‘It is the riskiest film I’ve ever made’: Pedro Almodóvar on being the villain in his own movie

Traverse theatre, Edinburgh Malaika Kegode delivers a supernatural story about the strange disappearance of a maudlin folk singer Playwright and performer Malaika Kegode tops and tails this show for Theatre Royal Plymouth with a message about the allure of storytelling. In a festival city bursting at the seams with stories, it is an unnecessary observation. A more important question is about which stories we choose to tell, which resonate and which pass us by. Why, for example, did Kegode want to write a story – and it is a story rather than a play – about the strange disappearance of a maudlin folk singer? She focuses on the subsequent investigation by Meles Costas, an under-qualified true-crime podcaster, living in the shadow of a high-achieving and terminally ill mother. And she laces her story with gothic fairytale imagery: folk songs with dark-magic properties, human-to-animal transmutation and a hint of witchcraft. At Traverse theatre, Edinburgh, until 30 August; Theatre Royal Plymouth, 2–5 September; Bristol Old Vic, 8–12 September All our Edinburgh festival reviews..

Despite stars Leslie Mann, Anna Faris and Isla Fisher and the writers behind The Hangover, this tale of friends at a luxury hotel is a dud Jon Lucas and Scott Moore are the screenwriters who struck gold nearly 20 years ago with The Hangover, a brilliant stag-weekend nightmare comedy about what happens in Vegas, which sadly spawned a terrible (though lucrative) franchise. Now, as writers and directors, they have tried turning it around and making a movie about how middle-aged women behave on a longed-for spa weekend at a luxury-porn hotel. The result is a comedy without gags, a comedy which, for all the strenuous high-jinks, is afraid to be flippant or mean or, indeed, funny in any way. Leslie Mann plays a hotshot lawyer called Jane who can’t make room in her life for romance; Anna Faris is goofy Sophie, PA to a rich asshole; Michelle Buteau is outspoken badass Coco, angry at her ex-husband dating again; and Isla Fisher is landed with the stridently unfunny role of Mel, a wild child who makes the other three nervous, but whose life-affirming no-filter honesty is going to break everyone’s emotional logjam and sort out their lives. As for Jane, it looks as if the hotel’s super-hot super-sensitive yoga teacher, Kai (Adam Demos), is going to hook up with her...

The five-strong list features Ella Bruccoleri, Sheridan Smith, Ruth Jones, Vicky McClure and Judy Parfitt.