Our weekend arts and culture picks, from Knock at the Cabin to 2:22 A Ghost Story
Our critics and editors share their expert cultural picks for the next few days
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Welcome to The Independent’s Arts Agenda, our guide to the very best culture to catch up with across your Saturday and Sunday.
Carefully curated by our critics and editors, this round-up features hot tips across the worlds of art, film, TV, theatre, dance, comedy, opera, books and music. Whether you’re after a must-see new production or an under-the-radar gem you might have overlooked, we’ve got you covered.
This week, TV editor Ellie Harrison looks ahead to the series finale of BBC One’s acclaimed crime drama Happy Valley, and arts editor Jessie Thompson steers you towards Cheryl’s stage debut in 2:22 A Ghost Story. Film editor Adam White had a blast with M Night Shyamalan’s latest, Knock at the Cabin, while chief art critic Mark Hudson highlights a Golden Lion-winning work from Sonia Boyce. Our music editor Roisin O’Connor, meanwhile, gives you a rundown of what to expect from the Grammys this Sunday.
Art
Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way
This is a chance for the British public to see Boyce’s Golden Lion-winning work from last year’s Venice Biennale (touring later to Leeds). With five great women singers calling and responding to each other from different screens and rooms, the piece is as much an inspirational jam session as a sculptural installation.Turner Contemporary, Margate, until 8 May
Making Modernism: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Kӓthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin
Only a week left to see this highly atmospheric look at four women artists taking up the challenges of Modern Art in 1900s Germany. Sex, self, birth and death are their subjects, with Kollwitz’s anguished, starkly wrought monochrome cutting a swathe through the sometimes sugary expressionism of the others. Royal Academy, until 12 February
Barbara Chase-Riboud: Infinite Folds
There’s an extended run for the first UK show from this veteran African-American sculptor who is also famous, appropriately, as a historical novelist. There’s an eerie monumentality to her work’s complex interplay between cast bronze and woven silk and wool, as though we’re looking at commemorative objects from some elusive alternate reality. Serpentine Gallery, until 10 April
Mark Hudson, Chief Art Critic
Books
Windward Family by Alexis Keir
It’s a pleasure to read Alexis Keir’s powerful writing about returning to Saint Vincent, the Caribbean Island where he once lived as a child. Keir’s quest takes him on not just a personal journey but to stories of others who left the island, from one of the earliest Black nurses to work in a London hospital to a child with vitiligo who was paraded as a curiosity.
Love Pamela by Pamela Anderson
In the same week that Pamela: A Love Story debuted on Netflix, the Baywatch star continues to reclaim her narrative. Her candid memoir was written without a ghostwriter and starts with 14 pages of her own poetry, so be in no doubt that this is Pammy at her most authentic.
Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes
You know that old saying about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes? That’s the rough premise of the latest novel from Me Before You author (and major publishing force) Jojo Moyes. Two women accidentally swap gym bags and are forced to – literally – walk in each other’s shoes, with drastic consequences. As we speak, someone is probably already turning it into a film destined to make us all weep.
Jessie Thompson, Arts Editor
Film
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
This understandably delayed follow-up to 2018’s Black Panther had to withstand a number of calamities on its way to the screen, most tragically the death of leading man Chadwick Boseman from cancer. In a gesture of respect, Boseman’s death was mirrored in the off-camera death of his character T’Challa. It means Wakanda Forever is a bit of a downer – full of grief-stricken actors playing grief-stricken heroes, its plot a garbled bit of furniture-rearranging for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Arriving on Disney+ this week, the film is at least worth watching for Angela Bassett. Her work as Wakanda’s Queen Mother earned her an Oscar nod last month – a first for the MCU, in an acting category. Streaming on Disney+ now
Knock at the Cabin
Having breezed through the backlash portion of his career, M Night Shyamalan is now firmly embraced as the kind of filmmaker he always wanted to be: purveyor of nourishing B-movies that do exactly what they say on the tin. Knock at the Cabin stars Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint as members of a freaky doomsday cult who show up at a family’s holiday home unexpectedly. In cinemas from Friday 3 February
On paper, this seemed to be the film that comeback kid Brendan Fraser would easily ride to an Oscar. But Darren Aronofsky’s haunting grief drama is something far pricklier than that: a gnarly glimpse into self-destruction as Fraser’s character practically eats himself to death. Reactions overseas have been cut right down the middle (or, if we’re being less generous, a tad more negative than positive), but you can judge it for yourself this weekend. Fraser, at least, is remarkable, and he’s backed up by the great Hong Chau and Samantha Morton. In cinemas from Friday 3 February
Adam White, Film Editor
Music
Album: Raye – My 21st Century Blues
Our album critic Helen Brown was certainly impressed by Raye’s long-awaited debut. My 21st Century Blues follows a good few years of tumult for the British artist, most notably due to a row with her label Polydor over their alleged reluctance to let her release a full-length project. Having parted ways with them in 2021, she’s come back swinging with what Helen describes as a “lyrically compelling” and “exceptional” record. Spend some time with it this weekend; you’ll find it was worth the wait.
