof Loy’s staging has a cast of dreams. Dramatic powerhouse Nina Stemme takes the title role, with the great soprano Karita Mattila making her role debut as Klytämnestra. Outgoing Royal Opera music director Antonio Pappano conducts the first of a series of swansongs, before crossing town to join the London Symphony Orchestra this autumn. Alexandra Coghlan 

12-30 January (roh.org.uk, 020 7304 4000)  

Comedy

Janine Harouni: Man’Oushe 

American comedian and star of ITV’s Buffering, Janine Harouni rose to prominence in 2019 with her first solo show, exploring her complex relationship with her father – son of Lebanese immigrants and a Trump supporter. She returns with Man’Oushe (which she performed while eight months pregnant at the 2023 Fringe) in which she turns her polished punchlines to matters of love, loss and parenthood. She tackles difficult subjects – miscarriage, losing a friend, the physical challenges of pregnancy and childbirth – with ease. Rachael Healy 

Touring, 14 January – 23 February (janineharouni.com/gigs) 

Comedy

Martin Urbano: Apology Comeback Tour 

One of the most inventive shows of the past year, Mexican-American comedian Martin Urbano’s Apology Comeback Tour smartly satirises the conveyor belt of self-declared cancelled comedians – from the grifters pivoting to shock jokes to those accused of actual crimes. The premise: Urbano’s character has been #MeToo’d but now he’s back to rebuild his career.

He fully commits to the awful character, treading a delicate line while ensuring the laughs are always at the expense of his persona. It earned him a Best Newcomer nomination at the Fringe and now he’s back in the UK for a limited time. RH 

Touring, 14-22 January (monkeybarrelcomedy.com; sohotheatre.com; komedia.co.uk/brighton/comedy/) 

Theatre

Plaza Suite  

Savoy Theatre, London 

Carrie Bradshaw comes to London! Or at least Sarah Jessica Parker does, to make her West End debut opposite real-life husband Matthew Broderick in Neil Simon’s comedy about three different couples who stay in the same room in New York’s famous Plaza Hotel. When this production played on Broadway, it shattered box office records. Fiona Mountford 

15 January-31 March (plazasuiteuk.com) 

Comedy 

Paddy Young: Hungry, Horny, Scared 

Any show that feels funnier on the third viewing is worth recommending. With Hungry, Horny, Scared, Scarborough boy Paddy Young has achieved that rarity. He’s created an hour of pure, undistilled cheekiness and has the audience cackling with the slightest raise of his eyebrow.

Young’s found success online with a collection of offbeat sketches made with fellow comedian Ed Night. He refreshes some of those ideas for stage, and offers fun takes on the dire state of the housing market, millennial hopelessness, and the north-south divide. RH 

Touring, 15 January-5 April (berksnest.com/paddy) 

Comedy

Romesh Ranganathan: Hustle 

The teacher-turned-stand-up comedian is a regular fixture on our screens and speakers these days thanks to his role as host of The Weakest Link, his podcasts, and his own show on BBC Radio 2. Now, he’s back on stage with a new live tour, in which he makes a big promise – to dissect the human condition. Is hustling virtuous, or is it just a way to keep us all working hard for no reason? Ranganathan may or may not have the answers, but is sure to deliver on the laughs. RH 

Touring from 20 January (romeshranganathan.co.uk)   

24 January   

Books 

Empireworld by Sathnam Sanghera  

Few non-fiction books manage to be conversation starters quite like Sathnam Sanghera’s 2021 release Empireland was. The Sunday Times bestseller opened up a dialogue around the imperial legacy in Britain, went on to be an award winner and inspired a Channel 4 documentary (Empire State of Mind). Now, in Empireworld, the journalist and author has turned his pen to tracing the impact that the British empire has had across the world and what it actually means for the 2.6 billion people who live in former British colonies. This globe-spanning, incisive and rigorous read is bound to have the same impact as its predecessor. Anna Bonet 

25 January (Viking, £20) 

Visual arts 

Cute 

Somerset House, London  

Somerset House excels at these roving explorations of cultural phenomena and I suspect that with Cute, they’ll manage to have their sickly, pink-iced rainbow cake and eat it, celebrating big-eyed appeal while subverting it too. Alongside archival material from the Sanrio studio, figurines, accessories and pop videos will be works by artists including Cosima von Bonin (the queen of the outsized plushy), cartoon-universe stalwart Andy Holden, and Rachel Maclean, whose cute/ terrifying video turns (complete with extreme prosthetics) come with a sideorder of dystopian nightmares. Expect this to be the show that puts the “hell” into Hello Kitty. Hettie Judah 

25 January – 14 April (somersethouse.org.uk) 

Comedy

Olga Koch: Prawn Cocktail 

In 2022, Koch’s show Just Friends recounted how a sexual quest led her to find love. In her follow-up, Prawn Cocktail, a return to singledom compels her to confront her insecurities and delve into the phenomenon of parasocial relationships, the subject of her recently completed masters degree. There are detours into bisexuality, Magic Mike, and how social media interacts with the rest of our lives. Koch radiates charisma on stage and delivers this punchline-packed show, her most vulnerable to date, with style. RH 

Touring, 26 January – 22 March (rocknrolga.com) 

Film 

All of Us Strangers  

Andrew Haigh’s devastating meditation on love, loss, and the power of grief and loneliness is a love story and ghost story in one. It stars Andrew Scott as a single gay Londoner still struggling with the traumatic deaths of both parents in an accident when he was 12, and Paul Mescal as his impishly flirtatious downstairs neighbour. Scott’s character “visits” his two parents’ spirits to have modern conversations about his sexuality, their lives together, and the loss that he has suffered. Recalling the scenes of his parents – played with lived-in 80s verve by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell – is enough to make me want to start weeping. Bring a hankie or three for this one. CN 

26 January 

Comedy 

Tamsyn Kelly: Crying in TK Maxx 

This will be Cornish comedian Tamsyn Kelly’s debut stand-up tour, but after an acclaimed run in Edinburgh, Crying in TK Maxx has marked her out as a rising star of the UK scene. Directed by double Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Amy Gledhill, the show sees Kelly explore her relationship with men, prompted by a break-up and the chance appearance of her estranged father in a random documentary. It’s a sparkling party of a show, with a streak of darkness and self-reflection, all topped off with a massive helping of Mr Blobby. RH 

