New York
Nick Hasted
Tom Holland is 30 now, and after a decade in the role his boyish Spider-Man muscularly comes of age in this fourth solo outing. A montage of street-level NYC crime-fighting sums up his activities since Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), when Peter Parker’s unmasking and the collateral damage of Aunt May’s death caused Dr Strange to magically wipe public knowledge of his secret identity, protecting loved ones such as girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) only by sacrificing that love’s existence.It’s a classic sf quandary which this latest instalment relishes working through. Parker has let himself be absorbed Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
FRIDAY 24 JULY, by Guy OddyEven for a festival whose whole purpose is to platform a rich range of artists from cultures all around the world, WOMAD 2026 is seriously on top of its game for a new start at a new venue deep in the heart of rural Wiltshire. The 2000-acre Neston Park, created in the 1790s, proved a beautiful setting that mirrored the excellent acts and fine weather. It's certainly no Womud and sunscreen is at something of a premium during long summer days.
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Similarly, the food on offer is consistently off-the-hook and the Read more ...
Sarah Kent
How to Live on Earth should be compulsory viewing in every classroom, boardroom, town hall and government office on the globe. Billed as a “how-to video” the documentary offers hope as well as a realistic view of the dire straits our planet is in.Director Fredi Devas worked with David Attenborough on seasons two and three of Planet Earth, recording the stunning beauty of nature so as to bring home what our gung-ho economic policies are destroying, but without suggesting any realistic alternatives.In How to... Devas takes the next step. Focusing on three key questions – How to value nature? Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Currently on show at the Barbican is a video that makes your hackles rise. Two “savages” are on display in a cage surrounded by punters who happily pay a dollar to pose for photographs with these exotic natives or else to watch them dance. These hideous interactions are being played out in museums in supposedly civilised countries including America, Spain and Australia.You don’t have to be Einstein to smell a rat, though; the signs are there for all to see. Along with her grass skirt, the woman wears shades and sneakers while the man’s Mayan-style breast plate and head gear are accompanied by Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Anybody who relished the blistering family rows of Bad Jews or Admissions might be surprised by what their author, Joshua Harmon, wrote next: a three-hander still based on a warring family, but this time one closely resembling his own.Hampstead Theatre has sensibly staged We Had a World in its Downstairs space, where the intimacy of its content plays directly to the onlooker. The audience here, more overtly than is usual in the theatre, plays judge and jury for what the younger version of Harmon, Joshua (Ryan Kopel), stages as a recreation of his past, aided by his “cast”: his brisk lawyer Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
It was something of a miracle how long They Might Be Giants managed to preserve their trademark madcap optimism intact. It lasted right through to their last album, Book (2021). In The World is to Dig, they are still holding on to it in some tracks, but in others it is clear that even they have finally succumbed to ubiquitous world-weariness.Maybe the surprise is that they stayed immune from it for so long. The band’s two Johns, Flansburgh and Linnell, are now in their mid-sixties, their band has been going for over four decades, this is their 24th album. But it is hard to ignore a new vibe Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Just a year after the first series, Your Friends & Neighbours returns to titillate and amuse us with the escapades of the moneyed but never satisfied burghers of Westmont Village. This mythical community somewhere in New York’s Hudson Valley has everything that money can buy, and probably a bit more, but does this make the locals happy and well-adjusted? Well obviously not.Jon Hamm returns to reprise his role of Andrew “Coop” Cooper, the former Manhattan financier who was axed from his job and is now pursuing an imaginative new career in burglary, while trying to be a responsible father Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
After Barber Shop Chronicles comes a female slice of pan-African life, set in Harlem in July 2019, at the fag end of Donald J Trump’s first presidency. Playwright Jocelyn Bioh never mentions him by name, but his shadow looms over the lives of the braiders, all aiming to become US citizens.At least, his shadow looms over them now. Bioh’s tweaking of the text for the London run has added topical plot points from the second Trump presidency to give this bouncy Tony-nominated comedy a real sting in its tail.For most of its 90 minutes, though, it’s a fast-talking joy. We spend a 12-hour working Read more ...
David Nice
Have you ever witnessed both a Tristan and an Isolde physically plausible and vocally up to everything that Wagner throws at them, from violent cursing to heartbreaking tenderness? I hadn't until yesterday. At first it seemed as if Yuval Sharon's supposedly controversial production would smother Lise Davidsen's Isolde and Michael Spyres' Tristan in concepts and restrict them to a narrow curve set back from the front of the stage and hovering above it. Acoustically that seems to have been a challenge for those I know who were present at the Met, the orchestra supposedly overwhelming the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Another day, another few million bucks for Taylor Sheridan. Hot on the heels of Marshals, his latest Yellowstone spin-off, his inexorable march through the TV schedules continues with this saga of the Clyburn family. Previously they called New York home, but thanks to a sudden catastrophe they find themselves moving to the huge spaces and epic scenery of Montana's Madison River Valley. You could call it melodrama, and at times it threatens to go the whole hog and turn into soap, but The Madison does have the gift of watchability. It also delivers a hefty jolt of star power, in the shape Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Lise Davidsen: Live at the Met Lise Davidsen (soprano) James Baillieu (piano) (Decca)
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This really is Lise Davidsen’s moment. At the time of writing, the singer often described “greatest dramatic soprano in the world” has just performed the opening night of a run of performances at the Metropolitan Opera as Isolde. She made her house debut in 2019 (as Lisa in The Queen of Spades) and has been frequently welcomed back: this is her ninth different role in a house which she is starting to call it her second home. The current production of Read more ...
Joe Muggs
For anyone to create a whole, new, recognisable – and kick-ass – musical style in this day and age is no small achievement. To do so as you enter your 70s is pretty mind boggling. Yet somehow, that’s what sometime Sonic Youth-er Kim Gordon did on her second solo album The Collective in 2024. She’d already made a huge splash with No Home Record in 2019, where she smashed all kinds of dance, electronic and hip hop elements into distorted alt-rock with uncommon panache, but The Collective tightened the focus, building a whole language around mutations of the modernist drum patterns and bass Read more ...