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Clockwise from top left: Otobong Nkanga, Brad Pitt in Ad Astra, Hannah Diamond, For Sama, and Wasteland

What to see this week in the UK

This article is more than 4 years old
Clockwise from top left: Otobong Nkanga, Brad Pitt in Ad Astra, Hannah Diamond, For Sama, and Wasteland

From Ad Astra to Antony Gormley, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days

Five of the best … films

Ad Astra

(12A) (James Gray, 2019, Chi/Bra/US) 123 mins

Director James Gray has gone from outsider to bona-fide commercial auteur following the surprise success of adventure yarn The Lost City of Z. Now he has been given a sizeable budget (although not at Nolan levels) and a major star in Brad Pitt, who plays an astronaut attempting to track down his missing father. Gray has followed through on his vow to make the most realistic space-travel film ever.

The Farewell

(PG) (Lulu Wang, 2019, US) 100 mins

After Crazy Rich Asians, another breakthrough for Asian-American cinema. Awkwafina takes the lead role as a New York-based writer who heads to China for a family wedding after finding out her grandmother Nai Nai is terminally ill. Will she blurt out the diagnosis that has been carefully kept hidden from the matriarch? Or will family loyalty triumph?

Downton Abbey

(PG) (Michael Engler, 2019, UK) 122 mins

The big-screen spin-off of Julian Fellowes’s hit TV series has turned into a solid-gold box office hit, as if anyone doubted it. But it’s not likely to go down in the annals of great cinema: not only has the big screen shown up its fawning approach to the upper classes, it’s also evident that few risks were taken with the format, with a highly televisual approach to narrative and tone.

Hustlers

(15) (Lorene Scafaria, 2019, US) 110 mins

This high-trash thriller – about a team of strippers scamming their boneheaded Wall Street clientele – would appear to have saved the American summer box office; how ironic is that? It has also proved a comeback vehicle for Jennifer Lopez: she’s a hard-as-nails exotic dancer who initiates Constance Wu’s newbie into the art of grifting extra money from their marks.

For Sama

(18) (Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts, 2019, UK) 100 mins

A harrowing documentary that acts as a frontline dispatch from the siege of Aleppo; shot by Waad al-Kateab and pieced together in collaboration with British film-maker Edward Watts. As a depiction of life under constant bombardment, this could not be much rawer, but there are green shoots of hope: al-Kateab meeting her future husband Hamza, and the arrival of her daughter Sama, after whom the film is named.

AP

Five of the best … rock & pop

I’ll get your coat… Hamzaa

Hamzaa

A few years ago, 20-year-old Londoner Malika Hamzaa was working the cloakroom at Brixton Academy, having just quit her A-levels. Now, thanks to the soul-infused R&B of 2018’s First Signs of Me EP, a show-stopping debut on Later ... (while still unsigned) and her recent London anthem, London, she is being touted as one to watch in 2020.
The Scala, N1, Thursday 26 September

Madeon

When Hugo Pierre Leclercq, AKA Madeon, was 17 he chucked a mash-up of 39 different songs online and thought nothing more of it. The song, christened Pop Culture, went viral, he was signed to Columbia and went on to produce songs for Lady Gaga. Eight years later, after some time away, he is back with more densely packed dance music, with a new album, Good Faith, due soon.
Heaven, WC2, Wednesday 25 September

Hannah Diamond

With PC Music acolyte and Photoshop fan Hannah Diamond’s delayed debut album, Reflections, apparently still due for release at some point this year, expect a handful of new songs to creep into this one-off show’s setlist. Perhaps the album has been delayed by Diamond’s recent focus on photography, shooting the likes of Offset, Olly Alexander and occasional collaborator Charli XCX.
Soup Kitchen, Manchester, Saturday 21 September