Touring, 26 January – 20 April (linktr.ee/tamsynkelly) 

Theatre 

Hills of California  

Harold Pinter Theatre, London  

A new play from Jez Butterworth, writer of the all-conquering Jerusalem, is always an event. Here he reunites with director Sam Mendes, himself no slouch when it comes to theatrical success, after their triumphant pairing on Butterworth’s last play, The Ferryman. This multi-generational drama promises to “rifle through” decades of the history of the Webb family, as they gather at their mother’s run-down guest house in Blackpool during the heatwave summer of 1976. FM 

27 January – 15 June (hillsofcaliforniaplay.com, 0844 871 7622) 

Dance 

Metamorphoses  

Ustinov Studio, Bath 

Danish choreographer Kim Brandstrup’s mesmerising Minotaur – a classy remix of the story of abandoned Ariadne – returns to Bath’s Ustinov Studio following its 2022 debut, this time paired with a brand new Brandstrup work called Metamorphosis. The new piece is also an Ancient Greek tale, about Psyche meeting her lover Cupid in total darkness. Expect a raw and hypnotic retelling that makes a mythological subject feel piercingly human, shaped by the choreographer’s animalistic moves. The bewitching Alina Cojocaru will be performing, along with Royal Ballet royalty Kristen McNally. Rosemary Waugh 

29 January – 10 February (theatreroyal.org.uk, 01225 448844) 

Comedy 

Julia Masli: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha 

Soho Theatre, London

Estonian clown Julia Masli has set out to solve people’s problems in this mesmerising show. Dressed in a Victorian-esque outfit and holding a golden mannequin leg with a microphone taped to it, she seeks out audience members with issues and brings the room together to solve them. Masli creates a unique experience every night and cleverly controls the audience with wide-eyed charm. The result is a funny, surprising and dreamlike show that emerged as a word-of-mouth hit at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. RH 

30 January – 17 February (sohotheatre.com/events/julia-masli-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha) 

Books

Come and Get It, by Kiley Reid  

In 2019, Kiley Reid’s debut, Such a Fun Age, hailed the arrival of a major new literary talent. The deliciously sharp tale of a young black babysitter who was accused of kidnapping a white child garnered an exceptional reception, and rightly so. Now, the American author has returned with an equally satisfying satire. Come and Get It whisks us off to the University of Arkansas, where student Millie Cousins is all set to graduate and get the house and job she wants, until Agatha Paul, a visiting professor, sets foot in her life and makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Packed with lots of ideas around ambition, desire and recklessness, the novel also shines with what will soon become known as Reid’s trademark funny dialogue and clear-eyed perception. AB 

30 January (Bloomsbury, £16.99) 

Books

Green Dot by Madeleine Gray  

Hera works in a soulless office as a comment moderator for an online news outlet. Spending her days completely bored out of her mind is not exactly what she had hoped for a career. Then she meets her colleague Arthur, who is funny, smart, quite a bit older, and – rather inconveniently – married. Still, she finds herself tumbling into an illicit affair, one that she is absolutely convinced will work out in the end. Because why wouldn’t he leave his wife for her? Both hilarious and heartbreaking, Green Dot might just be the debut of the year. It’s the kind of book you can devour in no time (only at the cost of feeling bereft once it is over). AB 

1 February (W&N, £18.99) 

Film 

The Zone of Interest  

Jonathan Glazer is a film-maker who takes his time between projects: his last, a decade ago, was Under the Skin, a remarkable, shapeshifting sci-fi set on the backstreets of Glasgow and starring Scarlett Johansson. This time, he tackles a loose adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel about Nazi commandant Rudolf Hoss, the architect of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Filmed with chilly, sterile control, the film captures the nauseating contradiction of Hoss’s idyllic family life, lived just beyond the camp’s barbed wire-festooned walls. You might think you’ve seen enough films about the Holocaust, or about Nazism, but you’ve never seen one made like this before: without excessive violence, Glazer creates one of the most insightful and horrifying portraits of human evil I’ve ever seen. CN 

2 February 

Comedy

Sam Campbell: Wobservations 

The Australian comedian’s refreshing style of alternative comedy has earned him two of the industry’s highest honours – the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show in 2022 and the Taskmaster trophy in 2023. With his own distinctive cadence, he delivers stand-up with plenty of multimedia detours and weird little guys thrown in. Campbell has been on UK screens in the Sky sitcom Bloods, and is one of the writers on cult hit Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, and his live work is always surprising in the best possible way. RH 

Touring, 2 February – 28 March (samcampbelltour.com) 

Dance

Festival of New Choreography  

Royal Opera House, London 

For three weeks in February, the Royal Opera House will be taken over by a festival of newly commissioned contemporary choreography – and it looks great. The programme includes an immersive work by Robert Binet called Dark with Excessive Bright, where audiences are invited to wander as they please through the multi-part performance area. The other big draw is five new works performed by the Royal Ballet on the main stage, featuring premieres by resident choreographer 2023-24 Joseph Toonga, and something new by Mthuthuzeli November, who recently made a lovely piece for Ballet Black celebrating Nina Simone. RW 

5 – 23 February (roh.org.uk, 020 7304 4000) 

Theatre

The Picture of Dorian Gray 

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London 

Sarah Snook, aka Shiv from Succession, plays all the parts in this retelling of Oscar Wilde’s classic story about a portrait in the attic that ages instead of its owner (which sounds exactly like something that various members of the Roy family would want to possess). This new version is adapted and directed by Kip Williams, artistic director of the much-lauded Sydney Theatre Company, a venue at which the Australian Snook has often performed. FM 

6 February – 11 May (doriangrayplay.com) 

Theatre

An Enemy of the People  

Duke of York’s Theatre, London  

Matt Smith returns to the stage as Dr Stockmann in a radical reinterpretation of the Ibsen classic from powerful German director Thomas Ostermeier. It was originally produced at one of Europe’s most acclaimed theatres, the Schaubühne in Berlin. Expect themes of climate change and environmental destruction to feature prominently. FM 

6 February – 6 April (anenemyofthepeople.co.uk) 

Classical  

Dunedin Consort: Leipzig 300 

When the plum job of head of music at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche fell vacant in 1723, JS Bach wasn’t the first choice. He wasn’t even the second. Fortunately for music history neither of his rivals said yes, and Bach stepped into the role he’d hold for nearly 30 years – giving us the St John and St Matthew Passions among so many treasures. 300 years on and John Butt and his crack Dunedin Consort and soloists celebrate not just Bach himself, but Telemann and Graupner too: an extraordinary creative milieu and moment in time. AC 

Touring, 7 – 9 February (perththeatreandconcerthall.com, 01738 621031; thequeenshall.net, 0131 668 2019; wigmore-hall.co.uk, 020 7935 2141) 

Pop

The 1975’s carbon-removed concerts 

O2 Arena, London 

Matty Healy, the lead singer of The 1975, has spent plenty of this year causing, and then swiftly attempting to backtrack from, controversy. The band wisely announced earlier in the year they would be taking a hiatus after years of touring – but not quite yet. In early 2024 they will finish the extended leg of their “Still… At Their Very Best” tour – and the February shows at the O2 in London will be “carbon-removed” – which organisers AEG are declaring a world-first for a music event.

