There’s no rest for the webbed wonder in Spiderman: Far from Home. It’s just a few months since Marvel wiped out Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame and his protégé Peter Parker is being hounded to fill Tony Stark’s place.
I’m sure there’s an anthropologist out there writing a thesis on American teenagers’ coming-of-age rituals as performed in movies, from American Graffiti to this year’s Booksmart.
The release of Booksmart is perfectly scheduled for half term, this high school buddy comedy is guaranteed to tempt youngsters away from their exam revision. It’s fast and funny and packed with squirm-inducing sex gags and a peppy soundtrack. Its heroes are Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and her best friend Amy (Kaitlyn Deaver), the class swots who forswore all extra-curricular fun in order to study hard and get into top universities. They are the teens who got fake ID not to go drinking underage but to use the 24-hour library.
Flight is a show by experimental Scottish theatre company Vox Motus, adapted from the novel Hinterland by Caroline Brothers. It’s about two Afghan child refugees making their way across Europe to the fabled land of “London” and is based very directly on her own interviews with asylum seekers as a journalist. So far, so narrartively straightforward but Flight is unlike anything most people will have seen.
Where would you go for a devastating study on the human condition? The home movies of teenage skaters would be very low down on that list. But most of those movies aren’t filmed, compiled and analysed by Bing Liu, the director of Minding the Gap. Perfectly balancing perspective and curiosity, it’s perhaps the most unexpected achievement on the year.
You might think an American high school comedy an unlikely place to locate a love letter to Oscar Wilde – even if there’s a flamboyantly gay story behind it. But Freak Show screenwriters Beth Rigazio and Patrick J Clifton, adapting James St James’ source story, have a way with wit that is clearly aiming to match the writer whom they keep quoting.
We've all been there. The disappointing fling. The gently shattered illusions. The abortive holiday eliding languor and boredom. Teenage ennui. Revels peopled by runaways. Talking animals. Talking animals? Well, fine. Not quite.
Here's a good pub quiz question: after Shakespeare, who was the most performed playwright in America last year? Arthur Miller? Tennessee Williams? David Mamet? None of those.
This London premiere of Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe’s 2010 musical (based on Daniel Waters’ oh-so-Eighties cult classic movie, starring Christian Slater and Winona Ryder) had a development period at The Other Palace – no critics allowed – before cruising into the West End with a cult following already in place.