Critics’ choices for the week ahead
Cinema by Robbie Collin and Tim Robey
Alien: Covenant
Prometheus sequel or Alien reboot? Ridley Scott’s electrifying new science-fiction opus is a bit of both, and plenty more besides. It’s 2104, just before Christmas, when Katherine Waterston and her crewmates on an interplanetary colonial mission touch down on a seemingly welcoming planet. Thing is, enigmatic android David (Michael Fassbender) got first dibs on it, and has been doing some colonising of his own. The horrors that ensue are grandiose, blackhearted and genuinely visionary. 15 cert, 122 min
Miss Sloane
John Madden uses Jessica Chastain as a one-woman power supply for this furiously quippy, West Wing- type drama about Washington powerbroking. She plays a take-no-prisoners campaigner, expected to help the gun lobby quash a new regulation bill, who switches sides to the pro-control team – but sudden conviction in a cause is far from the only trump card she’s taking with her. 15 cert, 132 min
Jawbone
The underrated Johnny Harris ( London to Brighton) wrote and stars in this moody, south London boxing drama, as a former champ, now battling alcoholism, and rendered homeless. With the help of Ray Winstone and Michael Smiley as cruel-to-be-kind trainers, he picks himself up and heads north for an unlicensed payday. 15 cert, 91 min
Frantz
You may experience strong feelings of Vertigo while watching this black-andwhite, First World War-set romantic mystery from François Ozon. Its twisting tale of a young German woman and the enigmatic Frenchman who claims to have been a friend of her dead soldier fiancé was inspired by a little-known Ernst Lubitsch melodrama, but it’s Hitchcockian through and through. 12A cert, 114 min
Mindhorn
Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt) is best known as an Eighties TV detective with an ocular implant enabling him to see the truth. When a serial killer demands to see him, local police easily coax Thorncroft into helping. It’s getting rid of him that’s likely to be the problem. 15 cert, 89 min
Stage by Dominic Cavendish
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour This fresh and funny show, adapted from Alan Warner’s novel by Lee Hall, is a musical day in the life of six schoolgirl choristers from the west of Scotland, rampaging across Edinburgh on a choir trip with alcohol and sex-fuelled abandon, trying to get home in time to dance with submariners at the Mantrap club in Oban. Duke of York’s, London WC2 (0844 871 7623), until Sept 2
Love in Idleness
An enjoyable revival, transferring from the Menier Chocolate Factory, of a barely known Terence Rattigan play, from 1944, in which a returning evacuee from Canada gives his widowed mother and the latter’s new flame – a wealthy Tory industrialist – merry ( Hamlet- inspired) hell, puffed with socialist convictions and childishly impatient to greet the new dawn of the post-war era. Apollo Theatre, London W1 (0330 333 4809), Thurs-July 1
The Ferryman
Jez Butterworth cements his position as British theatre’s go-to guy for meaty drama with a play that takes us to Armagh, where we watch the Carney household unravel when news of a corpse brings unrequited longings, IRA guests and intimations of the supernatural. Paddy Considine heads the crack cast in Sam Mendes’s fine production. Royal Court Theatre, London SW1 (020 7565 5000), until May 20
Angels in America
Andrew Garfield plays the Aids-afflicted protagonist of Tony Kushner’s Nineties two-parter, revived by Marianne Elliot. Kushner wings us across New York and into the minds of his dramatis personae, variously affrighted by mortality, their own sexuality, the inequities of Reaganomics and millennial foreboding. Eight hours, all told – possibly bum-numbing, but positively mind-tingling. Lyttelton Theatre, London SE1 (020 7452 3000), until Aug 19
Exhibitions by Mark Hudson and Rupert Hawksley
The Pink Floyd Exhibition:
Their Mortal Remains Having embraced new technology and ground-breaking design throughout their career, Pink Floyd are the perfect subject for a blockbuster exhibition of this sort. From ragtag psychedelic beginnings to some of the most sophisticated stage pyrotechnics ever created, the show includes 350 artefacts, co-curated by Aubrey Powell, the man behind the band’s most iconic album covers.
V&A, London SW7 (020 7942 2000), until Oct 1
Object Lessons
When investment banker George Loudon ran out of space for contemporary art, he started collecting curiosities from the world of 19th-century science. This fascinating exhibition includes a life-sized papier-mâché anatomical wild turkey, wax fruits and early illustrations of the aurora borealis. Manchester Museum (0161 275 2648), Fri-Aug 20
Classical by Ivan Hewett
Tenebrae tour This superb choir is celebrating its 15th anniversary with a nationwide tour. The focus is Path of Miracles, a moving celebration of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
Holy Trinity Church, Hull (tenebraechoir.com), Thurs, and touring
Gigs by Neil McCormick
Paul Rodgers Last year, Paul Rodgers toured with Bad Company on what was billed as a farewell tour. The 67-year-old frontman is back, however, on the Free Spirit tour, playing material from his other classic rock band, Free. Rodgers’s macho swagger and soulful bluesy voice (as heard on Free’s All Right Now) became an archetype for Seventies rock. Yet he remains a gritty, charismatic singer.
New Theatre, Oxford (paulrodgers.com), tonight, and touring