Category : Culture

Till review – sensitive Emmett Till drama aims to educate and honor

A remarkable performance from Danielle Deadwyler anchors an at times morally questionable pursuit: to retell a devastating story of Black painFrom the first scene, Till is haunted with grief. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall) sits in the fro...

The week in audio: Hoaxed; Dua Lipa: At Your Service; You and Yours

An unmissable podcast tells the terrifying tale of a satanic abuse hoax. Elsewhere, Dua Lipa asks the questions, and even Winifred Robinson is shockedHoaxed | Tortoise MediaDua Lipa: At Your Service | Apple.comYou and Yours (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds...

Souad Massi: Sequana review – an outstanding return to form

(Backing Track/Wrasse)The Franco-Algerian singer’s 10th album spans genres and moods to potent effect, with glittering production from Justin AdamsAfter exile from her Algerian homeland (her crime: being a political singer), Souad Massi enjoyed inter...

Tosca review – gloriously sung and full of grand passion, this is gripping theatre

Coliseum, LondonChristof Loy’s atmospheric staging of Puccini’s opera doesn’t always cohere, but its psychological probing proves powerful and Adam Smith is a tremendous CavaradossiEnglish National Opera opens its season with Puccini’s Tosca, in a st...

The Woman King review – a thunderously cinematic good time

Magnificent Viola Davis heads Gina Prince-Bythewood’s ass-kicking, thought-provoking epic inspired by a real-life all-female armyMuscular in its action sequences, sweeping in scope; a big, flexing, show-off spectacle of a movie. The Woman King is the...

Björk: Fossora review – one of her hardest-hitting albums

(One Little Independent)The pop auteur’s 10th album deals with the death of her mother and the dawn of new love by digging deep into Dutch techno, bass clarinets – and fungiIt was, perhaps, only a matter of time before Björk, that great musical natur...

The week in classical: Aida; Candide; Manchester Collective: Weather – review

Royal Opera House; Blackheath Halls; Queen Elizabeth Hall, LondonVerdi’s music reigns supreme in the Royal Opera’s austere new staging of Aida; a community Bernstein production raises the roof; and a cult 90s work has never felt more timelyStripped o...

The great British sell-off: why are we allowing our arts to be privatised by stealth? | Charlotte Higgins

Gallery by gallery, museum by museum, the public stake in our cultural institutions is shrinkingThere is a frequent complaint from the right that that the deep-rooted ideological position of the BBC, universities, theatres, museums and other arts and...

Jason Derulo: ‘What happens when we die? I am going in a first-class seat to heaven’

The singer on a wardrobe malfunction at Wembley, being told he has a dad bod and his love of chocolate lava cakeBorn in Florida, Jason Derulo, 33, attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles. In 2009, his debut single Whatcha Sa...

Little Fires Everywhere author Celeste Ng: ‘Elena and Mia constantly butt heads with each other inside me’

The writer of the novel that inspired the hit TV series starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington talks about how her new book turned dystopian after Trump came to powerCeleste Ng’s first novel, Everything I Never Told You, about a Chinese Amer...

British artists recreate ‘A Great Day in Harlem’ photo for Black History Month

Project marks 40th anniversary of British black arts movement and features emerging black talentEstablished and up and coming black artists are to be photographed together, marking the 40th anniversary of the start of the British black arts movement,...

A Ballet of Lepers by Leonard Cohen review – violent literary beginnings

A novella and short stories from the 1950s showcase Cohen’s fascinating self-fashioning, but also a taint of bitternessLong before he wrote Famous Blue Raincoat or Last Year’s Man, Leonard Cohen already knew – with painful exactness – who he wanted t...

‘I am lonely’: controversial book reveals Anthony Bourdain’s final days

Family and friends are upset by new biography divulging Bourdain’s moods – and texts – in the lead-up to his death“God gives us meat, but the devil sends us cooks,” Anthony Bourdain told the Observer two decades ago. He viewed the phrase as a complim...

‘It’s embellished, but it’s a TV show’: is Chicago happy with the way it’s portrayed in The Bear?

The surprise US TV hit of the summer has divided Chicagoans about the picture it paints of the city and its eateriesIn the back of the house at the Original Beef of Chicagoland, things are tense. Space is limited. Money is low. Bills are literally pi...

From Flux Gourmet to Björk: a complete guide to this week’s entertainment

Whether you’re after director Peter Strickland’s descent into the decadently weird or the Icelandic conjurer’s latest aural opus, our critics have you coveredScream/Nightmare on Elm Street marathons The Prince Charles Cinema, London, 1 October onlyWe...