Robert Hastie, Anthony Lau and Elin Schofield co-direct this theatrical first, the centrepiece of Sheffield theatres’ 50th-anniversary celebrations. The same cast will perform the interlinked but standalone dramas – about a scissor manufacturer and a family feud – simultaneously on the different stages, running between buildings between scenes, leaving one stage to arrive on another. Rock/ Paper/ Scissors, Sheffield theatresįrom 16 June to 2 July, all three Sheffield theatres – the Crucible, the Lyceum and the Studio – will come together to put on three new plays by Chris ( Standing at the Sky’s Edge) Bush. Also recommended is Silent Land (22 July), the coolly Haneke-esque study of a perfect marriage in crisis from Polish director Aga Woszczynska. Greek director Jacqueline Lentzou’s engaging Moon, 66 Questions (24 June) is a gentler proposition but no less accomplished: it explores the estranged relationship between a daughter and her ailing father. It’s eye-watering and eye-opening a tough watch, but an utterly fearless piece of film-making.
Take Pleasure (17 June), the extraordinary, unflinching feature debut from Ninja Thyberg, which follows an ambitious Swedish adult movie actress as she works her way up through the US porn hierarchy. And on the strength of the summer’s releases, they are bold, unconventional and anything but polite. With female directors taking the top prizes at the most recent Venice and Berlin film festivals – as well as Cannes 2021 – and films by women winning the best picture Oscar for the last two years, perhaps it’s time to look to the next generation of female voices in cinema. Bring a picnic and a cushion (but no glass bottles). Other music includes George Gershwin’s An American in Paris, Max Bruch’s Kol Nidre and Ernest Bloch’s Prayer from Jewish Life.
Playing on a giant temporary stage in Trafalgar Square, the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Simon Rattle will perform free to an audience of thousands on Saturday 11 June, with cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason as guest star making his LSO live debut, and a world premiere, Faiya!, by Ayanna Witter-Johnson. The London Symphony Orchestra’s Trafalgar Square performance last August, conducted by Simon Rattle. With the action switched to a garage in smalltown America in the 1950s, where a charismatic drifter causes havoc, the work is one of Bourne’s best: sexy, thrilling and emotionally gripping (9-19 June). Twenty years and several revivals later, there’s no reason to think that this new in-the-round production with 65 dancers and musicians will be anything other.
When Matthew Bourne’s radical rethinking of Bizet’s Carmen premiered in 2000, the critic Jack Tinker described it as a “humping, pumping, thumping fat hit”.
This long-awaited survey (15 July-18 October), the first in Europe, will also include his humorous portraits of family and friends: everything he loved in a poetry of paint. A later starter at 40, he was almost 70 before he began painting the large-scale landscapes that made him famous: hymns to Connecticut in spring, Vermont in autumn, to spiralling firs, bright pebbles and clustering sheep. Gentle, unassuming, with his outstanding gift for colour and his simplified grace, Milton Avery (1885-1965) is a singular master of American art. From 5-29 August all dates, times and tickets at.
In comedy, there are bankable sets from Nish Kumar, Fern Brady, Ed Gamble, Nina Conti, Phil Wang, Tim Key and Stewart Lee, musical comedy from Flo and Joan, Michelle Brasier and Jonny & the Baptists, plus a chance to see viral stars Rosie Holt and Michael Spicer live. Untapped award-winners Ugly Bucket deliver a “techno-clown-funeral” to explore loss in Good Grief, Nouveau Riché’s Caste-ing vibrantly charts the experience of Black actresses, and there’s top new writing from Sami Ibrahim, Dipo Baruwa-Etti and Chris Bush at Paines Plough’s pop-up venue, Roundabout. Rafaella Marcus’s Sappromises a queer urban fable about bisexuality, while Emily Aboud’s Bogeyman offers a ghost story inspired by the Haitian revolution. Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder is a comic murder mystery musical by Olivier-winner Jon Brittain and Matthew Floyd Jones (of Frisky & Mannish). The fringe is back – and once more overstuffed with goodies. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian Performance Nish Kumar will perform at the Edinburgh festival.