MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play that presents Shelley as polite and conventional man who lives a chocolate box, cottagey life

Reading Picasso’s Guernica like a comic strip offers a new way to understand the story it is telling, posits HARRIET EARLE  

STEVE JOHNSON interviews with Martin Green about his love affair with brass bands

GEORGE FOGARTY falls under a spell of an unpretentious gathering that is as edifying as it is entertaining

MARIA DUARTE and MICHAL BONCZA review Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Bob Trevino Likes It, Lilo & Stitch, Fountain of Youth

MARIA DUARTE is in two minds about a peculiar latest offering from Wes Anderson

New releases from Nazar, Peter Gregson and Mesias Maiguashca

ANGUS REID calls for artists and curators to play their part with political and historical responsibility

Generous helpings of Hawaiian pidgin, rather good jokes, and dodging the impostors

MARY CONWAY is stirred by a play that explores masculinity every bit as much as it penetrates addiction

by Tracey Rhys

Chris Searle speaks to saxophonist XHOSA COLE and US tap-dancer LIBERTY STYLES

LEO BOIX introduces a bold novel by Mapuche writer Daniela Catrileo, a raw memoir from Cuban-Russian author Anna Lidia Vega Serova, and powerful poetry by Mexican Juana Adcock

RITA DI SANTO speaks to the exiled Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa about Two Prosecutors, his chilling study of the Stalinist purges

FIONA O’CONNOR is fascinated by a novel written from the perspective of a neurodivergent psychology student who falls in love

MATTHEW HAWKINS gives us a sense of what to expect from Glasgow’s International Dance festival

New releases from Robert Forster, Self Esteem, and Arve Henriksen

SIMON PARSONS is gripped by a psychological thriller that questions the the power of the state over vulnerable individuals

SUSAN DARLINGTON is bowled over by an outstanding play about the past, present and future of race and identity in the US

RON JACOBS welcomes an investigation of the murders of US leftist activists that tells the story of a solidarity movement in Chile

RITA DI SANTO surveys the smorgasbord of films on offer at this year’s festival

The bard gives us advance notice of his upcoming medieval K-pop releases

KEN COCKBURN assesses the art of Ian Hamilton Finlay for the experience of warfare it incited and represents

GORDON PARSONS steps warily through the pessimistic world view of an influential US conservative

HENRY BELL takes issue with the assertion that basic income is a remedy for poverty when it doesn’t address the inbuilt inequality of capitalism

Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA

MARIA DUARTE is gripped by a tense drama set almost entirely in a car as distressed parents try to rescue their wayward daughter

In this production of David Mamet’s play, MARY CONWAY misses the essence of cruelty that is at the heart of the American deal

Poems by Mohammed Moussa, Mark Kirkbride, Omar Sabbagh, Ruth Aylett, Mark Paffard and Patrick Jones

SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star

MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump

Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz

MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility

A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens 

SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.

JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones

GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world

ELIZABETH SHORT recommends a bracing study of energy intensive AI and the race of such technology towards war profits

RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery

HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come

MATTHEW HAWKINS surveys the upcoming programme of contemporary dance in Glasgow, and picks some highlights

JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media

‘Chance encounters are what keep us going,’ says novelist Haruki Murakami. In Amy, a chance encounter gives fresh perspective to memories of angst, hedonism and a charismatic teenage rebel.

The Star's critics MARIA DUARTE and MICHAL BONCZA review Backlash: The Murder of George Floyd, The Uninvited, The Surfer, and Motel Destino

No excuses can hide the criminal actions of a Nazi fellow-traveller in this admirably objective documentary, suggests MARTIN HALL

DAVID NICHOLSON applauds the return of Azuka Oforka’s stunning drama about slave plantation politics

PAUL DONOVAN relishes a fascinating exploration of the leading lights of the Labour right in the 1970s

BEN LUNN alerts us to the creeping return of philanthropy and private patronage, and suggests alternative paths to explore

A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis

MAYER WAKEFIELD laments the lack of audience interaction and social diversity in a musical drama set on London’s Underground

WILL STONE foresees the refashioning of Beckett’s study of bitter nostalgia given the plethora of self-recording we make in the digital age

New releases reviewed by IAN SINCLAIR

MIK SABIERS savours the first headline solo show of the stalwart of Brighton’s indie-punk outfit Blood Red Shoes

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