On my radar: Lolita Chakrabarti’s cultural highlights

One to One: John & Yoko (2025, dir. Sam Rice-Edwards, Kevin Macdonald)

This film really grew on me. I knew the obvious things about John Lennon and Yoko Ono, but I didn’t know much about them personally. It’s a very intimate portrayal of them during the two years when they were living in a tiny apartment in New York, and it builds up to a concert they put on for children with intellectual disabilities. What struck me was how they put all their celebrity and artistry at risk to stand behind political and social causes they believed in. I was so engrossed.

Joan (ITV)

I thought the lead actress in this six-part drama was absolutely fantastic. Sophie Turner plays a woman who escapes an abusive relationship and, to provide for her daughter, develops a con act where she transforms into a variety of characters including a glamorous American heiress. It’s based on a true story and set in 1980s London. Frank Dillane is also excellent as her accomplice and lover. It was so stylish and beautifully done, and it’s nice seeing a woman playing a role that has everything.

We Should Have Never Walked on the Moon, the Southbank Centre

Last month the French dance collective (La)Horde, with dancers from Ballet National de Marseille and Rambert, took over the Southbank Centre for this excellent promenade piece. You walked around different parts of the building and found dancers moving in unison by a bar or spray-painting slogans on the pavement outside. It made you look at life in a heightened way. It reflected the monumental things going on in the world, how awful and difficult it all is, while creating a sense of togetherness.

The Producers, Garrick Theatre, London W1

I don’t know if it’s just that I’m getting older, but so often I come away from the theatre feeling short-changed. The set or the story is great but it never quite comes together. But this new production of The Producers really does. It’s so irreverent and clever and funny – every third line is a killing joke. It’s about a Broadway producer who needs to produce a flop, to pull off a fraud, and puts together a musical so terrible that it becomes a huge hit. It’s glamorous and appalling and really, really funny. My cheeks hurt from laughing so much.

Chineke! Plays Shostakovich at the Proms, Royal Albert Hall

I went to the Proms for the first time last month. I’ve never particularly felt they were for me, because I’m not educated in classical music, but maybe I don’t need to be. And I’m so glad I went. The Chineke! Orchestra played music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, which was lyrical and melodic; and Shostakovich, which was frenetic and passionate and edgy. I was lucky to be sitting in a box and it was amazing to watch the orchestra, everything going at the same time. And the Royal Albert Hall is such a glorious, epic space.

In Love with the World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

I used to be an avid reader of fiction, but since I’ve started writing, I can’t focus on it. So I like to read philosophical things that give me a different spin on this confusing, difficult world. This is a book about a Buddhist abbot at a monastery in India who goes back to basics: without telling anybody, he steals out of the monastery with hardly any money and goes to experience life outside. It’s a journey into letting go of the world, and letting go of self. And it’s a beautiful book with a real story in it.