The Auschwitz Memorial has created the model ‘to provide the industry with credible resources’, but it raises ethical questions over what type of films could be set there

The Auschwitz Memorial has launched a “historically accurate” digital replica of the former concentration camp for filmmakers to set their pictures in, breaking a long-held taboo around shooting features at the grounds where an estimated 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazi regime.

At the Cannes film festival on Thursday, he organisers of the Picture from Auschwitz project said they have harnessed “cutting-edge 3D scanning technologies” to build a digital model of the concentration camp that matches the site in its current state “down to every single brick”.

Minerva theatre, Chichester
Mark Addy plays the Bunyanesque everyman whose trip to the postbox becomes a spiritual journey set to glorious foot-stomping songs

There is nothing like impending death to concentrate the mind on life. Certainly not for Harold Fry, the Bunyanesque modern-day everyman who goes out to post a letter to his terminally ill, long-lost friend and ends up hiking 500 miles to say goodbye to her in person.

Harold (Mark Addy), middle-aged and mournful, leaves his Devon home and his distant, disenchanted wife, Maureen (Jenna Russell), to go to the post office. But he is inspired by a petrol station attendant (Sharon Rose, twinkling as Garage Girl) to begin his secular pilgrimage to the Berwick-upon-Tweed hospice where Queenie (Amy Booth-Steel) lies dying.

From dominatrix divas to sauna bros and the ‘Viking Jedward’ – plus maybe even Céline Dion – there’s something for everyone at this year’s Eurovision. Bring on the innuendo!

Pomp and pageantry. People from different nations wearing camp costumes. A tense buildup before the winner is announced. But enough of the papal conclave. It’s time for May’s other main event: the Eurovision song contest.

The eccentric extravaganza’s 69th edition – expect that number to be the subject of cheap innuendo – is being held in Basel, Switzerland. An audience of 160 million is expected to tune in for the usual heady mix of geopolitical point-scoring, cheesy sentiment and surreal performances.

★★★★☆ / ★★★★★
The Hepworth Wakefield
Chadwick’s work ranges across media, from molten chocolate to tonsils and intestines, while Walker’s attentive paintings depict maternal pleasure and pain. Both offer startling insight into women’s lives

You’d be hard pressed to find a more alluring opening to a show than this: a bubbling pool consisting of 800kg of molten milk chocolate oozing seductively, filling the gallery with a sweet aroma and a soft, steady gurgling. On the walls brightly coloured, circular photographs of orchids, gerberas, sweet peas and chrysanthemums repeat the circular shape of the chocolate pool.

But for artist Helen Chadwick – whose Life Pleasures show at the Hepworth Wakefield is the largest retrospective of her work – pleasure is never that far from pain. It is not long before that thick, gloopy chocolate starts to smell sickly, the scent overwhelming the senses; the mechanism inside making the liquid bubble artificially. On closer inspection, the petals in the photographs are suspended in a variety of less pleasant liquids – industrial hand cleaner, window spray, washing up liquid – and the suggestive shapes of tonsils, testes and vaginas begin to emerge.

The Welsh novelist’s third novel, set on a Scottish island during the Highland Clearances, has won £10,000 for writing that ‘best evokes the spirit of a place’

Clear by Carys Davies has won this year’s Ondaatje prize for writing that “best evokes the spirit of a place”.

The Welsh novelist’s third novel is set on a Scottish island during the Highland Clearances, and follows two men as they form an unlikely bond. On winning the £10,000 award, Davies gave particular thanks to the Faroese linguist Jakob Jakobsen, as his dictionary of the now-extinct Shetland language, first published in 1908, was an invaluable source when she was writing.

Barbican Hall, London
Starry conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra saw Strauss and Ravel given explosive power but limited depth

Launching a concert with Strauss’s Don Juan makes quite a statement: those madcap opening seconds, the music scrambling from the bottom of the orchestra in a bravura sweep before blooming into an irresistibly cavalier and heroic melody. It seemed a very Gustavo Dudamel way for the starry conductor to begin his first London appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra, after concerts in Spain last week.

Dudamel drove the music hard and fast: it was full of firework explosions that dissolved into sparkling blurs of light. On one level it was thrilling. On another, it soon began to feel a little narrow. Dudamel let the brightest moments scythe through the texture – an ear-splitting glockenspiel, a brief but brazen trumpet solo – and yet the general orchestral sound was so thickly blended as to be almost homogenised. There was little sense of the music bubbling with detail, and a limited depth to the sound.

Far from 1978’s morally noble colossus, Gunn’s Man of Steel is a flawed being – but perhaps he can allow us to hope for a better world

In the 1960s, Marvel comics made its name by dragging superheroes down to street level. Peter Parker worried about his homework. The Fantastic Four bickered like flatmates. Even the Hulk, a walking nuclear tantrum, was really just a green and muscular guy having a bad day. Over at DC, though, the heroes remained clean, polished and largely unbothered – moral titans gazing down from above, solving problems without ever really having any of their own.

Superman was the prototype of that ideal: an all-powerful alien whose only weakness was a glowing space rock and an unshakable sense of duty. He wasn’t like us – he was better than us. And that was the point. When Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane first meets the man of steel in 1978’s Superman, she is almost impossibly awestruck by the presence of this walking, talking, flying god. Lois’s wide-eyed vulnerability is a stark contrast with the condescension she doles out to his alter ego, Clark Kent. The two sides of the Last Son of Krypton might be exactly the same person, but it’s virtually impossible for anyone to recognise them as such, because one radiates impossible power while the other can barely hold on to his briefcase.

Ex-girlfriend details sexual and physical abuse as defense zeroes in on text messages about so-called ‘freak-offs’

Singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, a former girlfriend of Sean “Diddy” Combs and a key witness in the federal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial of the music mogul, is returning to the stand on Friday for further examination by Combs’s legal team.

Ventura, who is eight and a half months pregnant, has been on the stand since Tuesday afternoon, and has detailed years of sexual and physical abuse she alleges she endured during their decade-long relationship.

In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid . In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org .

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
Martin Green’s play, set in a village still traumatised by the miners’ strike, follows a young musician under pressure from all sides

Towards the end of Martin Green ’s brass-infused play for the National Theatre of Scotland, there is a resonant metaphor. It makes the connection between directing the breath to play a wind instrument and dealing with life’s stresses.

“The skill is in controlling that pressure,” says Keli, a 17-year-old tenor horn player who knows all about pressure. On her plate is a thankless job in a supermarket, a mentally ill mother and a solo spot in a national brass band competition.