Joe, Dru Hill, 112

This trip down R&B memory lane was originally meant to feature Brandy but, according the Eventim Apollo’s website, “due to no reason given” she’ll no longer be joining Sisqó et al. Still, in her place there’s Bad Boy Records’ “vocal harmony group” 112 alongside the smooth croon of Joe and a whole host of Dru Hill bangers and slow jams to make it feel like 1996 all over again.
Eventim Apollo, W6, Fri; touring to Sunday 29 September

MC

Vijay Iyer

London’s venerable Wigmore Hall could hardly have found a better composer in residence to reflect contemporary music’s diversity than Vijay Iyer, the US jazz and straight composer, piano improviser, and world-musical genre-hopper. These two gigs find Iyer exploring long-running partnerships with acclaimed New York pianist Craig Taborn, and poet and electronicist Mike Ladd.
Wigmore Hall, W1, Sunday 22 September

JF

Three of the best … classical concerts

Booked up… Gerald Barry. Photograph: Alan Betson

The Intelligence Park

Gerald Barry has now composed six stage works but his operatic journey began in 1990 with The Intelligence Park. A tale of love between an opera composer and a castrato set in Dublin in 1753, it is a freewheeling mix of styles and historical references, with much of the music based upon chorales by Bach. Music Theatre Wales’s revival is directed and designed by Nigel Lowery, whose quirky vision might well match Barry’s anarchic imagination, and stars Michel de Souza and Patrick Terry.
Royal Opera House: Linbury Theatre, WC2 Wednesday 25 September to Friday 4 October; touring to Monday 4 November

Bittersweet Metropolis

Any series devoted to the music of the Weimar republic must explore the cabaret that flourished in Germany in the 1920s, and the second half of the Philharmonia’s Weimar series begins with an evening devoted to the images, words and music that came out of that explosion of artistic energy. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts, as he does the more conventional final pair of concerts, featuring music by Hindemith, Berg, Weill and Busoni.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Monday 23 September; Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Thursday 26 & Sunday 29 September

Carmen

Welsh National Opera’s first season under its new general director Aidan Lang opens with a new staging of one of the staples of any company’s repertory. Jo Davies directs what is promised as an updating of Bizet’s masterpiece, set in Central America in the 1970s. In the initial cast, Virginie Verrez takes the title role, with Dimitri Pittas as Don José and Phillip Rhodes as Escamillo.
Wales Millennium Centre: Donald Gordon Theatre, Cardiff, Sat 21 September to Thursday 10 October; touring to Thursday 7 May

Five of the best … exhibitions

Steel to Rust - Meltdown, 2016, by Otobong Nkanga

Otobong Nkanga

Maps of the spaces between us and the hidden forces that connect us – desire and fear, money and power – give the work of this Nigeria-born, Belgium-based artist a cosmic mystery. She uses tapestry as well as painting and video to weave her lyrical images of the threads of human community and the world economy.
Tate St Ives Saturday 21 September to Sunday 5 January

Antony Gormley

One of Britain’s most popular artists brings his mixture of spectacle and simplicity to London in what is sure to be a hit show. In recent years, Gormley has branched out in all directions – from hotel design to mass participation – but the expressionless casts of the human figure that are his trademark remain his most convincing images.
Royal Academy of Arts, W1, Saturday 21 September to Tuesday 3 December

Mark Leckey

A full-sized replica of a Merseyside motorway bridge that hung over the artist’s childhood is the centrepiece of this journey through memory, myth and pop culture. A radio drama about kids, changelings and Leckey’s own early years will haunt this grandiose and brutal setting. At his best this artist is a hallucinatory archaeologist of contemporary life. At his worst he’s like a loud but vacant music festival where nothing adds up to much.
Tate Britain, SW1, Tuesday 24 September to Sunday 5 January

The Art of Innovation

Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg’s painting Coalbrookdale By Night is a masterpiece of Romantic art yet belongs to the Science Museum. Why? Because art and technology were as entwined in the Industrial Revolution as they are today. This blockbuster explores two centuries of art and science and also includes futurist sculptures, installations inspired by contemporary physics, and what may be the art of AI.
Science Museum, SW7, Wednesday 25 September to Sunday 26 January

