Royal Opera House, London
Mark-Anthony Turnage’s varied musical palette, Lee Hall’s unfussy libretto and Richard Jones’s focused staging of the tragedy of a family deeply scarred by abuse drives the drama inexorably in a remarkable production

First the film, then the stage play and now an immensely impressive opera. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Festen (Celebration) is the latest incarnation of Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 movie , which is regarded as the starting point of the Dogme 95 movement in Danish cinema. With a libretto by Lee Hall based upon the English stage adaptation , Festen is the fourth opera to be derived from a Dogme film, following Poul Ruders’ Dancer in the Dark, Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves and Mikael Karlsson’s Melancholia (all based on screenplays by Lars von Trier).

It’s Turnage’s fourth full-length opera for adults, and the benefit of that experience shines through every bar, and is reflected in its immaculate dramatic and musical pacing. Hall has supplied him with a taut, unfussy text in which not a word is wasted, so that the awful story that unravels at the 60th birthday dinner for hotel owner Helge, of a family deeply scarred by child abuse and haunted by a suicide, is presented in a single 95-minute span that grips, moves and appals from first moment to last.

Astounding shots of a wounded civil war major and a flogged Black man sit amid amateur snaps and propaganda in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum – showcasing the nation’s unrivalled mastery of the camera

As the land of the free and the home of the brave reverberates to cries of Make America Great Again, what is often overlooked is the complicated notion of the word “again”. As highlighted in American Photography, an expansive, sometimes beautiful but often shocking survey at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam over the past two centuries, what has been great for some has been downright awful for others.

“America and photography are entwined. You can’t see the two apart from each other,” says Mattie Boom, curator of photographs at the Rijksmuseum, who has spent two decades helping build the American collection. It now amounts to around 7,000 photographs – all by American photographers of American subjects – and 1,500 American photobooks and magazines. The current exhibition is the first major survey of the field to be staged in Europe, and is a triumphant swansong for Boom as she retires from her post.

Office drone Alex meets Kyle on a dating app and he seems perfect. But all is not what it seems in Elric Kane’s clever supernatural foray

A ghosting story as much as a ghost story, this film sees twentysomething office drone Alex (Blu Hunt) strike gold on dating app called Friktion. Uncannily attuned to her emotions, hunky barista Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen) appears to be the elusive perfect match. So after several blissful hook-ups, Alex can’t believe it when he suddenly blanks her messages – and is appalled to walk into a bar to witness him use the same line on another date: “We don’t really need to talk, do we?”

After making inquiries regarding his whereabouts in the intervening time, Alex learns something shocking: that apparently she matches with dead people. With Kyle’s amnesiac revenant now haunting Alex, director Elric Kane deftly modulates this mashup of state-of-dating drama, erotic thriller and light supernatural foray. In the initial stages, he maintains a mood of uneasy languor as blase Alex navigates her carousel of sexual possibilities. But he switches to a mode of abrupt Lynchian dislocations and ruptures as the increasingly bunny-boilerish Kyle monopolises her life.

Voice actors demanding compensation when AI generates performances from their work have taken industrial action since July

When Harrison Ford spoke to the Wall Street Journal last week, praising the performance of voice actor Troy Baker in the recent video game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, he was doing much more than recognising a great impression of himself. “You don’t need artificial intelligence to steal my soul,” he told the paper. “You can already do it for nickels and dimes with good ideas and talent. [Baker] did a brilliant job, and it didn’t take AI to do it.”

Video game performers in the SAG-AFTRA union have been on strike since July, the major issue being the use of generative AI in the games industry. The union wants members to be compensated when AI performances are generated from their work, and demands consent and transparency around Gen AI technology. Major video game publishers such as Activision Blizzard, Disney, Warner Bros and Electronic Arts are involved in the dispute, and several recent titles including Destiny 2: Heresy and Genshin Impact have been affected, with English-language voice performances missing. AI voice synthesis is being touted as a means of cutting costs in an industry where game budgets are spiralling, but such technologies imperil actors’ livelihoods while relying on their work to seed virtual performances. Plus, the budgetary benefits of the tech are still in question.

