I only needed to hear the names Jemaine Clement (from Flight of the Conchords) and Nicola Walker to get excited about this new six-part comedy written by Sophie Goodhart. Happily, it delivers on my unreasonable expectations and then some with brilliantly observed performances and a pin-sharp script.

Alice and Steve have been friends for decades. She’s married with adult kids, he’s going through the aftermath of divorce. All is well until, one drunken night, Steve stays over and ends up sleeping with Alice’s 26-year-old daughter, Izzy. And worse, they want to start seeing each other. It’s a refreshing take on hitting your 50s and feeling the tug-of-war between the carefree youth you used to be and the crone staring back at you in the mirror. My favourite new comedy of the year. 

Julia Raeside, writer

It might seem unnecessary to recommend the most successful show in the National Theatre’s history when it has played to nine million people, but this homecoming is another chance to experience a masterclass in the suspension of disbelief. Consider the initial audacity of attempting to represent the western front – a cavalry massacre, the monstrous emergence of a tank – using just lights, sound, projected animations and still-unrivalled life-size puppets, originally created by South Africa’s Handspring. And to make the main character a horse! Tom Sturgess as Devon farmboy Albert and Manuel Klein as disillusioned German officer Captain Müller play second fiddle to the uncannily persuasive movements of Joey, whose journey through hell represents the miracle of anybody surviving this four-year meat-grinder. While Michael Morpurgo’s book for children doesn’t make for the most sophisticated take on the first world war, the show’s deft blend of sentimentality, comedy and horror makes the conflict legible to younger viewers and immensely moving for everyone else. My daughter agreed that the accordion-playing folk singer was surplus to requirements but the rest was faultless. One of this century’s great theatrical feats, still.

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

Jem Calder's debut novel will no doubt be endlessly talked about in book clubs this summer. It centres on the relationship between Joey, a 23-year-old barista and poet battling imposter syndrome and Chuck, a 35-year-old retreating into himself after a broken engagement. A devastatingly sharp and accurate exploration of adulthood in the modern world and how we can use relationships as a means of escape rather than growth, it stays with you long after the final page.

Michaela Makusha, writer

Now in its closing weeks in Cardiff, this brilliantly curated retrospective moves to Edinburgh from 1 August and shouldn't be missed. A meditative journey through Gwen John’s life in her 150th anniversary year, it takes us from her youth in west Wales to the Slade School of Art to 20th-century bohemian Paris. In her paintings, you sense ripples of impressionist and post-impressionist influences, but also something new and sharply defined – a quiet intelligence in every stroke of oil, watercolour or pencil. Her repeated studies of women and nuns, her use of both sides of a canvas and her sketches of cats point to her bisexuality and her faith, her poverty and her tenderness. There is even a sculpture of John by Rodin, her one-time lover, but her talent's the main draw. Seeing a Welsh artist get her dues so beautifully at home was very moving.

Jude Rogers, writer

What do the secrets that women hold tell us about the times that they live through? Spanning the 1950s to the present day, The Book of Revelations delves into tales of forbidden love, interracial relationships, hidden pregnancies, mental health struggles, battles with addiction and much more to show how social values have evolved towards shame and concealment. But this is much more than a book of well-written social history: Juliet Nicolson is a superb, open-hearted interviewer, able to gently draw the most delicate and often longstanding revelations out of her subjects – partly because she herself is intimately acquainted with family secrets and weaves her own revelations through the book. Nicolson is the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (who both had passionate relationships with other people – Vita most famously with Virginia Woolf) but she also charts her parents’ unhappy marriage as well as her own affairs and alcohol addiction, and the dangers of digital life for her daughters’ generation. Utterly compelling and perceptive, it came out in paperback last month and would make a perfect holiday read.

Imogen Carter, Nerve co-founder

One of those magical theatrical evenings where the less you know in advance the better. This allegorical work exploring freedom of expression by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour was written when he was forbidden to leave his country. Now celebrating its 15th anniversary, it has toured the world, with much of its success surely down to one simple conceit: its instructions demand that a different actor, who has not read the text in advance, takes to the stage each night. The audience and the actor are complicit in how the evening unravels. Seventy minutes; no interval. I saw Lucian Msamati accept the challenge – bravo! It plays every Monday until 2 November and upcoming names already announced include David Tennant, David Harewood, Riz Ahmed, Kathryn Hunter …

Jane Ferguson, Nerve co-founder

The Jamaican dub pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry died in 2021, aged 85, leaving behind a monumental legacy of bass weight and eccentric oddities. But not before he turned up in Berlin in 2019, at the studio of German electronic duo Mouse on Mars, for what would become his final recording. There wasn’t really a plan – or even a set time that Perry would arrive – but the trio concocted a truly unplaceable, surrealist collage of chants, slogans, prayers, hypnotic rhythms, delirious percussive loops, psychedelic bleeps and bloops, seductive saxophone and more. You can hear the album in the spatial audio of its title, enveloped in sound, in the pit of the Barbican in London until 13 June as part of the venue’s Project a Black Planet season.

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

THEATRE
Lanny
(Bristol Old Vic, 16 October-7 November)

Max Porter’s much-loved 2019 novel about a missing boy and his deep connection with the countryside has been adapted for the stage by West Country playwright Bea Roberts and will have its world premiere in Bristol, in association with English Touring Theatre, directed by Nancy Medina.

ART
Painting the French Riviera
(Royal Academy, London W1, 2 October-31 January)

Featuring work by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Yves Klein and more, as well as travel posters and film, the Royal Academy explores the influence that the beauty and brilliance of the Côte d'Azur had on modern art from the 1870s to the 1960s.

THEATRE
Hadestown UK and Ireland tour
(Opens at the Curve, Leicester, on 19 February and tours throughout 2027)

The award-winning, Greek-myth-themed musical by singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin is setting off on its first UK and Ireland tour, covering more than 20 cities.