They claim to have calculated how much carbon the staging, catering and travel for the show will produce, and the equivalent amount will be removed from the atmosphere by the start-up CUR8. It follows on from the opening of The 1975’s 2020 album Notes on a Conditional Form, which featured a speech from the activist Greta Thunberg. Maybe Healy could just about redeem himself if he saved the planet. Emily Bootle

Touring, 8 – 21 February, carbon-removed shows 12 and 13 February 

Dance

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boriz Charmatz: Nelken  

Sadler’s Wells, London 

No, not a premiere. Far from it, in fact. Germany’s iconic Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch – always a pleasure to have them in London – are bringing an absolute classic of contemporary dance to Sadler’s Wells. The company’s signature 1982 piece, Nelken, is performed on a stage strewn with 8,000 silk carnations and contains some now-seminal bits of Bausch choreography and sentiments. This latest iteration of the work combines the energies of a new generation of dancers with the expertise of two Bausch veterans offering advice as rehearsal directors. The company’s new director, Boris Charmatz, describes Nelken as “a mad mind party that throbs with the performers’ life”. Sometimes, the oldies are the goodies. RW 

14 – 22 February (sadlerswells.com, 020 7863 8000) 

Visual

Zineb Sedira: Dreams Have No Titles 

Whitechapel, London  

Long-time Brixton resident Zineb Sedira represented France at the 2022 Venice Biennale and scooped the Silver Lion, pipped to the top spot only by her former next-door-neighbour Sonia Boyce, who was representing Britain. The Whitechapel show restages Sedira’s installation for the French Pavilion, for which she constructed a trio of impeccably detailed film sets, and shot a movie in homage to Algerian cinema, which was projected in a back room. From time to time, parts of the set were brought to life, as tango dancers pranced across the bar-room floor. HJ 

15 February – 12 May (whitechapelgallery.org) 

Theatre 

The Human Body

Donmar Warehouse, London 

Small-screen favourites Jack Davenport and Keeley Hawes team up for this new romantic drama from the always-exciting Lucy Kirkwood, in which private and political passions collide. It’s 1948 and the nascent NHS is dealing with a bitter Shropshire winter, when a GP (Hawes) has a chance meeting with a local man who made it to Hollywood. Michael Longhurst takes charge for his final production as the Donmar’s Artistic Director. FM 

16 February – 13 April (donmarwarehouse.com, 020 3282 3808) 

Theatre

A View from the Bridge  

Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath   

Dominic West recently waxed lyrical about audiences in regional theatres, so let us hope that punters in Bath return the love. West, recently seen as Prince Charles in The Crown, makes a rare return to the stage, playing Arthur Miller’s tragic hero Eddie Carbone in this modern classic drama of sexual jealousy in an Italian-American family in Brooklyn. FM 

16 February – 9 March (theatreroyal.org.uk, 01225 448844) 

Theatre 

Ben and Imo 

RSC Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon  

Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst, daughter of composer Gustav and eminent musician in her own right, are the intriguing subjects of this new work from Mark Ravenhill. Britten has nine months to write the opera Gloriana for the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and he, disheartened and capricious, is struggling. Thus a tumultuous working relationship begins to blossom. Erica Whyman, the RSC’s recently departed leader, returns to direct. FM 

21 February – 6 April (rsc.org.uk, 01789 331111) 

Theatre

Nye  

National Theatre, London 

That proud Welsh actor Michael Sheen stars as Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, the founder of the NHS and seminal figure in Clement Attlee’s post-War Labour government. Rufus Norris, the outgoing National Theatre artistic director, directs this new drama by Tim Price, which has Nye looking back over his eventful life, including leaving school at 14 and time as a miner working underground, in a near-death fever dream. FM 

24 February – 11 May (nationaltheatre.org.uk, 020 3989 5455) 

Visual arts

Angelica Kauffman 

Royal Academy, London 

This show was originally scheduled for 2020, and I assumed it was cancelled for good because of the pandemic. What a joy to see it return to the schedule four years later. A Swiss child prodigy, Kauffman was one of two female founding members of the Royal Academy and became a star of the European art world in the 18^th century. If you’ve ever been to the Royal Academy you will have seen her work – she painted the four panels representing the “Elements of Art” set in the ceiling of the entrance hall. Expect allegory, classical tableaux and portraiture, all with active female characters at the centre of things. HJ    

1 March – 30 June (royalacademy.org.uk) 

Dance

Rambert: Death Trap  

Hall for Cornwall, Truro and then rest of UK tour 

This Rambert double-bill opened at the tail end of 2023, but its spring dates are a must-see for the new year. When I saw it recently, an A level student sitting near me described it as “sick as fuck”. Created by the inestimable Ben Duke, Death Trap pairs up Cerberus, a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, with Goat, a strangely Wes Anderson-esque work set to Nina Simone music. The first half is all black-lace gothicness, the second a study of repressed human emotion and fear. Both utilise Duke’s trademark blend of humour and heartbreak, leaving the viewer devasted without quite knowing why. SAF. RW 

