THEATRE
The Red Lion
(London)
Patrick Marber returns to the National with a play the writer says deals with something “so private and intimate I don’t want to share it with anyone” (ostensibly it’s about amateur football). After making his name writing and starring in Knowing Me Knowing You and The Day Today – then making it again with smash-hit plays such as Closer in the late 90s – Marber has been largely absent of late, something he accounted for recently by revealing that he spent five years experiencing debilitating writer’s block. Call this a comeback.
The rest of this week’s theatre
EVENT
Sheffield Doc/Fest
(Sheffield)
The documentary community comes to the Steel City for this annual, world-leading fest. Kicking off proceedings is the premiere of Benedikt Erlingsson’s Sigur Rós-scored The Greatest Shows On Earth: A Century Of Funfairs, Circuses And Carnivals, in which the Icelandic director documents the lives and lifestyles of circus families of the last century. There’s also the UK premiere of The Look Of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s hugely anticipated follow-up to The Act Of Killing, which sees the film-maker continue to confront the perpetrators of atrocities in Indonesia to a backdrop of overwhelming cinematography.
COMEDY
David Cross
London
Best known on these shores for playing the mesmerisingly deluded doctor-turned-out-of-work-actor Tobias Fünke in Arrested Development, David Cross joins a host of British comics for a casual-ish London stand-up show. In the 90s, the comedian starred alongside Bob Odenkirk (now the titular Better Call Saul) in cult sketch comedy Mr Show, and the pair have recently resurrected it for an upcoming Netflix revival. Expect Cross to become very hot property once again.
The rest of this week’s comedy gigs
TV
An Hour To Save Your Life
(BBC2)
Amongst TV schedules deluged by observational documentaries, this BBC series, which concerns itself with the lengths doctors and paramedics go to in order to save people on the precipice of death, proves that training a camera on things we often witness but don’t truly see can still result in something extremely worthwhile.
ART
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Oxford
Between the years 1974 and 1978, the artist Lynn Hershman Leeson maintained an alter ego called Roberta Breitmore. Leeson blurred the lines between persona and person, giving Breitmore all the documentation – driver’s licence, credit cards and psychiatrist letters – of a real human. She also existed in the physical world as played by the artist and other actors. Through this work, Leeson was dealing with notions of identity in its most fundamental and contentious sense. In this exhibition, centring on her replica genetics lab, Leeson continues her often-prescient look at the self and what it’s made of.
The rest of this week’s exhibitions.
CLUBS
Art’s House
London
Artwork – dubstep progenitor and one third of Magnetic Man – decided earlier this year that he fancied a post-afterparty rave, and called on his Twitter followers to offer up their houses to him and friends Skream, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Route 94. Now, he’s turned the idea into a franchise and taken it to The Nest, which will be become the DJ’s surrogate home each Friday in June, with precursory food and music served up at Dalston Roof Gardens before the party relocates up the road.
The rest of this week’s clubs.
DVD
The Emperor’s New Clothes
After claiming he didn’t believe in voting, then endorsing Ed Miliband, then subsequently revealing he only did so because other people told him it was a good idea, Russell Brand came out of this year’s general election looking – in a period of stiff competition – like one of the most confused men in England. That distinct lack of political agenda, though, makes him a more earnest guide than most, evidenced in this half-documentary, half-real-life quest, in which the comedian attempts to track down the perpetrators of the banking crisis.
ALBUM
Slaves: Are You Satisfied?
Kent duo Slaves make punk as filtered through the bulked-up, distortive guitars of the hardcore scene, the righteous ire of comment boards and the eyesore graphics of a post-internet aesthetic. They might be bringing more hoarse bellowing to Radio 1 than its seen in years, but in debut album Are You Satisfied?’s sparse directness there’s as much new wave weirdness as there is Combat Rock.
Read an interview with Slaves and a review of their debut album
FILM
Timbuktu
Once a byword for unfathomable exoticism, the Malian city of Timbuktu has in recent years been most synonymous with the violent Islamist insurgent forces that emerged from the area’s civil war. Premiering at Cannes in 2014, Abderrahmane Sissako’s drama about people beset by extremist forces – originally intended to be a documentary, until the director realised ordinary citizens had been effectively silenced by Jihadists – has only become more timely in the interim.
GIG
Jamie xx
Dublin, London
On his 2014 track All Under One Roof Raving, Jamie xx layered excerpts from Mark Leckey’s iconic rave culture film collage Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore over his trademark bare-bones steel drum sound, turning a tribute to communion into a lonely-sounding bedroom nostalgia for something the 26-year-old never actually experienced. On 1 June we get the first full album fruits of the DJ and producer’s brand of clever and considered dance music, in the form of In Colour, while this week also sees him begin the festival season in earnest with Dublin’s Forbidden Fruit festival, as well as an appearance in the suitably reverent environs of Hackney’s St John’s Church.
