Events
International Women’s Day
Wednesday marks the annual day to celebrate female empowerment, and so many events are there now that there is bound to be something in your town. Among the biggest is Southbank’s WOW festival from 7-12 March, this year featuring a talk from Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadel about their new book, an evening of comedy and music hosted by Sandi Toksvig, and live performances, including the 16-piece Icelandic rap group Daughters Of Reykjavík on 11 March.
Performance
My Brilliant Friend
The first adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s portrait of an all-consuming rivalrous female friendship in postwar Italy is at the Rose Theatre, Kingston to 2 April, starring Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack as the intense mates in question.
An American In Paris
The Broadway hit opens in the West End this weekend with some much-needed razzle-dazzle, adapted by Christopher Wheeldon from the film of the same name.
Dominion Theatre, London, to 30 September
Tree Of Codes
After premiering at the Manchester international festival in 2015, choreographer Wayne McGregor – currently showing his take on the works of Virginia Woolf at the Royal Opera House – has taken inspiration from the pages of another novelist: Jonathan Safran Foer. This piece is at Sadler’s Wells, EC1, to 11 March, with music from the xx’s producer Jamie xx and striking visuals by Olafur Eliasson.
Music
Sleaford Mods
The Nottingham duo articulate the lumpen anomie of Brexit Britain more convincingly than anyone. They’re a mixture of fury and vulnerability with Jason Williamson’s apoplectic stage persona increasingly articulating pathos as well as fury. Their new album, English Tapas, is out now.
Night + Day
Even if you find their music achingly dull, you have to hand it to the xx for not just playing some shows but curating a week-long festival around them, with daytime gigs and afterparties from Wednesday. Guest acts include Kelela, Cat Power, Floating Points, Sampha and the return of Robyn.
Film
Elle
Paul Verhoeven has never shied away from controversial material and this new film, which stars Isabelle Huppert as a wealthy Parisian who is raped in her own home before plotting revenge, is nothing if not provocative. Huppert’s Michele is cynical, blase and even daringly unsympathetic. Accordingly, Elle resists easily digested moral lessons in favour of black humour and troubling ambiguity.
Elle is out from 10 March
Human Rights Watch film festival
The independent organisation dedicated to defending and protecting human rights heads to the capital from 6 March with its worldwide festival – screening in a total of eight cities – of films that address human rights. Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro imagines the book that James Baldwin never finished, examining race relations in the US, while another highlight, Girl Unbound, follows one female athlete as she defies the Taliban to compete in male-only squash competitions. It continues to 17 March.
At Barbican, British Museum and Picturehouse Central
Exhibitions
Tony Cragg
Bad dad jokes about how Mr Cragg is the ideal artist to showcase work across the rocky fields of Yorkshire aside (cragg – geddit? geddit?), artist Tony’s amorphous forms, knifelike blurs and twisting towers are typically striking dotted among the county’s open-air Sculpture Park. His giant bronze creations are a marvel; just make sure you check the weather forecast before you go.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, until 3 September
Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932
A companion and counterpoint to the other show at the Royal Academy, America After The Fall, this equally striking exhibition locates itself in the post-revolutionary, pre-Stalin window of opportunity in which the likes of Kandinsky, Malevich, and Chagall thrived.