1 – 2 March (hallforcornwall.co.uk, 01872 262466), then touring to 25 April

Classical 

Big Bruckner Weekend

The Glasshouse, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear  

There’s big, and then there’s Bruckner-big. The Austrian composer didn’t do things by halves. His late-Romantic symphonies are grander, broader, more epic than any before them – musical “cathedrals in sound”. Gateshead’s Glasshouse hosts some of the UK’s top ensembles for a weekend wallow in some of his greatest hits. Sir Mark Elder conducts the Hallé in the mighty Symphony No. 8, which sees darkness battle light in a thrilling, existential tussle. The Royal Northern Sinfonia raises the roof with the composer’s powerful statement of faith, the “Great” Mass. And then the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra finish the story with the composer’s “farewell to life” – the unfinished Ninth Symphony with its monumental closing Adagio. AC 

1 – 3 March (theglasshouseicm.org, 0191 443 4661) 

Books 

The House of Hidden Meanings, by RuPaul  

At the heart of the global phenomenon that is Drag Race, RuPaul has always been a bit of an enigma. Now, the megawatt star is offering a rare glimpse behind the curtains of his life in his memoir. The House of Hidden Meanings charts his early beginnings in a poor, broken home, and his struggles with his sexuality and self-image. We follow him all the way through to discovering drag and becoming the face of one of the world’s biggest TV franchises, all of which is spun into an introspective tale about identity and survival. AB 

5 March (Fourth Estate, £22) 

Theatre 

Opening Night  

Gielgud Theatre, London  

How is this for a deliciously unlikely combination? Sheridan Smith stars in a new musical from arthouse darling Belgian director Ivo van Hove, with music from Rufus Wainwright. Opening Night is based on the John Cassavetes film of the same name, about a theatre company preparing to open a show on Broadway, with a leading lady in turmoil. FM 

6 March – 27 July (openingnightmusical.com) 

Dance 

Northern Ballet: Romeo and Juliet  

Leeds Grand Theatre 

Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet always provides great drama – so great, in fact, that even Alan Sugar’s The Apprentice couldn’t kill the pleasure that comes from hearing the score played live. However, Northern Ballet’s resurrected production has a tragic backstory of its own. It premiered in the early 90s and was very popular until all its beautiful costumes, set and props succumbed to flood damage. It has now been lovingly restored to its former glory and will premiere in Leeds, followed by a UK tour which ends in London’s Sadler’s Wells. Production design by Lez Brotherston promises a visual feast. RW 

8 – 16 March, then touring to 1 June (northernballet.com) 

Visual arts 

Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood 

Arnolfini, Bristol  

The cat’s out of the bag! For the past four years I’ve been working on a major exhibition for Hayward Touring. Acts of Creation plunges into the joys and heartaches, mess, myths and mishaps of motherhood through artworks from the feminist avant-garde to the present day. While the Madonna and Child is one of the great subjects of European art, we rarely see art about real motherhood, in all its complexity. Acts of Creation addresses this blind spot in art history, proposing the artist mother as an important cultural figure. (Ok, plug over.) HJ 

9 March – 2 June and touring (arnolfini.org.uk) 

Books 

Until August, by Gabriel García Márquez

There is nothing better for book lovers than when a lost novel is unearthed, especially when it’s by the late, great Nobel Prize-Winning author of Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Until August follows Ana Magdalena Bach, who, despite being happily married with a son, travels every August to the island where her mother is buried and takes a new lover for a single night. A profound study of desire and womanhood from the titan of Latin American fiction, it will be one of the biggest literary events of the year. AB 

12 March (Viking, £16.99) 

Theatre

Player Kings 

Manchester Opera House, Manchester and Noël Coward Theatre, London  

Maverick genius Robert Icke, for too long lost to theatres in mainland Europe, returns to direct Ian McKellen as Falstaff, in Icke’s own adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part One and Part Two. Given that Icke was the man who streamlined Greek tragedy trilogy The Oresteia into a 21st-century sell-out hit, expect something unusual and special. In an acclaimed Shakespearean career, McKellen has never previously played Falstaff. FM 

14 – 23 March and 1 April – 22 June (playerkingstheplay.co.uk) 

Film 

Drive Away Dolls  

In his second solo directorial effort without brother Joel, Ethan Coen has made a queer road movie comedy. It stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan as two opposites-attract friends – one wild and the other more demure – riding through the South after one has a bad breakup with her girlfriend. So begins a girls’ trip with plenty of raunch and a tiny bit of crime, in true rebellious road movie spirit. Knowing Coen’s comedy chops, this is bound to be good fun. CN 

15 March 

Dance

Mark Bruce Company: Frankenstein 

The Mark Bruce Company loves a bit of gothic decadence, so what could be more up their street than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? This is destined to be a riot of slit-and-stitched costumes, filmic compositions, and a semi-immersive experience for those watching, and Bruce’s aim is to humanise the story, making it less horror-genre and more a psychological drama. The Monster is danced by the multi-talented Jonathan Goddard, a magnetising presence on stage. Other dancers include Cordelia Braithwaite, who originated the role of Juliet in Matthew Bourne’s version of Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy. It opens in the company’s hometown of Frome, Somerset before moving to Jerwood/Dance East in Ipswich and then The Place in London. RW 

Touring, 15 – 28 March (fromememorialtheatre.org.uk, 01373 462795; danceeast.co.uk; theplace.org.uk, 020 7121 1100) 

Dance

Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young/Kidd Pivot: Assembly Hall  

Sadler’s Wells, London 

Powerhouse duo Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young are back with the UK premiere of their latest work for dance-theatre hybrid company Kidd Pivot. Assembly Hall’s plot is based around some medieval re-enactors congregating at a village hall, potentially for the last time. What happens next is anyone’s guess. Probably, based on Pite and Young’s previous, discombobulating work, something really odd. But my guess is: whatever it is, it will be great – and, probably, unforgettable. Catch the show in London in the spring before it heads to the Edinburgh International Festival later in the year. RW 

20 – 23 March (sadlerswells.com, 020 7863 8000) 

Dance 

Royal Ballet: Danses Concertantes/Different Drummer/Requiem 

Royal Opera House, London 

The Royal Ballet’s spring/summer 2024 programme is, as ever, a delight with highlights including the return of Christopher Wheeldon’s gorgeous The Winter’s Tale. However, this mixed bill of three one-act ballets by the mighty Kenneth MacMillan looks particularly enticing. It includes his weird and wonderful interpretation of Woyzeck, a heartbreaking play about a soldier’s mental unravelling. MacMillan’s choice of this as the basis for a ballet provides a flavour of his brilliant and unconventional mind and it will no doubt be a great introduction to how the former Royal Ballet director’s work came to shape basically everything we now know to be true about ballet. RW 

