Torch Song, Turbine Theatre review - impressive return for Harvey Fierstein's seminal gay drama

★★★★ TORCH SONG, TURBINE THEATRE Impressive return for Harvey Fierstein's seminal gay drama

Matthew Needham in lithe drag queen form opens new London venue

London’s latest theatre opening brings a stirring revival of Harvey Fierstein’s vital gay drama, which premiered as Torch Song Trilogy in New York at the beginning of the 1980s, the playwright himself unforgettable in the lead, before it opened in London in 1985 with Antony Sher.

Napoli, Brooklyn, Park Theatre review - lacking substance

Actors battle with accents and a wooden script in 1960s drama set in a New York Italian immigrant neighbourhood

According to their mother, Luda (played by Madeleine Worrall, pictured below), each of the three sisters (pictured top) in Napoli, Brooklyn, bears one of their father’s admirable traits. Tina (Mona Goodwin), the oldest, who left school early to earn money for the family in a factory job, has his strength. Vita (Georgia May Foote), who is smart but has been banished to a convent school for crossing her father, has his tongue.

Men in Black: International review - lacklustre sequel missing original stars

★★ MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL Lacklustre sequel missing original stars

One reboot too many as a new generation of alien exterminators fail to ignite

The best joke in Men in Black: International happens before the film starts, when the iconic Columbia Pictures lady in a toga whips out a pair of familiar dark glasses. It’s a nifty, witty gag that doesn’t outstay its welcome, which is more than can be said for the feature that follows. The original stars are absent and there’s an absence too of the screwball humour that made the first film, back in 1997 such a hit. 

Kiss My Genders, Hayward Gallery review – a shambles

★★★ KISS MY GENDERS, HAYWARD Important issues addressed, but a shambles nevertheless

Important issues addressed in an exhibition that should have been so much better

Kiss My Genders may not claim to be a survey, yet it seems perverse to mount an exhibition of work by LGBTQ artists who address issues of gender identity without including some of the best known names.

Lee Krasner: Living Colour, Barbican review - jaw-droppingly good

★★★★★ LEE KRASNER: LIVING COLOUR, BARBICAN Jaw-droppingly good

Eclipsed by her famous husband, a painter finally gets her due

If you know of any chauvinists who dare to maintain that women can’t paint, take them to this astounding retrospective. Lee Krasner faced patronising dismissal at practically every turn in her career yet she persisted and went on to produce some of the most magnificent paintings of the late 20th century.

Blu-ray: The Woman in the Window

Fritz Lang conjures a homicide that enmeshes a timid professor with another man's slinky mistress

The Woman in the Window (1944) was the first of the two riveting film noirs in which Fritz Lang directed Edward G Robinson as a timid New York bourgeois, Joan Bennett as the alluring woman ill-met on a street, and Dan Duryea as the dandified sleaze who manipulates her.