The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess

CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington

STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves

JONATHAN TAYLOR is intrigued by an account of the struggle of Soviet-era musicians to adapt to the strictures of social realism

GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin

CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity

GEORGE FOGARTY is stunned by the epic and life-affirming sound of an outstanding Palestinian musical collective

GORDON PARSONS meditates on the appetite of contemporary audiences for the obscene cruelty of Shakespeare’s Roman nightmare

MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity

Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE

JOHN GREEN recommends a German comedy that celebrates the old GDR values of solidarity, community and a society not dominated by consumerism

CHRIS SEARLE wallows in an evening of high class improvised jazz, and recommends upcoming highlights in May

by Abeer Ameer

MARY CONWAY applauds the revival of a tense, and extremely funny, study of men, money and playing cards

MEHDI ACHOUCHE explores the constant fascination of cinema with Marxist alienation from Fritz Lang and Chaplin to Bong Joon Ho

FIONA O’CONNOR steps warily through a novel that skewers many of the exposed flanks of the over-privileged

MARY CONWAY applauds the study of a dysfunctional family set in an Ireland that could be anywhere

New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott

MARY CONWAY relishes two matchless performers and a masterclass in tightly focused wordplay

MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion

LOUISE BOURDUA introduces the emotional and narrative religious art of 14th-century Siena that broke with Byzantine formalism and laid the foundations for the Renaissance

ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice

SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management

JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal

SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic

JON BALDWIN recommends a provocative assertion of how working-class culture can rethink knowledge

These are vivid accounts of people’s experiences of far-right violence along with documentation of popular resistance, says MARJORIE MAYO

The Star's critics MARIA DUARTE, JOHN GREEN and ANGUS REID review An Army of Women, Julie Keeps Quiet, The Friend and The Ugly Stepsister

MARIA DUARTE recommends a tough love story that unfolds among mental health issues, drug addiction and inadequate housing

GORDON PARSONS squirms at a production that attempts to update Shakespeare’s comedy to a tale of Premier League football

by Pen Kease

Above a Gothic bar just down from Brighton station, something spooky is happening, suggests JAMES WALSH

How underground bands formed a vital part of the struggle against white supremacy

PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river

DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid

MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir