American playwright Tracey Scott Wilson’s razor-sharp newsroom thriller The Story was written in 2003, inspired by a real-life story of journalistic fabrication at the Washington Post from the 80s that had stayed with her since her teenage years. And yet its exploration of racial politics and fake news feels utterly of the moment. Black Panther star Letitia Wright makes her National Theatre debut as Yvonne, an ambitious young Black reporter who is racing to break the story of who murdered a white teacher in a Black neighbourhood in front of his pregnant wife, under the watchful eye of an overbearing editor (Lorraine Toussaint), herself a veteran of the 60s civil rights movement. Masterminded by director Clint Dyer, one half of the writing/directing duo behind the National’s brilliant Death of England trilogy, the slick, stylish production hurtles along at breakneck speed, the excellent cast firing lines at each other like bullets. A potent evening which, particularly in the wake of Jason Arday’s death, left me reeling, and reflective about the worsening state of misinformation and racial politics in the UK media.

Imogen Carter, Nerve co-founder

Marlon James’s sixth novel shows off the writer’s many expertly honed talents as a storyteller and master of experimental narrative. Clocking in at 616 pages, the book is amazingly propulsive, particularly given not only its length but its many settings and stages (literal stages, in some cases). The plot centres around a group of queer men in Jamaica who decide to secretly mount a production of John Herbert’s 1967 play Fortune and Men’s Eyes, which depicts the experience of gay men in prison. This leads to them being brutally assaulted in a homophobic attack, and the novel’s plot expands and expands from there. The Disappearers is a novel that doesn’t hold back and so, some would say, isn’t for the faint-hearted — but I say that its brilliance and its precision about the long shadow of trauma mean that everybody should read it, faint-hearted or otherwise. 

Lucia Osborne-Crowley, Nerve writer

This poignant installation is the culmination of the eight years artist Mark Storor spent working with people affected by suicide, helping them to express and make sense of their experiences through the creation of a series of video “chronicles’”. Displayed as separate but adjoining areas within a dreamlike space, where physical elements of the stories spill out into the real world, the chronicles are abstract rather than documentary, comprising film works, spoken-word pieces and photographic displays. Some capture single moments of grief (such as a woman slowly recreating the time she smashed an entire dinner service after losing her partner); some represent the shared experience of a whole community (the shoeboxes of belongings of people who have died by suicide packed up by YMCA workers for collection by families who rarely turn up). It is an ethereally beautiful installation to explore, if not an easy one, and has areas where you can go to decompress or ask for support if you find it overwhelming.

Laura Davis, writer

It’s five years since fictional Parisian showbiz agency ASK Talent closed its doors. But now nearly all of the original cast is back for a high-energy one-off reunion, talking faster than ever and no doubt giving the English subtitlers RSI. Former agent Andréa (Camille Cottin) is directing her first feature and juggling custody with her ex while the rest of her ASK colleagues have scattered to different corners of the industry. 

But Call My Agent! is at its best when the ensemble cooperates, despite their rivalries, and writers Fanny Herrero and Lison Daniel don’t waste much time in pulling their separate plot strands neatly together thanks to the efforts of Laure Calamy’s relentlessly upbeat Noémie, the former PA who has graduated to producer. With cameos from Eva Longoria and George Clooney, it is all the light-hearted Gallic fun you could wish for to usher in autumn.

Julia Raeside, writer

Are you, like me, a bit done with abrasive right now? Autumn has arrived and I want mellow magic instead – music that’s soft and fleecy, something that says “nap time”. It’s not that Haruomi Hosono’s new album (his 23rd) isn’t clued into current events – in a recent interview, the 79-year-old talked about the ongoing Middle East conflict; some songs here consider the climate crisis – but Yours Sincerely leans into the idea of compassion as a form of resistance, with almost subversively sweet lullabies, softly plucked acoustic folk and the subtle waft of exotica and doo-wop covers. If you’re not familiar with the prolific composer’s oeuvre, he’s a Japanese polymath who founded influential electronic pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra, led the country’s “city pop” explosion and is now a hipster hero to Mac De Marco and Harry Styles, who named his 2022 album in honour of Haruomi’s genre-agnostic 1973 debut, Hosono House. Over 50 years later, his music still comforts and confounds in equal measure.

