Angelina Jolie is back again with those cut-glass cheekbones and ink-black wings, reprising her role as the self-proclaimed ‘Mistress of Evil’, in Joachim Rønning’s nauseating sequel to the 2014 live-action spin on Sleeping Beauty. As the first film taught us, Maleficent isn’t evil, she’s misunderstood. Rat-bag men sold her out, and ever since she’s been on warry of humans, except for her god-child Aurora. The legend we knew was just propaganda. All Maleficent wants is to protect her fellow fairies from the war-mongering ways of men. This time around, it’s not a man that’s the Read more ...

PJ Harvey is not just a consummate rock musician but a multi-talented artist, who has re-invented herself throughout her career. She paints and makes sculpture, has participated with Artangel in an ambitious art installation, and written and performed theatre and film music. The music for the stage version of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s classic Hollywood blockbuster and Betty Davis vehicle All About Eve is the latest of her accomplishments.The exciting Belgian director Ivo Van Hove made a shrewd choice, as Harvey has shown herself to be expert at evoking the inner turmoil of women in conflict – Read more ...

David Greig’s reimagining of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel has brought a masterpiece of intellectual science fiction back to its philosophical core. Over the concentrated two hours of Matthew Lutton’s production, which reaches the Lyric Hammersmith from Melbourne via Edinburgh, we are compelled to contemplate, in the best tradition of the genre, ideas that go “beyond the reach of human beings”, as Lem himself put it. The experience is mesmerising. And if that sounds somehow cold or inhuman, the dramatic kernel of the story hits home at a deeply human level: Lem’s premise in this space Read more ...

You wonder about the title of French dramatist Sam Gallet’s Mephisto [A Rhapsody], an adaptation for our days of Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel about an actor unable to resist the blandishments of fame, even if they come at the cost of losing himself. Those who know the story from Hungarian director István Szabó’s celebrated 1981 film with its mesmerising central performance by Klaus-Maria Brandauer might come to this looking for an element of tragedy, one moderated by the merciless accusation of complicity directed at a character unable to resist the enticements offered by Nazism, a figure who Read more ...

The most arresting thing about Dada Masilo’s contemporary South African take on Giselle is Masilo herself. Tiny and boyishly slight, she inhabits her own fast, fidgety, tribal-inspired choreography with the intensity of someone in a trance. Costumed she may be in the familiar tight-bodiced little dress of traditional productions but her boldly shaven head suggests that this Giselle is no wallflower. And she's not going to take betrayal lying down.We first meet her at work in the fields alongside other villagers. The action, like composer Philip Miller’s electronic nod to Adolph Adam’s score, Read more ...

When Joker won the Golden Lion in Venice in September, it was an unprecedented achievement, the first time a comic book-related film had won such a prestigious prize. But then, isn’t your typical comic book film. Starring a phenomenal Joaquin Phoenix, it’s seriously themed, brilliantly executed and quite extraordinary. We’ve seen many Jokers, including memorable turns by Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, so it’s not unreasonable to wonder why we’d need another. One reason is that this is a Joker without his Batman, or any superhero trappings; another, that the ‘origin story’ is Read more ...

What a joy Laura Wade's latest play is. Transferring from its successful run at the Minerva Theatre at Chichester last year, The Watsons is developed from Jane Austen's unfinished novel (started in 1804 and abandoned the following year). But rather than give us a period homage or a modern pastiche, Wade serves up a delightful concoction that has elements of both, but also much, much more.She sets the scene by dramatising the surviving pages of Austen's story. Emma Watson (Grace Molony) returns home to Surrey after being raised by a moneyed aunt in Shropshire for 14 years. Her father is dying Read more ...

Midway through John Crowley’s The Goldfinch, a character compares a reproduction antique with the real deal. “The new one is flat dead,” he says. He might as well be talking about the movie.On paper, John Crowley’s adaption of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has all the right ingredients to be an early awards contender. Firstly, there’s the novel. It may have divided snootier critics, but is adored by legions of readers. A Dickensian tale that stretches nearly 800 pages, it tackles grief, terrorism and drug addiction, all set within the romance of the art world. Then there’s Read more ...

The only novel by the Hungarian dramatist Ödön von Horváth, Youth Without God was written in exile after he fled Anschluss Vienna and published in 1938, shortly before his death. In the English-speaking world, we know von Horváth for his plays, largely through the translations of Christopher Hampton, and it’s Hampton who has adapted the novel for its UK premiere at the Coronet (now minus its Print Room moniker), where Stephanie Mohr’s production plays very satisfyingly, making the most of the venue’s spacious, uncrowded stage as well as its striking sense of period dereliction.  When it Read more ...

Despite the fact that the Downton Abbey 2015 Christmas special wrapped the series up with a seemingly watertight bow, a cinema offering of Julian Fellowes’ much-loved creation was perhaps inevitable. And so virtually all of the series cast and a few new ones descend upon the fictitious Yorkshire pile for more misadventures upstairs and down. With no loose ends, Fellowes needed to devise a new dilemma to unite the Crawleys and the many staff who keep their privileged lives on track in 1927. Cue a letter from Buckingham Palace that heralds the imminent visit to Downton of King Read more ...

Newly arrived from a much-lauded stint at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, Rachel O'Riordan has undertaken to make "work of scale by women" during her time as artistic director of the Lyric. What better place to start than with Ibsen's once-shocking heroine, her story reimagined by prolific playwright Tanika Gupta? Ibsen's understanding of the fears and frustrations of women in the Nineteenth Century stood out among writers and thinkers of his time and modern women writers are likely to warm to him. Stef Smith's version of A Doll's House, offering three manifestations of Nora and bringing her Read more ...

Described as a "performer-led re-devising’"of Mozart’s 1787 opera Don Giovanni - a tale of an arrogant and ruthless lothario who seduced countess women - Don Jo certainly played around with many of the norms we encounter in both sexual relationships and in the operatic genre. Presented by Arcola Participation’s Queer Collective - a performance collective for LGBTQI+ people run as a strand of Arcola’s youth and community work -  Don Jo aims to give a voice to those whose stories are often underrepresented on the stage.The piece illuminates many pertinent issues. Consent, power dynamics, Read more ...