Get full access to the app & website:

Subscribe

The critics

Albums of the week: Foo Fighters, Julia Cumming, Noah Kahan, Gabrielle Cavassa

Dave Grohl returns to exhilarating form on the curious, furious Your Favoruite Toy

Saturday, 25 April 2026

Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Mother Mary, Primavera, Rose of Nevada, and more

David Lowery’s enigmatic, supernaturally-tinged drama about a toxic artistic relationship achieves moments of dark magic thanks to a standout Michaela Coel

Saturday, 25 April 2026

Is AI taking over podcasting?

Hundreds of AI-generated shows are being launched daily, but here is proof of the value of the human touch

Saturday, 25 April 2026

At a York festival, Shakespeare is the world’s common language

Philip Parr’s international event kicks off with a deeply moving, poetic puppet version of Romeo and Juliet by a Georgian theatre company

Saturday, 25 April 2026

Mark Jenkin: ‘Cornwall isn’t a backwater full of ice-cream sellers’

The director talks about capturing the life of trawlermen in his new time-travelling drama

Saturday, 25 April 2026

Wayne McGregor makes worlds collide in Alchemies

Classical and contemporary converge in a convention-shattering triple bill by the Royal Ballet’s resident choreographer

Saturday, 25 April 2026

LSO/ Pappano: The Dream of Gerontius – electrifying Elgar

The composer’s choral masterpiece and the leading Wagnerian conductor Antonio Pappano make a formidable pairing

Saturday, 25 April 2026

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: a play trapped in the past

Despite a radical recasting of the 1962 novel about patients at a psychiatric hospital, the production hovers rather than lands

Friday, 24 April 2026

Olivia Dean on tour – timeless, polished, but something’s missing

As her hit song Man I Need passes a billion streams on Spotify, the gen Z darling is riding a wave of confidence

Friday, 24 April 2026

Half Man is not just another ‘toxic masculinity’ series

Richard Gadd’s follow-up to Baby Reindeer is about male trauma more than misogyny

Friday, 24 April 2026

LA’s colossal new art gallery is a fossil in the tar sands

Built on asphalt pits, 20 years and $720m in the making, Lacma opened this week to polarised opinion. Was it worth the wait?

Thursday, 23 April 2026

Michael is everything that’s wrong with the music biopic

This surface-level, box-ticking film serves up the sanitised Michael Jackson story. It’s bad

Wednesday, 22 April 2026

Euphoria goes from dizzy high to epic crash

Returning with lurid, vapid and dull storylines, how did Sam Levinson’s magnificent show about waster teenagers become such a waste of major talent? Plus, Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Big Mood

Saturday, 18 April 2026

Planet Omar: Accidental Trouble Magnet – a joyous glimpse inside the mind of a Muslim boy

Zanib Mian’s children’s book and its zinging illustrations are brought to sharply coloured onstage life at Leeds Playhouse

Sunday, 19 April 2026

Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Rebuilding, Glenrothan, The Blue Trail and more

The unbeatable Josh O’Connor is superb as a taciturn cowboy reeling from the loss of his ranch in this wistful, gently profound drama

Sunday, 19 April 2026

Albums of the week: Honey Dijon, Jessie Ware, Tomora, Adrian Younge

The Chicago DJ brings us cold, hard sass on an unexpectedly powerful dancefloor album. Plus, one to watch Lip Critic

Saturday, 18 April 2026

The making of Peggy Guggenheim

A new show relives the collector’s short-lived but life-changing attempt to shake up London’s art scene

Saturday, 18 April 2026

Radio 4 explores what it means to be a girl

Young women’s views on education, sex and puberty ranged from bleak to uplifting on Catherine Carr’s About the Girls

Sunday, 19 April 2026

English Touring Opera’s tale of two Italies

Gritty realism meets G&S fizz in this double bill of Pagliacci and The Gondoliers

Sunday, 19 April 2026

A 21st-century take on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Anya Reiss relocates Romola Garai’s Nora to a modern London, where her controlling husband grapples with drug addiction

Friday, 17 April 2026

About

Contact usFAQsAbout us
Work with usCareersEditorial policy

Join

Journalism school
EventsShop

Follow

The Observer
The Observer Magazine
The ObserverNew Review
The Observer Food Monthly
Copyright © 2025 Tortoise MediaPrivacy PolicyTerms & Conditions