20 March – 13 April (roh.org.uk, 020 7304 4000)  

Dance 

Aakash Odedra Company/Aditi Mangaldas: Mehek  

Two exemplarity Kathak dancers, Aakash Odedra and Aditi Mangaldas, team up for a beautiful-sounding, boundary-crossing work about forbidden love, with an older woman and younger man at its core. Partly inspired by true stories the team collected from older people living in Leicester, Mehek – which will begin at Leicester’s Peepul Centre before moving to Sadler’s Wells and then touring the UK – takes its name from the Hindi word for fragrance and is a hymn to the power of memory and desire. Mangaldas, born in 1960, is a doyenne of Indian dance who recently created a brilliant solo show asking why cultures everywhere hate female desire. RW 

Touring 4 – 19 April (aakashodedra.com; peepulenterprise.com, 0116 261 6000; sadlerswells.com, 020 7863 8000) 

Theatre 

London Tide 

National Theatre, London 

PJ Harvey meets Charles Dickens in this retelling of the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend. Ben Power, the superlative adaptor of The Lehman Trilogy, supervises a script that centres upon two young women and the River Thames. Early snippets of Harvey’s powerful new songs suggest that romance and intrigue are swirling around. If this “play with songs” comes off, it will be a delicious celebration of collaboration between outstanding creative talents. FM 

10 April – 22 June (nationaltheatre.org.uk, 020 3989 5455) 

Visual arts 

Matthew Krishanu: The Bough Breaks 

Camden Art Centre, London  

One of my absolute highlights (though that is a peculiar word, under the circumstances) of 2023 was a small display of Krishanu’s paintings shown as part of Whitechapel’s summer exhibition. Charting his relationship with his wife Uschi Gatward, from romance, through time as a young family, to her illness and early death, the paintings had me in tears. Krishanu’s first major survey show in London will take a broader view, including his otherworldly paintings of young boys in dreamlike landscapes, and reflections on the iconography and cultural impact of religion. His apparently simple compositions gradually evanesce into hard planes of flat colour and expanses of loose wash, all held together with the lightest of painterly touches. HJ 

26 April – 23 June (camdenartcentre.org) 

Books

Knife by Salman Rushdie 

On 12 August, 2022, news of the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie reverberated globally. Writing about it for the first time, the Booker Prize-winning author reflects on the traumatic events of that day and their aftermath. With both candour and rich detail, and reminding us again of his knack for storytelling, the memoir celebrates art and love over violence, and resilience over acquiescence.  

16 April (Jonathan Cape, £20) 

Dance 

Clod Ensemble: Red Ladies  

V&A, London 

The V&A Performance Festival is back for another year and it opens with Red Ladies, a spooky little work from Clod Ensemble, a company who specialise in the uncanny. This work has a bit of The Handmaid’s Tale about it, with a large number of identically dressed women (black trench coats, red headscarves) populating an area of the museum. It’s dance-meets-theatre-meets-strange installation piece, and is part of a bigger project by the company revisiting and reperforming works from across their 30-year history as one of the UK’s most unique dance companies – they’ve done some fascinating interdisciplinary stuff with performance and medicine with NHS healthcare workers. RW 

20 April (vam.ac.uk, 020 7942 2000) 

Books

You are Here by David Nicholls  

With Netflix’s adaptation of his cult phenomenon One Day arriving in February, and this new novel coming two months later, 2024 is set to be the year of David Nicholls. You Are Here is about Marnie and Michael, both of whom are at pivotal points in their lives. His wife has walked out on him; she’s a lost soul who feels stuck. So when the pair cross paths, quite literally, they begin an epic journey together – and herein lies a story of love, chance encounters, new beginnings, and re-discoveries. AB 

23 April (Sceptre, £20) 

Visual arts

Expressionists  

Tate Modern, London 

I am mildly obsessed with Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) – a short-lived artists’ association that formed around Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter and Franz Marc in Munich in 1911. The group set out to change art, responding strongly to feelings and emotions, which were given dramatic expression through the use of colour and often stylised, geometrical form. Underpinning it all are experiments in modern life, belief in the spiritual energy animating the world, and a language of colour believed to express mood and behaviour. HJ 

25 April – 20 October (tate.org.uk)   

Pop 

Olivia Rodrigo, Guts World Tour  

It feels like the moment of truth for Olivia Rodrigo. Fresh off the Disney Channel, she came barrelling into the pop industry in 2020 with a debut album, Sour, that generated multiple accusations of plagiarism and seemed to be bolstered largely by her “relatable” teen girl qualities. It also had a satisfyingly angsty feel, and so Rodrigo is now known as a kind of pop-punk princess sitting somewhere in between Avril Lavigne and Dua Lipa. Her second album, Guts, was released earlier this year, and predictably sounded more developed and confident than Sour, with lyrical punch and catchy, addictive songs. With this tour, which will span the US and Europe from February to August and comes to the UK in May, it’s all to play for. It might just be her year… again. EBo  

Touring, 3 – 18 May 

Comedy

Kiri Pritchard-McLean: Peacock 

She’s on tour twice this year, first for the 10^th anniversary of her podcast All Killa No Filla, and then with her newest solo offering, Peacock. Welsh comic Kiri Pritchard-McLean had always drawn on her personal life in her stand-up – from experiences of sexism in comedy and gaslighting within a relationship, to her time mentoring a vulnerable young person – but this new show promises to be her most intimate yet, as she reveals a significant life decision and the tricky steps it took to get there. RH 

Touring from 4 May (kiripritchardmclean.co.uk/peacock1)  

Classical  

Manchester Collective and SANSARA 

Southbank Centre, London and Bridgewater Hall, Manchester  

The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas – home to 14 giant canvases by the American abstract artist – gives its name to one of the great works of musical modernism. Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel is a spare, lyrical tribute to the painter who killed himself in 1970, shortly before the space was completed. Now the Manchester Collective join forces with chamber choir SANSARA to plunge their audience directly into Rothko’s colour-saturated imagination in a performance flooded with light and sound. Framing the Feldman are four world premieres inspired by the artist’s paintings, including works by Isobel Waller-Bridge and Edmund Finnis. AC 

5 and 10 May (southbankcentre.co.uk, 020 3879 9555; bridgewater-hall.co.uk, 0161 907 9000)  

