Going out: Cinema
Medusa Deluxe
Out now
After a stylist at a hairdressing competition is found dead, the rest of the competitors play detective in this intriguingly camp spin on a traditional murder mystery. Director Thomas Hardiman’s feature debut looks a treat too, with camerawork from Oscar nominee Robbie Ryan.
Film on Film festival
BFI Southbank, to Sunday 11 June
Honouring not just cinema as an artform, but film prints as a tangible artefact, everything in this celebration of celluloid is screening from a physical print instead of digitally, including several nitrate prints – the luminous, lustrous and famously flammable substance which films were mostly made of from the 1890s to the 1950s.
War Pony
Out now
A young man, Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), pursues the American dream in this drama by Gina Gammell and Riley Keough (yep, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter), which won the Camera D’Or, an award given to the best first feature at the Cannes film festival, when it premiered there last year.
Chevalier
Out now
Inspired by the true story of composer Joseph Bologne, the illegitimate son of a slave and a plantation owner, director Stephen Williams tells the story of the man who rose from humble origins to unexpected success in French high society – including an affair with Marie Antoinette. Kelvin Harrison Jr stars as Bologne. Catherine Bray
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Going out: Gigs
SZA
Tuesday 13 June to 26 June; tour starts Manchester
Finally released late last year after a series of delays, SZA’s second album SOS quickly cemented her superstar status. Having spent 10 weeks at No 1 in the US, buoyed by brutally honest breakup anthem Kill Bill, it’s showcased on this UK arena show alongside her similarly plain-speaking, emotionally complex debut, Ctrl. Michael Cragg
Isle of Wight festival
Seaclose Park, Newport, Thursday 15 June to 18 June
Pulp, George Ezra, the Chemical Brothers and Robbie Williams headline the festival season’s first big blowout. Those topliners are also joined by some women, specifically a returning Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Ciao Adios hitmaker Anne-Marie, and the Missy Elliott-endorsed R&B girlband, Flo. MC
Les Dialogues des Carmélites
Glyndebourne Opera House, Lewes, to 29 July
Originally scheduled for the 2020 festival, Barrie Kosky’s production of Poulenc’s only full-length opera reaches the Glyndebourne stage, conducted by Robin Ticciati. Sally Matthews takes the role of Blanche, the nun at the centre of this tale of religious martyrdom during the French revolution, with Katarina Dalayman as the Prioress and Karen Cargill as Mother Marie. Andrew Clements
KOKOROKO
Royal Festival Hall, London, Wednesday 14 June
The sensuous ballad Abusey Junction by London’s KOKOROKO was a 23m-view YouTube hit, but its chilled West African sway is only a part of this octet’s effortless embrace of postbop, highlife, soul, hip-hop and more. They’re fittingly freewheeling guests on Christine and the Queens’ 2023 Meltdown. John Fordham
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Going out: Art
Capturing the Moment
Tate Modern, London, Tuesday 13 June to 28 January
There couldn’t be a more fascinating theme in modern art than the strange love-hate relationship between painting and photography. Ever since the 19th century, painters have emulated the camera’s blank truths, or resisted them, or sought something deeper in the photograph. Warhol, Hockney, Richter and Salman Toor should make this unmissable.
Beatriz Milhazes
Turner Contemporary, Margate, to 10 September
This Brazilian abstract painter creates kaleidoscopic maps of modern life. Her gyrating spirals, dots and chain reactions have a complex, multicoloured yet machine-like quality. This organised chaos somehow suggests natural and social systems, from the invisible realities of DNA and particle physics to the street life of a great city.
Liverpool Biennial
Various venues, to 17 September
History, memory and the power of healing are among the themes of this festival in historic warehouses and other atmospheric settings, bringing together a wide range of international artists under the title uMoya: The sacred Return of Lost Things. Participants include Julien Creuzet, Brook Andrew, Lubaina Himid and Melanie Manchot.
