The Guide 

The ten best… things to do this week

From The Get Down to No Man’s Sky: your at-a-glance guide to the next seven days in culture across the UK
  
  

Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down on Netflix.
Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down on Netflix. Photograph: Myles Aronowitz/Netflix

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The Get Down

Already being described as the “anti-Vinyl” by some, Baz Lurhmann’s Netflix opus sidesteps that failed series’ preoccupation with punk for a musical story that’s less frequently depicted but arguably more interesting: the death of disco and birth of hip-hop (as well as the rise of graffiti as an art form) in 70s New York. This is Lurhmann, so if you struggle with musical numbers you might want to leave your thumb hovering over the fast-forward button. But there’s much fun to be had in spotting musical maestros of the future in fictional form, including an ascendent Grandmaster Flash.

Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down: the hip-hop origin story explained

Theatre

Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.

“This play is not well behaved,” promises the blurb for Alice Birch’s exploration of 21st-century femininity. Quite. Revolt’s mischievous vignettes are rarely anything other than frank about the ways in which language and behaviour confine women. Catch it at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre from Tuesday.

Sunny Afternoon

These days it’s de rigueur for any band of reasonable repute to have a “jukebox” musical named after one of their songs. This Kinks stage show seems a superior effort, though, largely because it remembers that there has to be a good story beyond the song and dance. After a popular residency at the Harold Pinter, it heads out on a UK-wide tour starting this week in Manchester. Ticket info here.

Film

The Shallows

This high-concept horror has caused even the hardiest critics to squirm in their seats. The setup is essentially Gossip Girl v shark as Blake Lively, star of that series, finds herself marooned on a rock with the tide rising and a great white circling. There are hints of Gravity, as well as the underrated survival thriller Open Water, in a superior popcorn movie that certainly isn’t lacking in bite. In cinemas now.

Comedy

Isy Suttie

Formerly Dobby in Peep Show, Isy Suttie is becoming better known as a comedic chronicler of post-20s ennui with her book The Actual One. It’s accompanied by a tour, which begins this week. Ticket info is on her website.

Television

People Just Do Nothing

Brentford’s brappiest return for a third series of the BBC mockumentary this week, and pirate radio station Kurupt FM and its MCs remain as shambolic as ever. Good news for the rest of us, then. Keep an eye out for an exclusive outing with the People Just Do Nothing gang in next week’s Guide.

Music

Green Man festival

An indie pastoral playground in a lovely clearing in the Brecon Beacons, Green Man has sensitive music in spades, this year from James Blake, Laura Marling and Belle And Sebastian. Headlining on Thursday, however, is the metallic-tanged angular funk of Wild Beasts, as on their fifth album Boy King – more St Vincent than Kate Bush this time and more primal live than it is on record. For more information, see their website.

Dance

Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host

Even if you don’t recognise Ira Glass you’ll likely be familiar with his smooth, questioning voice: Glass is, of course, the host of This American Life, the wildly popular radio series/podcast that presents stories big and small from the US. His latest project, at London’s Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday, pairs that appetite for storytelling with an unlikely bedfellow – dance. His tales of love and mortality are offset by NY performers Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass’s routines. We’re not sure how to categorise it - dance, theatre, talks – but it sure sounds promising. Tickets are available here.

Games

No Man’s Sky

Games don’t get more ambitious than this intergalactic action adventure, which procedurally generates its universe as it goes. What that means in basic terms is that No Man’s Sky is virtually infinite, offering up 18 quintillion planets for gamers to explore. The key will be whether its playability matches its scope, but this is nothing short of a video gaming event.

Exhibition

The Scottish Endarkenment

Exploring identity confusion, folk art, technophobia and all manner of assorted dark matter, this exhibition features the likes of Alison Watt and Ken Currie and functions as an archly subversive retort to the notion of Enlightenment in modern Scottish art. It’s admirably varied; the perversity and horror summoned from paintings and sculptures; video art and photography. See it in Edinburgh’s Dovecote Gallery.

 

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