Pop  

Olly Alexander at Eurovision  

We all thought our fortunes had changed. Sam Ryder had charmed the nation in 2022, the contest was to be held in Liverpool, spirits were high – but alas, the UK at Eurovision 2023 just wasn’t to be, and Mae Muller’s limp “I Wrote a Song” came in second last. Can the nation be saved at next year’s contest in Sweden? If Olly Alexander has anything to do with it, yes. The former Years & Years singer and It’s a Sin star will be representing the UK in 2024 – the contest is due to be held in Malmö. While there are no teasers of the song yet, he’s promised to “give it everything I’ve got” and make his performance “unforgettable”. It’s written by certified banger producers Alexander and Danny L Harle, so I’ve got high hopes. EBo  

7 – 11 May 

Classical

Abel Selaocoe 

St David’s Hall, Cardiff and Brangwyn Hall, Swansea 

Music pours out of shapeshifting South-African cellist Abel Selaocoe, who straddles Western classical and African traditions in performances just as likely to see him singing, improvising or creating body-percussion as playing the cello. He makes his debut as Artist in Residence with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales this spring with his own cello concerto. First heard in Scotland last year, Four Spirits blends musical languages and worlds across four dazzling, virtuoso movements – Selaocoe’s cello often in dialogue with his voice as well as the orchestra. Also look out for the UK premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer (and Kanye-collaborator) Caroline Shaw’s The Observatory – exploring the “chaos and clarity” of the observable universe. AC 

9 and 10 May (stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk, 02920 878444; brangwyn.co.uk, 01792 475715)  

Opera 

L’Olimpiade, Irish National Opera 

Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, London 

Partner-swapping, secret identities, long-lost fathers and ferocious rivals. Today’s elite sportsmen and women have nothing on Vivaldi’s Olympic athletes and their scandalous tangle of lives – L’Olimpiade is as much Footballer’s Wives as The Four Seasons. Irish National Opera won an Olivier for their last Vivaldi staging (2022’s Bajazet), so smart money’s on this for the win. The show brings Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra (whose collective energy could power a stadium) together with director Daisy Evans, who rarely serves up the expected. AC 

13 – 25 May (roh.org.uk, 020 7304 4000) 

Pop

Girls Aloud UK & Ireland tour  

The Girls Aloud reunion tour – which kicks off in Belfast and ends in Leeds – is definitely not a comeback. Instead, it’s an unashamed greatest hits show to serve those who loved them the first time around (they recently celebrated their 20^th anniversary), and to commemorate former member Sarah Harding, who died of breast cancer in 2021. Girls Aloud are part of a generation of girlbands from the peak talent show era, and are unlikely to get the recognition many would say they deserve – but perhaps the whole point is to stick two fingers up to acclaim, and instead wholeheartedly embrace the fun of hits like “Sound of the Underground” and “Love Machine”. EBo  

Touring, 20 May – 16 June 

Comedy 

Brian Butterfield’s Call of Now 

He started life in a short series of sketches within 2007’s The Peter Serafinowicz Show, but the irrepressible Brian Butterfield found a second life online where he became a cult comedy star. The character, a dubious entrepreneur shilling everything from a sub-par talking clock to private detective services, is probably best known for the Butterfield Diet Plan (bonbonbonbons and pork cylinders, anyone?) but now takes to the stage in his first live tour. Expect an inspirational business seminar with plenty of crowd-pleasing sketches. RH 

Touring, 21 May – 25 June (brianbutterfield.co.uk) 

Visual arts

Judy Chicago: Revelations 

Serpentine, London  

Chicago can justly claim to be the grand dame of feminist art in the US. Co-founder of the LA Woman’s Building in 1973, she is best known for the iconic (and in its day highly controversial) installation The Dinner Party. For her expansive projects Chicago has historically collaborated with huge (named) networks of craftswomen. Together, they produced banners, tapestries and ceramics that translated skills and materials associated with the home into ambitious and highly political gallery displays exploring birth, death and everything in between (including orgasm). Now 84, Chicago comes to London fresh from an appropriately uproarious and collaborative retrospective at New York’s New Museum, which positioned the artist alongside the work of great women from herstory. HJ 

22 May – 1 September (serpentinegalleries.org) 

Film 

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes  

While other big-budget reboots and CGI-laden franchises have taken up most of the oxygen, the Planet of the Apes series has consistently and quietly been one of the best of the bunch. With incredibly true-to-life looking motion capture graphics, the latest in the adventures of Caesar the ape reaches far into the future of the civilisation he helped create, looking back at how his Moses-like effect has impacted the world and its various societies of ape and man. (Humans, of course, have gone feral.) CN 

24 May 

Film

Furiosa 

The prequel to Miller’s phenomenal, gut-wrenching 2015 thrill ride Mad Max: Fury Road explores a young Furiosa’s life (Anya Taylor-Joy takes on the role from Charlize Theron) before she becomes the vicious, shaved-head imperator of dictator Immortan Joe’s resource-hoarding army. The plot is shrouded in secrecy, but with the wild imagination of Miller at the wheel, it’s certainly one of the most anticipated films of 2024. CN 

24 May 

Classical  

LA Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel 

Barbican, London  

Everyone wants a piece of Gustavo Dudamel – the curly-haired Venezuelan conducting wunderkind who has grown up into the dynamic force on the podium of the LA Philharmonic, and who is moving on to the New York Philharmonic’s top job in 2026. But it’s his West Coast orchestra he brings to London this summer for two hot-ticket performances. First up is Dvorak’s New World Symphony (natch) along with Gabriela Ortiz’s colourful new Violin Concerto, premiered by rising star Maria Duenas. But don’t miss the performance of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio – a collaboration with Tony Award-winning Deaf West Theatre that nods to the composer’s own deafness, embodying the work’s themes of courage and freedom. AC 

2 – 3 June (barbican.org, 020 7870 2500)  

Theatre

Mean Girls 

Savoy Theatre, London   

Look out, the Plastics are coming to town! The all-conquering 2004 Lindsay Lohan film about ferocious high school cliques has become a stage musical, much praised upon its 2017 premiere in the States. The book is by Tina Fey, the film’s screenwriter, and director Casey Nicholaw previously triumphed with The Book of Mormon. In a wonderfully meta move, a film version of this musical treatment is also imminent. FM 

From 5 June (meangirlsmusical.com) 