Catherine Goodman
Waddesdon Manor, Aylesbury, to 29 October
Repeated studies of the same grove of time-hallowed olive trees on Corfu, which Goodman has sketched every year for more than a decade. Expressive colours and ruffled knotty surfaces evoke place and light with echoes of Van Gogh. But this is a classical setting and Goodman also evokes Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Jonathan Jones
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Going out: Stage
Groundhog Day
Old Vic theatre, London, to 12 August
Tim Minchin’s musical adaptation of this quirky hit film returns. Andy Carl is the weatherman doomed to live his day on repeat, with director Matthew Warchus and team infusing the show with energy and flair. Miriam G
Bristol Comedy Garden
Queen Square, Wednesday 14 June to 18 June
The Comedy Garden franchise – there are also Brighton and St Albans editions in July – provides the utmost in comedy convenience. Each night brings five excellent standups in one show, with stars such as Tim Key and Jack Dee rubbing shoulders with fresh faces like Daniel Foxx and Kyrah Gray. Rachel Aroesti
The Great Gatsby
Dolphin Pub, Mold, to 27 August
The hit immersive show – created by Theatr Clywd in collaboration with The Guild of Misrule – returns. It will unfold in the sprawling Dolphin, rammed with bootleg liquor, red-hot jazz and the decadent spirit of Fitzgerald’s novel pumped to the max. MG
Cinderella
Royal Albert Hall, London, Thursday 15 June to 25 June
English National Ballet dance Christopher Wheeldon’s nature-inspired Cinderella in the round, filling the space with Prokofiev’s lush music, played live, and more than 90 dancers. Making her debut is the striking soloist Precious Adams, who shall go to the ball. Lyndsey Winship
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Staying in: Streaming
Best Interests
Monday 12 June, 9pm, BBC One & iPlayer
Sharon Horgan is Nicci, a mother who goes into battle with the NHS after doctors decide to let her chronically ill daughter die in this enormously distressing but miraculously funny drama by Jack Thorne. Michael Sheen co-stars as Nicci’s drained, and later estranged, husband; Alison Oliver plays their neglected elder child, quietly going off the rails.
The Full Monty
Wednesday 14 June, Disney+
Good news if you’ve spent the past 26 years wondering what became of the Sheffield lads who stripped: this reboot of the 1997 smash – a key text in British culture’s gritty sentimentality genre – catches up with the greying crew as they grapple with modern life and the next generation (keeping their kecks firmly on this time).
Our Planet II
Wednesday 14 June, Netflix
Netflix plays host to its fair share of dubious docs, but this nature show narrated by Sir David Attenborough is as classy as they come. Series one showcased the ways creatures have adapted to their environments – and the problems climate change has wrought – while this second outing focuses on animal migration.
The Queen Of Oz
Friday 16 June, 9.30pm, BBC Two & iPlayer
After last year’s disappointing prison mockumentary Hard Cell, Catherine Tate mounts another attempt to regain her 00s comedy crown with this sitcom, co-created by her partner Jeff Gutheim, in which she stars as a gadabout princess who is given the Australian throne by her father in an attempt to get her on the straight and narrow. RA
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Staying in: Games
Dordogne
Out Tuesday 13 June, PC, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series X & S
An intimate, nostalgic, watercoloured game about childhood holidays in France, in which you revisit family memories and secrets in a beautiful setting.
Park Beyond
Out Friday 16 June, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X & S
Construct and run your own theme park and design rollercoasters in this management game, unfettered by boring real-world concerns such as the laws of physics. Keza MacDonald
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Staying in:Albums
King Krule – Space Heavy
Out now
This follow-up to 2020’s gloom-laden Man Alive! finds lo-fi troubadour Archy Marshall musing on the notion of “the space between”. Written during his long commutes between his new home town of Liverpool and London, it features the typically meandering lead single Seaforth and the delicately disillusioned If Only it Was Warmth.
Niall Horan – The Show
Out now
The erstwhile One Directioner is back with his third album of comfy, radio-friendly indie pop. Featuring long-term production collaborator John Ryan alongside Joel Little (Lorde, Taylor Swift), it’s chock full of soft-focused, uplifting anthems like singalong lead single Heaven and the decidedly Harry Styles-esque Meltdown.
Janelle Monáe – The Age of Pleasure
Out now
On her fourth album, the former self-confessed android sheds the conceptual framework for something looser and warmer. As the title suggests, this is all about self-pleasure, with recent single, the Stevie Wonder-sampling Lipstick Lover, a summer-ready ode to giving in to your desires.
Amaarae – Fountain Baby
Out now
Ghanaian singer-songwriter Ama Genfi scored a viral hit in 2020 with Afropop heater Sad Girlz Luv Money, which mused on personal growth and the unshakeable urge to dance. Genfi’s keen to keep that free spirit alive on this kaleidoscopic second album, which features the glistening, star sign-obsessed single Co-Star. MC
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Staying in: Brain food
Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things
Saturday 10 June, 9.15pm, Sky Arts
Replete with archive footage and stunning live performances, this deft film from director Leslie Woodhead paints jazz great Ella Fitzgerald as a lonely soul, only finding solace through a lifetime of endless touring.
Wilder
Podcast
The Little House on the Prairie books may be American family classics but this fascinating podcast reveals how, in recent years, criticism has swelled around their “dated cultural attitudes”, and doubts have grown over who actually wrote them.
Great Art Explained
YouTube
Curator James Payne’s long-running video series does exactly what it says on the tin, producing detailed essays examining the classics of western art, from Michelangelo to O’Keefe and Kusama, replete with helpful visuals and Payne’s enthusiastic narration. Ammar Kalia