Grammy Awards, Los Angeles
That’s right, music’s biggest night returns on Sunday 5 February (or the crack of dawn on Monday if you’re tuning in from the UK). Hosted by comedian Trevor Noah, the 65th Grammy Awards ceremony will include performances from Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny, British singer Sam Smith, and US pop star Lizzo. Arguably the biggest drama of the night comes from the fact that both Beyonce and Adele are up for the coveted Album of the Year prize, six years after the “Hello” singer won over the Lemonade artist. If she wins again for her 2021 album 30 over Beyonce’s shimmering, disco-influenced Renaissance, it could spark one of the greatest controversies in Grammys history.
The Mysterines at 100 Club, London, Friday 3 February
The Independent’s very own music correspondent, Megan Graye, has organised a gig at London’s storied 100 Club as part of her side hustle, Vocal Girls, to celebrate the blog’s third birthday. Expect some high-octane rock from the Liverpool and Wirral-formed alt-rock band The Mysterines. Because nobody puts Vocal Girls in the corner!
Roisin O’Connor, Music Editor
Stage
Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons
Not a shopping list for a gin and tonic festival, but an intriguing play from Sam Steiner, now open in the West End. Starring Jenna Coleman and Aidan Turner, it imagines a world where people are only allowed to speak 140 words a day. First staged at Edinburgh in 2015 and written when Steiner was just 21, it’s mainly worth seeing as a calling card for an exciting new writing talent. Harold Pinter Theatre, until 18 March; Manchester Opera House from 21 to 25 March; Theatre Royal, Brighton from 28 March to 1 April
Titus Andronicus
Bring your smelling salts: Shakespeare’s Globe has a new production of the play famed for making audience members faint and throw up. It’s a notoriously gory work – seriously, at one point a mother eats a pie and the filling is… her sons. Jude Christian’s production, though, has a different approach to the violence. Titus is performed here by an all-female cast, and staged in the Globe’s candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse for the very first time. Shakespeare’s Globe, until 15 April
2:22 A Ghost Story
Scary in a far less blood-soaked way is Danny Robins’s West End thriller 2:22 A Ghost Story. It’s been making waves for its surprising celebrity casting since it first opened: the role of Jenny has passed from Lily Allen (who got an Olivier nom in the process) to Laura Whitmore, and now to Cheryl. Don’t write her off… my colleague Isobel Lewis says the Geordie princess is actually pretty good. Lyric Theatre until 23 April
Jessie Thompson, Arts Editor
TV
Pamela, A Love Story
Pamela Anderson is taking ownership of her own life story, after the Hulu drama Pam & Tommy chronicled the leaking of her sex tape with her ex-husband Tommy Lee in the Nineties. This Netflix film by Ryan White, which the former Baywatch star and activist agreed to after persuasion from her son, shows the tender, homely, and often political side to Anderson, on her own terms. Out now on Netflix
Nolly
Anything Russell T Davies is attached to – from adventures in time and space to earth-shattering Aids dramas – is bound to burst with his trademark, bombastic heartiness. His latest project is Nolly, a drama about actor Noele Gordon (played here with relish by Helena Bonham Carter). Davies says he wrote the series because he’d always wondered why she was so unceremoniously sacked from the daytime soap Crossroads back in 1981. According to our critic Nick Hilton, Carter is “pitch perfect” and “sensational” in the role. Out now on ITVX
Happy Valley
This Sunday we will wave goodbye to Sarah Lancashire’s force of nature, Sergeant Catherine Cawood. We can only hope she’ll be leaving us in her refurbished Land Rover and not a body bag. The Yorkshire-based detective will be missed for her swearing as much as her stellar police work, and it’ll be very hard for another British crime drama to fill the hole that Sally Wainwright’s fantastic series will inevitably leave. Sunday, 9pm on BBC One
Ellie Harrison, TV Editor
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