The latest modish and archly marketed A24 release is a romantic comedy-drama – heavy on the drama – about an engaged couple, Emma and Charlie, whose relationship is shaken by a sudden revelation about Emma’s past, days before their wedding. There’s deeper meaning behind the casting of erstwhile teen icons Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as the leads, while support comes from a now-familiar cast of American indie favourites, like Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza, The Mastermind), Hailey Gates (Uncut Gems, The Moment) and Mamoudou Athie (Kinds of Kindness, Uncorked).

Ellen E Jones, Nerve film critic

The Royal Court is on a roll. Following Porn Play and Guess How Much I Love You?, here comes Danya Taymor’s fizzing production of Kimberly Belflower’s play, which earned seven Tony nominations on Broadway last year. We’re in a high school in rural Georgia in 2018, the season of #MeToo, Trump and (not insignificantly) Lorde’s album Melodrama. Five girls are studying The Crucible with their young, inspirational teacher and launching the school’s first feminism club when the return of Shelby, mysteriously AWOL for three months, throws a bomb into proceedings. Arthur Miller’s play supplies the framework for a new kind of witch-hunt, but who are the witches and who the hunted? Sadie Soverall (a dead ringer for Sadie Sink, the Broadway Shelby) and Miya James as Railynn are particularly fine at dramatising the fierce complexities of female friendship as allegations explode and alliances shift. The play is excellent; the final scene is a masterpiece.  (The run is sold out. Check box office for returns.)

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

There are no windows in the Grundy’s white-painted gallery spaces, yet light dazzles your eyes the moment you step inside Louise Giovanelli’s solo show. It illuminates the sumptuous, golden folds of a pair of stage curtains filling the far wall, breathes life into the dewy skin of a woman’s decolletage and bounces off a pair of shirts so lusciously painted they resemble sheets of copper.

Ten years after Giovanelli’s first solo exhibition opened in this Blackpool gallery, she has returned with another – this time generously sharing the space with work by graduates of the Apollo Painting School, which she co-founded in Manchester and Italy. And if that is not enough of a draw, there’s also a Monet landscape – The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil (1872) – here as part of The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour.

Tracing her progression as an artist over the past decade – during which she has been signed by the high-profile galleries White Cube and Grimm – this exhibition illustrates how she has progressed from art-school endeavours with light (I particularly liked her attempt to evoke the transparency of a plastic bag) to her experiments with scraping and scoring the painted surfaces of her work. She returns again and again to the same images – an uplifted chin, hands, curtains. I loved how she sees them with fresh eyes each time, finding something new to convey in what for a more jaded artist would be the same tired subject.

Laura Davis, writer

Beth Orton - The Ground Above (Partisan)

I was lucky to attend a gig by Beth Orton in London's St Pancras Old Church on Friday. The intimate vibe of this tiny womb-like venue was made all the more so by the fact that Beth was very nervous (and kept saying so, endearingly) and her two teenage kids were manning the merch stand. Backed by four musicians, Beth played a few of her stone-cold classics (including a hyper-delicate version of Central Reservation) but mainly showcased new material including this single - out today, her first release since acclaimed 2022 album Weather Alive. It's rare for new material to land as well as these songs did. They have a real heft and directness without dispensing with the ethereal beauty that is the trademark of the Orton sound. Here's hoping this means a new album is round the corner. Beth plays Aberdeen, Dundee and Belfast in May - and Latitude featival in July. Ticket details here.

Sarah Donaldson, Nerve co-founder

Bait

(Amazon Prime)

Created by Riz Ahmed, this is a witty and unexpectedly emotional series in which Ahmed portrays an out-of-work actor whose world is turned upside down after an audition to be the next James Bond. The show is a meta, satirical take on the entertainment industry, expanding the question that has been asked for years – what would it look like if James Bond was not white? But more than that, the show touches on what it is to be a brown actor in the spotlight, balancing your career, inward and outward pressures from family and community. You will laugh and cry.

And the show has a Bond-worthy soundtrack featuring Jorja Smith!

Michaela Makusha, writer

The Names by Florence Knapp

(Phoenix, £9.99)

What’s in a name? That’s the big question at the heart of Florence Knapp’s absolute must-read debut novel – a runaway hardback bestseller in 2025, now just out in paperback

Heartbreaking, horrifying and yet also hopeful in equal measures, the story explores in marvellously lucid prose the premise that our name can shape the course of our life just as much as our circumstances, our upbringing and the people around us. In her own highly original twist on the Sliding Doors concept, Knapp gives us three alternative versions of her protagonist, each of whom has been given a different name at birth. As we follow Bear, Gordon and Julian into adulthood, we witness the extent to which their names determine the men they become, the paths they take and the relationships they make and break.

Domestic abuse casts a horrendous shadow over their lives and that of their mother, Cora. But this is not a depressing book. It is a fundamentally compassionate and life-affirming novel about free will, family ties and the redemptive and enduring power of love. Not to be missed.

Lisa O’Kelly, Nerve contributing writer

THEATRE
Grace Pervades
(Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1, 24 April-11 July)

A West End transfer for Theatre Royal Bath’s sellout production of David Hare’s love letter to theatre, with Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Raison as Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, stars of the Victorian stage.

SEASON
Project a Black Planet 
(Barbican Centre, London EC2, 5 June to 6 September 2026)

Billed as “a deep dive into the rich influence of Pan-Africanism on contemporary arts and culture”, the programme includes an exhibition, music (from Cesária Évora to Meshell Ndegeocello) and film.  

FESTIVAL
Womad
(Neston Park, Wiltshire, 23-26 July)

A NTS DJ-curated strand has been announced to join initial line up that includes Greentea Peng and Oumou Sangare.

THEATRE
In the Print 
(King’s Head theatre, London N1, until 3 May)

In their new play Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky dramatise the behind the scenes story of the 1984 “Wapping Revolution” - the fight between the printworkers (represented by Brenda Dean head of the SOGAT union) and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch with his plans to modernise and streamline the industry.

ART
Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First
Royal Academy, London W1, until 19 April

Last chance to catch the 91-year-old artist’s huge, energetic and life-affirming canvases at the RA – the first time in the academy’s history that it has staged a solo exhibition of a female British painter in its main galleries.