The chummy everyman seemed to let his facade slip as he brutally ejected two hecklers from a recent gig – a misstep that showed he’s out of touch with the current cut-and-thrust of standup

Peter Kay isn’t the first comedian to deal harshly with hecklers – but will this incident be one of the most damaging? His eviction on Saturday night of two overenthusiastic audience members has raised more stink than most such encounters. Why? I think it’s because of the brutality of this kicking-out – and how jarring that is in relation to Kay’s lovable image, and to the nature of his comedy too.

The prime offender at Kay’s gig on Saturday night was a man shouting out the comic’s most famous catchphrase, “garlic bread”. This is not an unusual thing to do at a celebrity comedy show, where joining in on the catchphrase is often encouraged as all part of the communal fun. I’ve seen the show in question , which Kay premiered – after a long absence from the stage – more than two years ago. It is, in a sense, more catchphrase than comedy, fashioning TV themes, advertising jingles and the most popular routines from Kay’s career into one intense hit of relatability and fellow-feeling. If you don’t find yourself joining in, Pavlov’s doggy style, you’re not watching it properly.

Rapper’s fashion brand Yeezy taken offline by Shopify after he sold T-shirt with swastika design and praised Hitler

• Warning: this article contains offensive language and views

Kanye West has been sued and dropped by his talent agency after he posted a stream of antisemitic abuse, put T-shirts with a swastika on sale in his online shop, and was alleged to have described himself as Hitler to a Jewish employee.

Last week West, also known as Ye, wrote a barrage of antisemitic posts on X including, “I’m a Nazi … I love Hitler”.

New Century Hall, Manchester
Also channelling Elvis and Scott Walker, the charismatic singer’s character softens as he moves from bold songs from latest album A Firmer Hand to older tracks

On new album A Firmer Hand, Hamish Hawk traded the easy, early Scott Walker-indebted indie of previous albums – 2021’s Heavy Elevator and 2023’s Angel Numbers – for a darker, grittier, more sexually forthright evaluation of who the Edinburgh artist really is. The contrast gets turned up during this impressive show, which charts just how far he’s come; after more than a decade of releases, he has matured into a charismatic, Jarvis Cocker-esque performer at the edge of the big time.

After a quick introductory bow, Hawk leads his band breathlessly through A Firmer Hand’s opening four songs. His body tenses as he struts the stage, and his fierce glare only breaks when a raunchy one-liner – “I felt him fit me like a glove” he croons on Machiavelli’s Room – propels his eyebrows upwards. Save for a couple of playful touches – the “uh-huh” in Machiavelli’s Room comes an Elvis lip-curl, and the “playground jazz” in Big Cat Tattoos with a flash of jazz hands – this opening run is poised, serious business. When Hawk finally addresses the crowd – “there’s nowhere we’d rather be,” he beams – the sudden warmth comes as a shock.

British rapper is the youngest artist to take on the mantle of curator, following stars such as David Bowie and Patti Smith

Little Simz has become the youngest artist to curate London’s Meltdown festival, overseeing the lineup for the 11-day event in June.

In the festival’s 30th edition, she takes over the baton from Chaka Khan, who brought the likes of Incognito, Lady Blackbird and Les Amazones D’Afrique to Meltdown in 2024. Little Simz said it was “an honour” and that her as-yet unannounced lineup was “going to be epic”.

This tragically unfinished account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine bears witness to both grave crimes and the strength of the human spirit

It is expected that a book review will be written with some degree of critical distance, but, in this case, distance is not possible. On 27 June, 2023, Victoria Amelina, author of Looking at Women Looking at War, was in a restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk when it was hit by a Russian missile. She died of her injuries a few days later, leaving the book she was working on unfinished. Shock and grief at her killing continues to reverberate among those close to her, and among her wider circle of friends, of whom I was one. She was 37 and the mother of a young son.

The full-scale Russian invasion transformed every aspect of Amelina’s life. At the beginning of the war she threw herself into humanitarian work, as refugees from the east and south arrived in her home city of Lviv. But she soon began to realise that she could do something bigger through writing.