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Culture

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Entertainment

‘Completely original’ musical Midnight tries (and fails) to imagine a slavery-era romance

Todrick Hall’s off-Broadway show is about a doomed interracial love affair during US slavery in the 1860s During the intermission of Midnight, an off-Broadway musical about a doomed interracial love affair during US slavery in the 1860s, a woman sitting behind me lauded the show and compared it to Hamilton. On the surface, she was correct. Midnight also has a diverse cast with stunning vocals and a story that reimagines a time within American history. The difference, however, is that Hamilton’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, used source material – a 2004 biography on Alexander Hamilton by Ron Ch

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Entertainment

Identity, resilience and community: early Black portrait photography – in pictures

A new Washington DC exhibition aims to show how African Americans have used portrait photography to depict themselves, their communities, their aspirations and their identities. Titled Remember Me: Picturing African Americans in Early Photography, the exhibit at the National Gallery of Art features 70 works from the museum’s archives by African American photographers and portrait subjects, tracing the evolution of photography in Black communities. The show opens on 7 November and runs until 14 March 2027 Continue reading...

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Entertainment

Rocky review – 50 years on, Stallone’s boxer remains an exhilaratingly gritty contender

The actor’s triumphant breakthrough has clear ancestors in grimy tales of working-class struggle, but finds a fresh, rousing idealism Peter Farrelly’s new film I Play Rocky is about the underdog-with-heart story of how a great boxing movie got made against the odds with its plucky young untried screenwriter allowed to star. So here is a reissue of that 1976 film for its 50th anniversary. It’s a forthright, rousingly idealistic film, wholesome in its essential patriotism, and which unselfconsciously shrugs off the boxing-movie’s gloomy generic inheritance, throwing away its grim traditional bag

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Entertainment

Nikita Gill: ‘I read Flowers in the Attic too young. Someone should have stopped me’

The Indian-Irish poet on the Mahabharata retelling that inspired her to write, Arundhati Roy’s courage, and the poetry of Lucille Clifton My earliest reading memory My father was a sailor and my mother a teacher. They were both voracious readers. I was lucky enough to come from a home full of books and when we joined my father out at sea for extended periods of time, my mother carried plenty of books for me to read. I remember sitting by the porthole in our cabin, looking out at the sea on a sunny day, the ship moving calmly through the waters. I was reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix

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Entertainment

‘Mom encouraged me to get breast implants’: Disney child star Christy Carlson Romano on fame, family and freedom

She started acting at six and by 16 was starring in Even Stevens with Shia LaBeouf. Then her career fell apart. Here, she explains how she survived growing up in the spotlight In a class at college, Christy Carlson Romano was encouraged to think about her “community”. Who were their people, the tutor asked the class, and where did they belong? The answer that popped into Carlson Romano’s head was child actors, but not the ones that went on to have successful grown-up careers. “The ones who were once the shining stars,” she writes in her memoir, “and who are now just trying to find out their pl

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Entertainment

‘Too many stories exist only to make you think you’re on the right side’: Cristian Mungiu on Fjord, the Cannes winner that divided Europe

The Romanian auteur’s new film could have been the kind of homogenous ‘Europudding’ he’s railed against for years. Instead, it’s a culture-clash skewering of conservative and liberal values worthy of its Palme d’Or ‘Pffff!” Cristian Mungiu lets out an exasperated sigh. We are sitting in the basement of a London hotel, at the end of a long morning of back-to-back interviews for the Romanian film-maker, and his press handler has just snuck into the room to remind him of his next appointment across town. But Mungiu blanks him and leans on to his table, because he wants to tell one more story. In

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Entertainment

This extraordinary new Hamlet turns Shakespeare inside out with infinite jest – and cuddly toys

Sadler’s Wells East, London Ben Duke’s clever, witty and wholly unpredictable new show, The Last Hamlet, takes big liberties with the story that pay off Hamlet is trying to get a hire car. He has missed his dad’s funeral because he was at a silent retreat, dealing with his abandonment issues and the disturbing memory of a year 7 disco when his uncle and mum danced together to Yazoo’s Only You. There have been many takes on the troubled Prince of Denmark, but performer/director Ben Duke, co-founder of Lost Dog, has a talent for fresh readings. If Duke has a shtick – which after similar reworkin

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Entertainment

‘It’s a new world. It’s a little fascistic. And it needs a different response’: U2 on 50 years together – and why Bono can’t work with Trump

After some so-so albums, can U2’s new one, Carnaval de Luz, restore them to glory? They discuss male egos, working with Dolly Parton, and explain why, despite Trump, they still believe in democracy – at least in their band La Petite Maison, in Nice, has a certain reputation as a five-star celebrity haunt. Beyoncé eats here. So do Elton John, Tom Cruise, Harry Styles and Leonardo DiCaprio, their meals presided over by the restaurant’s founder, Nicole, variously described in print as “eccentric”, “unique” and “truculent” (she’s standing by the entrance when I arrive, and suffice to say, doesn’t

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Entertainment

Rise of the Rockstar Chef review – Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White serve up the most sizzling TV of the year

Heston Blumenthal is a third wheel as the pair reveal all about their culinary stardom and infamous beef. Expect endless juicy gossip, from pan-throwing to gatecrashing weddings … and mid-service kitchen sex Never mind the scallops, here’s the Chef Pistols. Rise of the Rockstar Chef portrays the fine-dining dons of the 90s and 00s in the manner of a band biopic. In place of musical differences is a stolen reservations book and an argument about red mullet that reduced Gordon Ramsay to tears. How’s that for a kitchen nightmare? As Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Heston Blumenthal look back at th

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Entertainment

Russell Brand faces ‘significant’ prison term for rape and sexual assault

Actor and comedian, 51, found guilty of raping a woman and assaulting three others Flashbulbs, lies and victim blaming: how Russell Brand’s trial unfolded The downfall of Russell Brand: from Big Brother and Hollywood to convicted rapist Russell Brand has been found guilty of raping a fan and sexually assaulting three other women, ending a years-long legal saga that has raised questions about how he was able to commit his crimes at the height of his fame. Brand, 51, was described during his trial as a ruthless, calculated and manipulative sexual predator. He was convicted of raping a woman at h

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Entertainment

‘A hero’s origins’: the true story of the first drag queen presidential candidate

In off-Broadway show Ms Blakk for President, Oscar-winning Moonlight writer Tarell Alvin McCraney explores a slice of under-appreciated queer history At the height of the Aids crisis, Chicago activist Terence Alan Smith put on his drag persona, Joan Jett Blakk, and announced she was running for president. Her slogan: “Lick Bush in ‘92!” Her platform: fire everyone in the White House and paint it pink, reroute the military budget towards education and healthcare, then give the land back to Indigenous people “and let them take it from there”. The campaign did not advance. But Blakk did make it o

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Entertainment

Is that an explosion, an implosion or an orgasm? Pixies bass-player Emma Richardson’s realm-leaping life in painting

Huge, ecstatic canvases are just one of the vocations of the musician who joined the art rockers in 2024. As her show Hotwire My Heart opens, she talks terror, awe and teabags Emma Richardson loves to eavesdrop when people look at her paintings and talk about what they see in them. “They turn into these Rorschach inkblot tests,” she grins. Looking at her works, you do stand back in awe wondering. Is that a nebula, a god or a fleshy, baroque orgy? An explosion, an implosion or an orgasm? Richardson implies all of these and more, her paintbrush chasing in vivid oils the hedonism, desire and brea

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