Lucian Freud’s colour palette of warm creams and browns, fleshy skin tones and deep greys is so renowned that it’s hard to conceive him drawing as a child with the same primary-coloured crayons as everyone else. And yet here in the National Portrait Gallery hang some of his joyous first drawings, created between the ages of five and nine: from a bird with rainbow plumage to a wonderful, slightly wonky Witch’s House with a bright red roof. 

The first show of Freud’s work at the gallery since a major painting retrospective in 2012, and since it acquired his archive in 2015, Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting is a lovely, luminous dive into the role drawing played throughout Freud’s life and features 170 drawings, etchings and paintings, including sketchbooks and love letters (one such, I Miss You, is a scratchy pen and ink depiction of Freud’s messy bathroom, the pipework like tangled human limbs). There are works associated with well known paintings, such as those of his first wife, Kitty Garman, from the 1940s, or his large-scale family portrait Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau), 1981-83, alongside countless other exquisite portraits (including my favourite, Self-Portrait with a Hyacinth Pot, 1947-48), which showcase how brilliantly Freud captured light and textures, human feelings and frailties.

Imogen Carter, Nerve co-founder

How do you follow Derry Girls? Writer Lisa McGee’s answer is a darkly funny buddy mystery that offers the same charismatic ensemble dynamic (millennial adults instead of 90s teenagers) and throws in a compelling puzzle arc for the perfect comic nostalgia sandwich.

Róisín Gallagher, Sinéad Keenan and Caoilfhionn Dunne are Saoirse, Robyn and Dara, a tight school foursome brought back together as grown-ups by the sudden death of Greta, their fourth. They all had matching tattoos back then, and a big secret. The dialogue fizzes with McGee’s breathless wit, the friends revert to childhood as they try to negotiate their adult lives while forming an ad hoc Scooby-Doo gang. And it’s all bathed in lashings of B*Witched and Daniel Bedingfield for that rewarding nostalgic crunch. McGee might just be the genius we need right now.

Julia Raeside, writer

So little live music dazzles on TV outside of festival season, so it's been a joy to delve into Radio 2's new Piano Room sessions on the BBC iPlayer. Starting in 2022 and filmed in the BBC's beloved Maida Vale studios, these annual sessions put together a Radio 2-friendly act with the BBC Concert Orchestra to play three tracks – a newbie, an old classic and a cover. The sessions run throughout February (see the line-up here) and the best set last week belonged to Pulp, who played Hymn of the North, a song Jarvis Cocker wrote to his now-adult son, 1995 hit Something Changed, and a song that inspired it, Abba's mysterious late-career classic The Day Before You Came.

Jude Rogers, writer

Friday night: three 16-year-old girls are in the bathroom nervously putting on makeup before heading out-out. “We go in, pick one boy each to pull, do that pulling, then come home and eat the chicken dippers”. To the right, in the living room, a brother and an older boy silently play Nintendo. It’s with the arrival of Anya, from the year above, that the stakes rise. Playwright Miriam Battye’s funny, poignant, ultimately dark new work is taken to the next level by director Jaz Woodcock-Stewart’s bold staging. The young cast, some recent drama graduates, are terrific. 

Jane Ferguson, Nerve co-founder

As we’ve learned from Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance, language is barely a barrier any more – emotion is the true weapon. Mandy, Indiana are actually from Manchester and their songs are mostly in vocalist Valentine Caulfield’s native French. But the gnarly, dread-filled electronics, end-of-the-world drums and crushing, wall-of-sound atmosphere are a diamond-sharp rendering of the global hellscape we are facing. It’s harrowing, disorienting and unlike anything else you’ll hear all year, as hardcore-punk intensity gives way to pummelling techno, with an unsettling intensity that makes shoegaze sound as soft as baby yoga beats. As they put it so succinctly: URGH.

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

For Strindberg, marriage is hell. In Richard Eyre’s punchy new version of Dance of Death - which bumps the action forward from 1900 to the 1918 flu pandemic - it is also hellishly funny. On a lonely island, army captain Edgar (Will Keen) and former actress Alice (Lisa Dillon) are about to “celebrate” 25 years of hating one another when Edgar’s guileless cousin Kurt (Geoffrey Streatfeild) stumbles into their marital war zone. Keen, who won an Olivier as Vladimir Putin in Patriots, is equally magnificent as a failed martinet whose ailing heart is kept pumping only by his epic contempt for everybody around him. When Edgar and Alice are tearing chunks out of each other with unholy glee (Strindberg influenced Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), Eyre’s production proves Edgar’s bitter observation that there is comedy in misery.

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

This eye-opening investigation into the proscription of Palestine Action was quietly released last night (despite being listed in the TV guide as Concorde: The Race for Supersonic) after repeated delays amid ongoing trials. The ban, which has led to more than 2,000 arrests and is currently being appealed, has been criticised by many as draconian overreach by the government, while others say it is a necessary step to contain a dangerous organisation. Reporter Matt Shea has obtained exclusive interviews with PA founder Huda Ammori, one of the Filton 24 defendants, and senior Home Office figures speaking anonymously about the ban’s impact on freedom of speech. A leaked internal intelligence report contains disquieting new information.

Kathryn Bromwich, writer

THEATRE
The Harder They Come, Stratford East, London E15
(16 May-4 July)

The hit reggae musical based on the 1972 film returns after thrilling audiences last autumn.

ART
British Landscapes: A Sense of Place, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
(30 May-1 November 2026)

A show that explores how, since the late 18th century, artists including Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Eric Ravilious and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham have captured the “spirit of place” found in Britain’s landscapes.

MUSIC
Robyn: Sexistential tour (on sale Friday 13 February)
(Summer 2026)

The Swedish dance-pop star tours Europe, North America and Australia including shows in Glasgow (26 June), Manchester (27 June) and London (3 July).

ART
Turner Prize 2025, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford

The exhibition of work by this year’s four nominated artists, including winner Nnena Kalu, ends on 22 February.