Pop

Taylor Swift, The Eras Tour, European leg 

Taylor Swift’s Eras tour is likely to be the biggest pop event of the year – again. Given most of us have already seen half of it via social media, or the whole of it at the cinema, you might think sparkly leotards and “Cruel Summer” would be wearing thin – but you’d be mistaken. Swift fever shows no sign of abating. She kicks off the European leg on 9 May in Paris, and will tour Sweden, Portugal, Spain and France before landing in the UK, at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium, on 7 June. Expect memes, mass hysteria and ironic masochism: the queen of self-aware storytelling reigns supreme. EBo 

Touring UK 7 – 23 June and 15 – 20 August  

Classical 

Curlew River 

Aldeburgh Festival, Suffolk  

Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival celebrates its 75^th anniversary this year and it’s a bumper programme. Most intriguing is a new staging of Britten’s extraordinary Curlew River, 60 years on from its festival premiere. Ian Bostridge steps into original tenor Peter Pears’ shoes as the Madwoman, first searching for then mourning her lost child, in this haunting piece of music-theatre. Part-ritual (the piece draws on traditions of Japanese Noh theatre) and part-drama, it’s a meditation that cuts to the heart of grief and loss – a strange, alien experience full of unexpected textures and gestures. There’s also a rare opportunity to see Sumidigawa – the Noh drama that inspired it – performed by Japanese artists. AC 

7 – 23 June (brittenpearsarts.org, 01728687110)  

Opera 

The Merry Widow 

Glyndebourne, East Sussex  

What do you get if you cross the West End’s king of physical comedy Cal McCrystal with the sumptuous waltzes of Franz Lehar – “the last king of operetta”? A right royal smash. A lavish new production of will-they-won’t-they love-farce The Merry Widow inspired by the Golden Age of Hollywood promises ballgowns and chorus girls galore, while a new English translation brings the satirical laughs bang up to date. Glyndebourne’s own leading lady Danielle de Niese takes the title role, with conductor John Wilson in the pit ensuring a score spun from pure musical gold. AC 

9 June – 28 July (glyndebourne.com, 01273 815 000)  

Books 

Parade by Rachel Cusk  

This novel will be unlike any you have read before, such is Cusk’s talent for breaking new ground with her writing. Best known for her deeply charged and unforgettable Outline trilogy, the author here pulls together fragments of plot – a mother dying; a woman attacked on the street; a painter beginning to paint upside down – in order to tell a story about art, identity, gender and family. It confirms Cusk as one of the UK’s most talented literary writers. AB 

18 June (Faber, £16.99) 

Books 

Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan  

The author of the megahit romcom Crazy Rich Asians, which was adapted into an equally successful film of the same name, is treating us to another novel that you’ll probably see on every sunlounger this summer. Lies and Weddings revolves around the glitzy world of Rufus, son of a former Hong Kong supermodel and future Duke, who has managed to run into (a lot of) debt. So, at the instruction of his mother, his sister’s upcoming wedding is less a cause for celebration and more a chance to seduce any of the rich women in the room. Expect glorious, salacious fun. AB 

20 June (Hutchinson Heinemann, £16.99) 

Film

The Bikeriders 

A Levi’s ad brought to life, blasting 60s girl groups while leather-jacketed men climb on motorbikes, The Bikeriders is pure, breezy iconography in motion, and great fun to watch. Jeff Nichols (director of Loving) tells a story loosely based on real accounts of the formation of one of the first major biker gangs in mid-century America. Told by a photojournalist (Mike Faist) who records an oral history of the gang and its personalities – mainly Kathy, played by a heavily midwestern-accented Jodie Comer – the film charts the journey from innocence to experience in this counterculture of working-class men. Also starring Austin Butler as a devil-may-care James Dean type and Tom Hardy as the gruff, wise leader of the pack, this retro drama is full of wall-to-wall pleasure. CN 

21 June 

Visual arts 

Ronald Moody: A Transatlantic Modernist, Sculpture 1935-84 

The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire 

A long overdue exhibition dedicated to the work of the Jamaican-born sculptor. Moody was a contemporary of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and a friend of Jacob Epstein. I’ve seen his stylised wood figure carvings and portraits displayed individually in a number of British collections, but they have not been gathered and exhibited together until now. This show will place Moody’s work and objects from his archive in context, alongside the work of Moore, Hepworth and Epstein as well as the Caribbean Arts Movement, of which he was a founding member. HJ 

21 June – 3 November (hepworthwakefield.org) 

Pop  

Robbie Williams   

BST Hyde Park, London 

Robbie, it seems, is back – it’s up to you to watch his eponymous Netflix documentary to figure out how reluctantly. Now grey-haired and worldly-wise, the former noughties heartthrob and once-in-a-generation male entertainer seems like he’s grown up a great deal, but if his recent run of stadium shows is anything to go by, he’s still got the old manic energy that incites shrieking, pint throwing and arm-in-arm group singing among the crowd. His headline show at London’s BST Hyde Park festival, which may well include “Angels” just as the sun is going down, is likely to be nothing short of euphoric. EBo 

6 July   

Dance 

London City Ballet  

Once upon a time, London City Ballet played a major part in the UK’s dance scene and had none other than Diana, Princess of Wales as its patron. Sadly, this resident company of Sadler’s Wells shut down in 1996. But now, happily, they are back and kicking things off with a UK tour, starting at Theatre Royal Bath, of two works: Ballade, a classic bit of Kenneth MacMillan performed by three men and one woman, exploring the tense relationship dynamic therein, and – most excitingly – a new commission from the Olivier Award-winning Arielle Smith, very much a rising star in the choreographic world. RW 

Touring, 17 – 20 July (londoncityballet.com) 

September 

Books

A Yard of Sky by Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe and Richard Ratcliffe 

The world knows Nazanin’s story. We watched on as news reports relayed how she had been boarding a flight from Tehran in April 2016, with her baby daughter, when she was unexpectedly detained. We saw her finally brought home to the UK six years later. But we could never really understand what it is like for a family to go through this, and A Yard of Sky gives us that true account for the first time, told alongside Nazanin’s husband Richard. AB 

26 September (Chatto & Windus, £25) 

Theatre

Waiting for Godot

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London 

Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati form a double act to be reckoned with as those lovable existential urchins Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece about hopes, dreams and the enduring futility of life itself. This is a play that offers fresh riches on each new telling and it was apparently seeing this drama as a teenager that persuaded Whishaw to study acting. FB 

