Troubadour Canary Wharf theatre, London
Eye-popping visuals and a strong lead performance energise Matthew Dunster’s production – but the emotion gets lost amid the action

A luminous bow hovers in the darkness as if suspended in the sky while the arena-like stage is filled with smoke. A figure emerges: Katniss Everdeen, the girl from District 12 in Suzanne Collins’ post-apocalyptic universe, played by Jennifer Lawrence in the film franchise. With her appearance, the 74th Hunger Games begin – and no special effect is spared.

Closely following the plot of Collins’ first book in the young adult series, and the Lionsgate film of 2012, Matthew Dunster’s production is a grand-scale manifestation of dystopian Panem. It is a place in which the haves and have-nots are divided into districts, and in which children are pitted against each other as “Tributes” in a deadly TV gameshow, forced to kill for prime-time entertainment. The last one standing wins the prize of survival.

The statement highlights how resale platforms have allowed touts to bulk buy and resell tickets at inflated prices, forcing fans to either pay above the odds or miss out entirely

Season three of Hulu’s hit reality series premieres Thursday

Gurinder Chadha’s leaden update of the hardy seasonal chestnut with Kunal Nayyar is joyless and nausea-inducing

Keen though I always am to indulge any and every new riff on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and keen also to hear from Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha, this cynically Christmassy movie is leaden, unconvincingly acted and about as welcome as a dead rat in the eggnog. It’s the worst Christmas film since last year’s Red One, in which Dwayne Johnson played the head of security for Santa Claus and more or less had us all rooting for anyone who could beat up Father Christmas.

In this one, Big Bang Theory star Kunal Nayyar lifelessly and joylessly plays a Scrooge variant called Mr Sood, part of the Ugandan south Asian community expelled by Idi Amin in his childhood, and embittered by early poverty. An early romance soured because of his obsession with money, and he has become a grasping and unpleasant old guy in London (cue stock footage of the London skyline) in the rather quaintly imagined business of moneylending, with his now dead partner Jacob Marley, played by Hugh Bonneville. But after petulant displays of boorish meanness with his nephew, employees and the cheerful Cockney Christmas-jumper-wearing cabbie played by Danny Dyer (surely Mr Sood knows that Ubers are cheaper?), he is visited by Marley’s ghost and then the spirits of Christmas past, present and future (played by Eva Longoria, Billy Porter and Boy George).

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway reunite in the first look at the follow-up to hit comedy set to be released in May 2026

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway have reunited in the first teaser trailer for the much-anticipated follow-up to The Devil Wears Prada.

The Oscar-winning actors are reprising their antagonistic roles for The Devil Wears Prada 2 which is set for release next summer.

Sarah Jessica Parker swept all before her at the Booker prize ceremony, but is fame the best way to encourage reading?

In these turbulent times, we take small joys where we can find them. And this week we’ll take this: the spectacle of various literary people at the Booker prize award ceremony jamming themselves into photos alongside Sarah Jessica Parker. The actor – if you missed the long piece about it in the New York Times, or the many social media posts promoting Parker’s involvement – served as a judge for the Booker this year, a process that required her to read 153 books, some of them on the New York subway while being followed by a film crew. “Oh let me try!!!!” Parker had posted to Booker organisers last year, and for reasons that became obvious this week, they did.

I know what you are going to say; that anything short of full-throated support for Parker’s adorable engagement with books in general and the Booker prize in particular is just unacceptable snobbery. There is nothing wrong with an actor involving herself in literary life or using her cultural weight to promote literacy. And – it goes without saying – we are all weepingly grateful to anyone with a platform bigger than that of the dowdy stay-at-home novelist who harnesses her glamour and spotlight for good. That celebrity book clubs have become the natural PR extension of taking up animal charities or becoming a UN goodwill ambassador is, surely, something to be celebrated. Who among us can fail to welcome Mindy Kaling, or Emma Watson, or Jenna Bush Hager in their fight against dwindling attention spans and addiction to screens?

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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