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

While it’s tricky to assess a historical play when you know the true story very well, I could find no holes to pick in Rosalind Adler and Lea Sellers’s very smart drama about Dmitri Shostakovich’s vexed relationship with the Soviet state. Benjamin O’Mahony is superbly moving as the ambiguous protagonist. Sometimes the composer was a national hero; at others he was persona non grata; always he was living in fear. The play moves deftly from his first “cancellation” in 1936 to Stalin’s death 17 years later but really pays off in two dynamic clashes with the fictional dissident Katya (Phoebe Pryce), who mercilessly interrogates his pleading defence: “I’m not political, I’m an artist!” Director Kate Fahy works wonders with a small stage and a cast of four: a disembodied Greek chorus of gossips narrates the composer’s yo-yoing reputation while ingenious effects bring to life the siege of Leningrad. It’s also a lot funnier than the subject matter would suggest, especially Jenna Augen as Shostakovich’s formidable, foul-mouthed wife, Nina. An exceptional piece of work about music, power and impossible dilemmas.

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

When Dialled In began in 2021, shortly after the pandemic, as a small London festival, it set out very simply to show how south Asian musicians and artists have been "underestimated by a predominantly white-focused creative industry". Five years on, it has blossomed into a bigger festival, a record label, and a creative community wing-spanning, and mentoring, the diaspora who arrive in the UK. The average Dialled In event will feature artists from Karachi or Nepal, and everything from Sufi music on indigenous instruments to desi hip-hop remixed on electronic systems. Beyond being endorsed by American DJ and producer Skrillex, or played at by legends such as revered benju player Ustad Noor Bakhsh and DJ Mixtress, the transgressive Dialled In ecosystem also involves its founders going home to the subaltern to nurture relationships with the youth there, i.e. play at raves in Karachi. If you're curious to see what inclusion looks like when it's not surface-level, Dialled In (and I) will be at Jumbi, Peckham on the 12 September, for a day of music.

Anandita Abraham, writer

FILM
London Film Festival
(Various London venues, and on tour in 10 partner venues across the UK, 7-18 October)

The 70th edition of the capital’s annual festival features the latest films from luminaries including Danny Boyle, Mike Leigh, Ava DuVernay, Jesse Eisenberg, Boots Riley, Taika Waititi, Paweł Pawlikowski, Martin McDonagh and Carol Morley, with many of them also being shown in venues across the UK as part of LFF on tour. (One intriguing late addition to the programme is Luca Guadagnino’s controversial Sam Altman biopic Artificial, starring Andrew Garfield as the CEO of OpenAI, which was dropped like a hot potato by its distributor Amazon earlier this year after the company signed a deal with the artificial intelligence company, before later being picked up by Neon). Tickets for the festival go on sale for BFI members this Thursday, 10 September, at 10am, and on general sale at 10am next Thursday, 17 September.

THEATRE
Stuffed
(Unity Theatre Liverpool, 2-3 October; New Diorama Theatre London, 13-24 October; The Warehouse in Holbeck, Leeds, 31 October)

Blending clowning, electronica and personal testimony, theatre company Ugly Bucket tour their 2024 Edinburgh fringe hit about food banks and the UK's cost of living crisis to Liverpool, London and Leeds. The company calls the show “a roaring call to action amidst the wreckage of a desecrated system” and there will be wraparound activity in each city.

PHOTOGRAPHY
Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong
(Hayward Gallery, London SE1, 24 November-14 March 2027)

Major solo show of work made by the pioneering American photographer, film-maker and activist over five decades, including a brand new film and other recent moving image works and photographs.