From September (waitingforgodotplay.com) 

Visual arts

Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit 

Tate Modern, London  

A punk, a trickster, a kid who never grew up – Kelley was an irreverent shapeshifter, whose art blended performance, sculpture, music and the ongoing excavation of his own imperfect memory. His influence has been enormous – on the work of the British artists Jeremy Deller and Mark Leckey, among others. At the time of his early death in 2012, Kelley left a vast unfinished project, Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions which was imagined as a 24-hour loop of 365 videos creating imagined scenarios based on photos from high school and college yearbooks. Those he completed are daffy, rambling and uncanny, raising questions about social control and sanctioned forms of rebellion in the everyday. HJ 

3 October – 9 March 2025 (tate.org.uk) 

Visual arts

Barbara Walker  

Whitworth, Manchester 

A major solo outing for the beloved Birmingham-born artist nominated for last year’s Turner Prize. Walker is a draw-er and a paint-er, best known for her monumental, ephemeral site-specific charcoal drawings of Black subjects. Her Turner Prize-nominated display featured portraits of individuals affected by the Windrush scandal drawn against the backdrop of documents requested to prove their British residency. In other series she has studied the interiors of barber shops, or drawn focus to the marginal Black figures in historic paintings. HJ 

4 October – 26 January 2025 (whitworth.manchester.ac.uk) 

Visual arts

Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, C.1504  

Royal Academy, London 

The scene is set 520 years ago – three of the greatest artists of their respective generations crossed paths in Florence. The city’s artists had assembled to decide the best site for Michelangelo’s sculpture of David, which was then nearly finished. Leonardo was in his early 50s and Michelangelo in his late 20s – their mutual dislike was fuelled by their competition for patrons and commissions, but they were also fascinated by one another. Both were commissioned to create murals for the Palazzo Vecchio, and their studies will be shown here together again for the first time. Drinking it all in was Raphael, then a youth of 21. The Ninja Turtle jokes? They just write themselves. HJ 

9 November – 16 February 2025 (royalacademy.org.uk)  

Opera

Ring Cycle 

Regent’s Opera, Freemason’s Hall, London  

Ring Cycles don’t come cheap or often. Fearless fringe company Regent’s Opera may have been building up to this one for over a decade, but with tickets from £45 – for four nights, four operas and around 15 hours of music – you’ll never get a better bargain. Or a better introduction to Wagner. This ambitious company and their music director Ben Woodward really get the human cut-and-thrust of this music, and serve it hot and at close-quarters in the impressive interior of the Freemason’s Hall. Try it here first, then decide if you want to splash out to see Barrie Kosky’s cycle (just getting started) at the Royal Opera. AC 

10 Nov – 1 Dec (regentsopera.com) 

Film

Gladiator 2  

There’s not a ton of information out there about this unexpected sequel to the 2000 hit film starring Russell Crowe, but we know this: it stars Paul Mescal as Lucius, the nephew to Joaquin Phoenix’s dastardly Roman emperor, who is saved as a child by Crowe’s gladiator Maximus. Now a grown man, he returns to the place of his birth. Denzel Washington also stars in what is sure to be a thrilling entry back into the violent machinations of a wild ancient world. CN 

22 November 

Pop 

Sugababes  

New album  

Rarely has a reunion generated as much hype as that of the original line-up of the Sugababes. After a tumultuous decade in which the band’s original line-up changed several times, the original three members – Mutya Buena, Siobhan Donaghy and Keisha Buchanan – got back together in 2011, but it was only in 2019 that they reclaimed the name. In 2021, they released a 20th-anniversary edition of their debut album One Touch, and in 2022 played at various music festivals, announcing plans for new music. Although they released The Lost Tapes last year, an album of previously unreleased material, their upcoming album – whose title is yet to be announced – will be the first release of newly written music in recent years, with this year’s single, “When the Rain Comes”, fuelling excitement among the fanbase for more sultry R&B and lush vocal harmonies. EBo 

Date TBC 

Film

Hit Man  

Filmmaker Richard Linklater (Boyhood, Dazed and Confused) returns to screens with his purest crowd-pleaser in ages. In this comic and romantic hitman story, the hitman in question (charisma machine Glen Powell) is actually an undercover cop looking to bust low-level contract killers by pretending to be one. But his success rate falters when he meets a seemingly abused wife (the sultry Adria Arjona) who’s looking to have her husband knocked off. Rather than arrest her for her plotting, he lets his crush on her take the wheel – with both disastrous and very funny consequences. Smart, funny, and surprisingly sexy, Hit Man isn’t heavy-duty in its themes, but it is pure Hollywood fun with a dash of self-awareness in the vein of Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight. In other words: it’s the kind of movie that rarely gets made well these days. CN 

TBA  

 

Pop  

Dua Lipa  

New album  

Though Dua Lipa has ascended to the heights of the starriest of stars, her music has never quite tipped over the edge of catchy-but-ultimately-unmemorable pop primed for Heart FM. Her new album, the first since the pandemic disco hit Future Nostalgia, is due sometime next year, and if its lead single, “Houdini”, can be relied upon as a prediction, it looks like it’s going to be more of the same: slick, danceable songs with disappointingly little substance. Still, Lipa is still the British music industry’s golden girl, so we can expect a whole lot of hype regardless. EBo  

Date TBC 

Pop

Ed Sheeran and J Balvin  

New album   

The popularity of Latin music in the UK and US has been brewing for years – whether it’s Daddy Yankee’s 2004 hit “Gasolina” or Luis Fonzi’s soundtrack to 2016 “Despacito”, you’ve probably sung along to at least one reggaeton banger in your time, even if you didn’t realise it. But recently, with the success of Latin pop acts like Bad Bunny and J Balvin, reggaeton has become a global sensation that rivals English language pop in its popularity. What to make of that latter artist teaming up with English good-boy Ed Sheeran? Well, when Balvin announced it in July, responses on social media were mixed. What language will it be in? Will there be visuals? What, one Twitter user reasonably asked, is Joe Biden doing to stop it? All we know is that this meeting of sometimes brilliant, sometimes cringe pop minds is sure to generate at least one song that, come the summer, will be blasting from the open windows of every car in your neighbourhood. EBo 

Date TBC