Anna Maria Maiolino

Bizarre organic effusions made of mud sprout from the imagination of this artist, born in Italy in the last years of Mussolini, who moved to Brazil when she was 18 only to live under a similarly brutal regime. Maiolino is a dissident artist whose subversion ranges from sensual sketches of fantastic worlds to films that defied the military. A masterclass in the art of resistance.
Whitechapel Gallery, E1, Wednesday 25 September to Sunday 12 January

JJ

Five of the best … theatre shows

Hair today… Grace Molony and Paksie Vernon in The Watsons. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

The Watsons

Laura Wade’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel was the big hit of last year’s Chichester festival. It is, however, no scissors-and-paste job but, in Samuel West’s production, a brilliantly witty examination of who actually owns a story: is it the author or the characters themselves? Expect to be constantly surprised by Wade’s ceaseless invention.
The Menier Chocolate Factory, SE1 to Saturday 16 November

‘Master Harold’ … and the Boys

Lucian Msamati and Hammed Animashaun star in Athol Fugard’s terrific play about the close relationship between a Port Elizabeth schoolboy and two of his parents’ black employees in training for a dance championship. But this is 1950s South Africa where even friendship is circumscribed by the cruel laws of apartheid.
National Theatre: Lyttelton, SE1, Saturday 21 September to Tuesday 17 December

Macbeth

There must be a reason why Shakespeare’s study of the perils of vaulting ambition is everywhere this autumn. Could it be that the play has suddenly acquired a dangerous topicality? Here, John Simm becomes the murderous thane with Dervla Kirwan as his dagger-wielding wife. Paul Miller, who is doing great things at Richmond’s Orange Tree and who directed Simm’s Hamlet in Sheffield, is in charge of proceedings.
Chichester Festival Theatre, Saturday 21 September to Saturday 26 October

Assassins

Even by Stephen Sondheim’s standards, this was a daring show: “an anti-musical about anti-heroes,” as the New York Times put it, exploring nine actual, or would-be, presidential assassins. In fact, the show, with a book by John Weidman, says a lot about the American dream and evokes the rich sound of the nation’s music. It is directed by Bill Buckhurst, who did a superb Sweet Charity at Nottingham Playhouse, where this production heads after.
West Berkshire Playhouse: The Watermill, Newbury, Thursday 26 September to Saturday 26 October

The Wolf of Wall Street

Jordan Belfort’s memoir about his life as a stock market millionaire and federal convict has already been turned into a Martin Scorsese movie. Now it becomes an immersive theatre experience taking place over four floors of a London office block. Coming from the team that created a similarly immersive version of The Great Gatsby, it should be a memorably involving event.
Stratton Oakmont, EC2, to Sunday 19 January

MB

Three of the best … dance shows

Aye aye… Wasteland. Photograph: Joe Armitage

Boy Blue: Redd

East London hip-hop company Boy Blue moved up to the next level with its last outing, the acclaimed Blak Whyte Gray, so expectations are high for Redd. It is not a continuation of the misspelled colour theme but from the Gaelic word that means to put things in order, in this case about finding peace after trauma.
Barbican Theatre, EC2 Thursday 26 September to Saturday 5 October

Gary Clarke Company: Wasteland

The sequel to Clarke’s Coal, which looked at the miners’ strike in his home town of Grimethorpe, Wasteland asks what happened next in the post-industrial north and finds an unexpected answer in the rise of rave culture.
Northern Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne, Wednesday 25 & Thursday 26 September; touring to Wednesday 4 March

Rosie Kay Dance Company: Fantasia

What would the most joyful, beautiful, pleasurable dance you could make look like? Rosie Kay attempts to go some way to answering that in a work informed by neuroscientific research into audience aesthetics.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Wednesday 25 & Thursday 26 September; touring to Thursday 21 November

LW

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