Seabiscuit, Creed, Rocky, The Full Monty, Chariots of Fire… George Clooney’s latest directorial project is in the same vein as these earlier films, but swap Seabiscuit et al for a rowing eight. 

Oliver Goldsmith was a literary all-rounder – novelist, poet and playwright – remembered chiefly for one example of each discipline, respectively The Vicar of Wakefield, "The Deserted Village" and, of course, above all, She Stoops to Conquer.

Like theatre itself, the law finds its voice in stories, performance and spectacle. Any law student will, from that very first induction lecture, become suffused in a culture that is informed by and in turn informs theatre, some classes more like an evening at the Old Vic than an afternoon at the Old Bailey.

Continuing the retrospective aspect of his final season as music director of the Hallé, Sir Mark Elder returned last night to Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, the work with which he opened the orchestra’s 2014-15 Manchester series to such memorable effect.

That was the fulfilment of a long-held ambition, he said at the time, and, with the Hallé Choir joining the orchestra for the performance of this “choreographic symphony”, it was no doubt equally satisfying to bring it back in all its glory.

Partie de Campagne (1946), while not being one of French cinema giant Jean Renoir’s best-known films, unfinished and just under 40 minutes long, is still regarded as an important if not essential example of the director’s multi-faceted and often innovative work.

I find it hard to know quite what to make of Ainadamar, Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov’s one-act opera about the life and death of the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered in unknown circumstances – probably by Nationalist militia – in the early months of the Spanish civil war in August 1936.

Thieves Like Us, Robert Altman’s 1974 evocation of 1930s Mississippi, wasn’t a commercial hit on its original release, even though Pauline Kael called it a masterpiece.

The BBC Philharmonic ended its 2022-23 season in Manchester with a programme that might have been chosen as a showpiece for virtuosity.

There are better musicals in town, but can you find me a more spectacular show in a more comfortable theatre? I doubt it. Not that Jonathan Church's new production at Sadler's Wells is flawless. It's a 90-year-old blockbuster so, for all its references to breadlines, insecure employment and heat-or-eat decisions, one wonders if so much effort might be better expended on something a little more recent, a little less bound by the cliches of musical theatre?

Miles Malleson, known as an inter-war character actor who popped up in numerous small roles on stage and screen, was also a surprisingly prolific writer and adaptor. Mint Theatre Company of New York love truffling out work like his Yours Unfaithfully, a 1933 play on a topic that still resonates today, even if the social milieu of the piece doesn’t.