Rapper trails summer release of The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) with a fictional crime report suggesting that the antic character will meet a violent end One of the great alter egos in pop could be meeting a grisly end, as Eminem announces his first album since 2020: The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce). Set for release on an unspecified date this summer, the album was announced with a trailer that frames the demise of the antic character, with a crime reporter saying to camera: “Through his complex and oft-criticised tongue-twisting rhymes, the anti-hero known as Slim Shady has had ..read more

Philip Pullman will help choose this year’s winners of award set up in memory of the keen young writer who died aged 13 in 2021 The Martha Mills young writers’ prize has opened for entries on the theme of “A Secret”. The competition, run by the London Review Bookshop, invites 11- to 14-year-olds living in the UK to submit up to 500 words of any type of prose – such as a fictional story, a piece of schoolwork, or a diary entry – based on this year’s theme ..read more

O2 Arena, LondonThere’s some magic amid the cheese as the trio revisit a stacked catalogue of hits – and gamely give their old choreography a go It’s difficult to say exactly what Take That are going for on their This Life tour: a 41-date behemoth that has shifted more than 700,000 tickets. Video interstitials show the three remaining members doing their very best at acting in retrofuturist infomercials. The set is sometimes done up like a 1950s sitcom, sometimes just with sterile white staircases. At times we’re at a pop show and at others a museum retrospective. It’s confusing packaging for ..read more

Queen Elizabeth Hall, LondonTwo of Mendelssohn’s symphonies plus his second piano concerto were almost too much of a good thing, but not when played with such delicacy and spirit Three nights, three concertos and five symphonies: the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is approaching its deep dive into Mendelssohn with the kind of intensity this still-slightly-underrated composer doesn’t often receive. András Schiff is both conductor and, in the two piano concertos, soloist. The Blüthner fortepiano he’s playing looks like it wants to be a modern concert grand when it grows up. It’s a big ins ..read more

Soho theatre, LondonPhil Burgers made clowning hip after winning the Edinburgh comedy award in 2012. Now older, if not wiser, his new show is a little undercooked, but his skill as a performer is undeniable Clown is the hippest thing in comedy right now, thanks in no small part to the American act Doctor Brown, who launched its new wave by winning the Edinburgh comedy award in 2012. Now wicked, now innocent, now sensitive, now sexy, Phil Burgers’ alter ego staked out a fresh, stripped-back, non-gurny brand of silent comedy, and influenced a generation. Now he’s back, with his first solo show i ..read more

The 27-year-old American actor has gone from the Disney channel to new classy arthouse threesome drama Challengers, via a massive blockbuster and a hot-button TV series. So can she convince as an Oscar contender? Actor-model-producer Zendaya Coleman – universally known mononymously, without her last name – has never been short of attention, but it feels as if the 27-year-old has arrived at a breakthrough moment. With the tennis romance Challengers arriving in cinemas, in which she is the central focus, the sci-fi blockbuster Dune: Part Two still reeling in audiences, and acting as the simultan ..read more

He melted hearts as Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid, but his latest role couldn’t be more different – playing an Auschwitz tattooist in an epic Holocaust drama. The actor opens up about how his own family’s plight inspired him It’s not every day that I meet a real-life Disney prince. It’s even more discombobulating when he tells me he spent the weekend cheering on Clapton CFC women’s team in windy east London. “Before The Little Mermaid, a lot of people told me, ‘This is going to happen! That is going to happen!’” says Jonah Hauer-King, who starred as Prince Eric in last year’s remake. “It’s ..read more

Southwark Playhouse, London Adam Scott-Rowley struts, writhes and jiggles his way from ancient Celt to Hieronymus Bosch wretch in this potent cross between physical theatre and performance art A man sits on a toilet seat under a spotlight, his naked body smeared with chalk and black splodges. He gets up to strut, writhe or jiggle his bits. It might sound like the stuff of an underground fetish club – Adam Scott-Rowley its creature – but it is a physical meditation on mortality and the dying body. There is no through-narrative, and the show is built on surreal non-sequitur flashes, some arcane ..read more

(Ed Banger/Because) The French producer duo attempt a return to their roots, but the results are a little too polished With their self-titled 2007 debut, French production duo Justice – Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay – established themselves as promising Daft Punk successors. Combining arena-sized drum tracks with squealing guitars and a thundering dancefloor pulse, they delivered gargantuan melodic hooks with gut-thumping force. Yet subsequent releases have struggled to elicit the same sense of vitality. Audio, Video, Disco, from 2011, veered into the complicated world of prog, while 2016 ..read more

Narrator Simone Collins leans into the dark humour of life at the domestic coalface, where moments of fierce love jostle with soul-sapping drudgery A thrillingly blunt account of new motherhood, Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor has been shortlisted for the Women’s prize, and finds its narrator addressing her baby, whom she calls Sailor, as she reports from life at the domestic coalface. Blending the profound and the soul-sappingly mundane, she talks of her fierce love for her son while navigating the purgatory of laundry, mealtimes, baby groups, trips to the playground, broken nights and exhaust ..read more