Royal Festival Hall, London
Timely take on pieces by Prokofiev, Mussorgsky and Lyatoshynsky masterfully encapsulated the continuing struggle between war and peace

It felt as though war and peace were locked in a battle for the very soul of this concert of Russian and Ukrainian music, a savage reminder three years on of the brutal invasion of one country by the other.

Things got off to an inauspicious start. Even conductor emeritus Vladimir Jurowski’s powers of persuasion couldn’t disguise the fact that Semyon Kotko is second-rate Sergei Prokofiev. Set in rural Ukraine, his 1940 opera ran into difficulties from the start: after Stalin and Hitler signed their notorious non-aggression treaty, a drama filled with marauding hordes of German invaders was distinctly on the nose. An orchestral suite was the composer’s way of getting some of it heard, but for all his evident warmth for the Ukrainian countryside (Prokofiev grew up in Donetsk), the inspiration struggles to rise above the commonplace. The most original movement here featured a garish execution sequence with more than a whiff of the firing squad about it.

It may not reinvent the wheel but the forthcoming racer looks awesome, plays flawlessly, offers more exhilarating carnage than ever before – and even allows some open-world exploration

• I got to play Nintendo Switch 2: a first look at 2025’s gaming must-have

How do you follow a game as complete and extensive as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe ? Nintendo is banking on the answer being: go bigger. Double the number of racers to 24. Increase the number of characters (60 in total). More weapons. And, most eye-catchingly, more exploration.

That’s not a term you’d associate with the closed circuit, three-lap formula that the series has perfected over the last three decades, but in Mario Kart World, the flagship launch title for the forthcoming Switch 2, Nintendo is tearing down the tyre barriers and offering players a Forza Horizon style open world. It’s not exactly a total reinvention of the wheel, but it’s as big a change to the format as any since the series began. Given physical copies of Mario Kart World will retail at £75 though, is it enough?

New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme
Ambitious adaptation of Powell and Pressburger’s romantic fantasy is intelligently rendered, with well-chosen music added to the period mix

The propaganda brief for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on A Matter of Life and Death was to come up with a film to help smooth postwar relations between Britain and the US. We could certainly do with a bit of that now, although to fix our current impasse would probably take more than a love affair between a fated British fighter pilot and a steely American radio operator.

It is a metaphysical story in which the life of Peter Carter (Thomas Dennis in the David Niven role) hangs on a heavenly court case and the love of June (Kaylah Copeland), whom he meets only after falling from the skies without a parachute. If this stage adaptation does not explain why we should revisit a story so deeply rooted in an era of loss, grief and reconciliation, it is no less intelligent and ambitious for it.

At the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme , until 19 April

Brosnan, who co-stars with Mirren in new series MobLand, said ‘there’s always going to be conflict’ when it comes to the 007 spy series

Pierce Brosnan, who played James Bond in four films between 1995 and 2002, has said he has qualified sympathy for Helen Mirren’s feelings about what she called the “profound sexism” of the spy series.

Speaking last week, Mirren said she had “never liked James Bond” because the concept is “drenched and born out of profound sexism.”

Singer-songwriter made more than 30 albums away from the mainstream, inspiring numerous artists in American alternative music

Michael Hurley, the American singer-songwriter whose unique path through the US folk scene made him an inspiration to generations of alternative musicians, has died aged 83.

A statement from the family announced his “recent sudden passing”, though no cause of death has been given. It added: “The ‘godfather of freak folk’ was for a prolific half-century the purveyor of an eccentric genius and compassionate wit … There is no other. Friends, family and the music community deeply mourn his loss.”

(ECM)
Backed by pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s group, the US sax elder plays freely around a song-rooted approach, resulting in sparkling, spontaneous exchanges

Joe Lovano, that giant American elder of jazz reeds-playing, nowadays seems – rather like the equally eminent saxophone master Charles Lloyd – to be simmering all his decades of timeless tunes and exquisite passing phrases down to essences. The 72-year-old Ohio-born sax star and occasional drummer’s partners here are Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s collectively freethinking trio – Homage’s shape was formed on extensive tours with them, and a week in 2023 at New York’s Village Vanguard club that acted as an impromptu rehearsal.

Song-rooted American jazz-making and give-and-go European free-jazz have become intertwined within Lovano’s later-life soundworld. Wasilewski’s compatriot Zbigniew Seifert’s Love in the Garden is reworked as a rapturous tenor-sax ballad with every soft horn outbreath embraced in silvery keyboard streams. Lovano’s Golden Horn evokes the iconic four-note hook of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme before his tenor sax eases in on hints and fragments, then sweeps into fast linear post-bop. There’s a driving, McCoy Tyneresque solo from Wasilewski and Lovano switches to hand drums, animatedly joining percussionist Michal Miskiewicz – but there’s an exhilarating surprise when the leader whoops back in on the soprano-sax-like Hungarian tárogató.

Will Gaitok go rogue? Might there be an incest-related shooting? Could primates do it? Here’s a rundown of the top rumours around the last episode’s looming death (or deaths)

It all began with a dead body, before the HBO hit flashed back to a week earlier. Now satirical spa drama The White Lotus is set to solve all its mysteries in the third season finale, titled Amor Fati (which translate as “love of fate”, Latin fans).

The Thailand-set series opened with Zion’s meditation session being interrupted by gunfire. As the panicking student waded through the resort’s ponds to look for his mother, Belinda, an unidentified corpse floated past him face-down. Who was it? Who pulled the trigger? And will anyone squat over a suitcase?

The Alex Rider author on being put off Dickens for a decade, why he reads poetry in the mornings, and how reading Sherlock Holmes made him want to be a crime writer

My earliest reading memory
I started with a comic: Valiant. Hardly great literature – but it provided escapism from my prep school. The tales of Kelly’s Eye and the Steel Claw enthralled me and I still dream of them now.

My favourite book growing up
I was always a fan of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise. She was a sort of female James Bond, a criminal turned government agent. My parents used to read each new book as it came out and then hand it on to me. It was one of the few things that brought us together as a family.

The marmalade-loving bear returns to his homeland to hunt for his missing aunt, and Viola Davis turns action hero – and has to single-handedly save the free world

A South American immigrant in London has to return to home. But this isn’t a Reform political broadcast, and the marmalade-addicted bear in question has a shiny new British passport. Aunt Lucy has gone missing from her Home for Retired Bears in the Peruvian rainforest, so Paddington and the Browns (with Emily Mortimer taking over as Mrs Brown) fly off to find her. Less a fish-out-of-water comedy than a fish-back-in-water quest, Dougal Wilson’s film gives Paddington a few slapstick pratfalls but it’s more of a spoof Indiana Jones tale, revolving round the myth of El Dorado, with Antonio Banderas as a boat captain and Olivia Colman as a nun joining the fun.
Tuesday 8 April, Netflix