Composer also discusses plans for musical and film score as kingdom attempts to improve its image

Saudi Arabia has asked the Oscar-winning composer, Hans Zimmer, to work on a new version of its national anthem, a senior official said, as the kingdom steps up an image makeover.

Zimmer, whose film scores include the 1994’s The Lion King, Dune and the Dark Knight trilogy, has agreed to the “broad outlines” of the project, the General Entertainment Authority chair, Turki Alalshikh, said.

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Chronically handsome and brooding he may be, but the actor’s casting in a new film has inverted the traditional Star Wars formula by bringing in an established star. Will it work?

What exactly is the essential DNA of Star Wars, its unique selling point, its defining je ne sais quoi? Is it its uncanny ability to turn space wizards, walking carpets and beep-booping rubbish bins into the backbone of a multibillion-dollar mythology? Naturally, it’s the creation of a preposterously hopeful galaxy in which a lowly moisture farmer can become a Jedi knight, or a hardbitten bounty hunter can find himself playing surrogate daddy to a tiny green enigma who communicates entirely through coos, ear twitches, and an ability to devour live amphibians. And it’s most definitely the conviction that you can slap a fresh coat of CGI on a 40-year-old spaceship, throw in a few cryptic prophecies about destiny, and still convince millions that this time – this time! – it’s all leading somewhere achingly, untouchably profound.

But what it’s never really been, ever since George Lucas began mulling the idea of a big budget space opera influenced by 1930s adventure serials and 1950s Japanese samurai flicks, is a star vehicle. Which is why this week’s news that Ryan Gosling is to join a new Star Wars film being directed by Deadpool & Wolverine’s Shawn Levy feels downright weird. It’s as if the Mona Lisa suddenly showed up as a background painting on the set of a TV sitcom.

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Soho theatre, London
Annette’s stage presence shines in a show full of vivid observations, campy asides and nostalgic pop culture

Amy Annette is the sort of woman who’d rather drop her phone than a lovely bit of bread, she tells us by way of introduction. That’s why growing up in the 00s was far from ideal. “I was a size 16 teen in the era of the low-rise jean,” she says.

Annette’s debut is propelled by fear for today’s teenagers, who are living through a revival of 00s fashions. Will the scourge of body-shaming and diet culture follow?

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The musician’s raucous new look at life’s harder side starts with tonnes of energy, while Miquita Oliver ropes in a group of famous pals to replace Lily Allen

“Just when you thought you didn’t need another podcast to listen to, here I come!” So announces Paloma Faith in her new show where she chats to celebrity guests about the lows of their lives. Episode one’s chat with her pal Alan Carr is an energetic, off-kilter chinwag, punctuated by highly entertaining anecdotes about crying during orgasms, terrible dates – and a moment where Faith’s mum wanders in mid-show. Very fun. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly

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(Young/Atlantic)
Coining a word to describe a particular state of euphoria, twigs effortlessly juggles left-field digitals and club pop tunes on album No 3

It’s a slippery concept, but FKA twigs’s third album title roughly translates as an instance of feeling perfectly at one inside oneself, the Cartesian mind-body split healed over. An example might be diving unselfconsciously into a rave in Prague, as twigs did while filming The Crow in 2022. Alternatively, it might be the moment before orgasm. “It feels nice,” she choruses simply on Room of Fools , a track that explores the somatic healing potential of the dancefloor with an exuberance that tilts both at Kate Bush and Middle Eastern vocalisations. Girl Feels Good drives home the point that the world spins better when women feel good, recalling, of all people, Madonna.

FKA twigs has long operated at the bleeding edge of left-field digital musicianship, with incursions into the mainstream reminding fans she could do pop, if she wanted to. Eusexua is one of those instances writ large, where gnarly electronics – in collaboration with producer Koreless – remind you of her outsider status while the tunes sing out. A hymn to anonymous encounters, Perfect Stranger is club pop powered by a little two-step syncopation, while a more minimal, emotional track such as Keep It, Hold It contains explicit advice for how to get through hard things.

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Succession star will play the ghost of Adam Smith in ‘operatic’ drama about the 2008 financial crash

The Dundee-born actor Brian Cox will return to the Scottish stage for the first time in a decade to play the ghost of Adam Smith, a role he created for himself, in the first major drama to tell the story of Royal Bank of Scotland’s role in the 2008 financial crash.

Cox, whose performance as the ailing patriarch and media mogul Logan Roy in TV’s acclaimed Succession won him a Golden Globe and multiple Emmy nominations, will play the Enlightenment-era economist in Make it Happen, an “operatic in scale” production for the National Theatre of Scotland by the playwright and screenwriter James Graham.

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Royal Academy, London
Brazil produces incredible artists, too few of whom appear in this deluded show, which sadly fails to live up to its own hyperbolic guff

What words would you use to describe the design of this exhibition of Brazilian modernist art? “Chic bombast” perhaps. The biggest room in the main galleries of Burlington House is painted bold yellow with the names of its two featured artists in huge black graphics and, for visitors to sit on, funky curving furniture. But there’s a mismatch between this ostentatious layout and the small canvases lined up on the walls, in greys, greens and browns. This is the kind of exhibition where everything is “trailblazing” and every artist a “pioneer”. But the art completely fails to match that hyperbolic guff.

“Anita Malfatti was a trailblazing artist whose modernist paintings shocked the Brazilian establishment,” claims a huge wall text that’s much bigger than her works. They must have been easily shocked. Malfatti’s paintings that date from the first world war include cubist studies of the nude, fauvist portraits and expressionist landscapes. Before 1914, she had studied art in Germany and her paintings draw on what she saw and learned. They are fine, just not very original or revolutionary.

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Camden People’s theatre, London
The storyteller completes his trilogy of soft, stark shows with an hour of sweet, scatter-gun observations about how we live

If you had an hour, just an hour, and it was your last hour, and there was an audience in front of you, what would you say? This is the brief that James Rowland, the gentle storyteller and sweaty, near-naked man who stands in front of us in a hospital gown and crocs, set himself. This raggedy finale to his trilogy of soft, stark shows ( Learning to Fly , Piece of Work ) was meant to run before Christmas but had to be delayed for an emergency trip to hospital where, Rowland learned, you do in fact wear pants beneath the gown.

For his sweet, scatter-gun final hour, Rowland chooses love. He hands us a smattering of nature and laughter and the floating first note of a song. Soundtracked by his favourite music, he tells us with the world’s brightest, saddest smile about birds, waterfalls, his cat, his partner. Finding comfort in tales that are handed down so they’re never forgotten, he devotes a large chunk of time to his dream iteration of Robin Hood, his gown flapping as he runs about the stage playing each part. Glowing behind him, a digital clock counts down.

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The relentless skill challenges of caring for his newborn baby reminded developer Nicholas O’Brien of his day job. He explains how turning it all into a game helped him cope

I don’t remember much from the first weeks of parenthood – a colicky baby and extreme sleep deprivation will do that to you – but I do vividly remember one night with my baby son when absolutely nothing I did seemed to help him. I walked him around: he screamed. I tried to feed him: he screamed. I put him down: more screaming. So it went for a couple of hours. I remember thinking: this is like a text adventure video game where none of the answers are right.

Game designer and college teacher Nicholas O’Brien had similar thoughts. His first child was born during the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City, and he and his partner were trapped at home, on the endless merry-go-round of menial baby-care tasks. It was getting to him, like it gets to all new parents. “I didn’t have a lot of social or emotional outlets besides my partner,” he tells me. “I felt like I needed to create something about how I was feeling, work my way through it by making something.”

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