Acuts Di/ar t y -

A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics

EXHIBITIONS

John Heartfield, Barbican. Graphic designer and photomontagist who took on Hitler.

Desires and Disguises: Contemporary Photography from Latin America, Photographer's Gallery, WC2. Remarkable documentary work ranging from Guatemala's syncretic religious festivals to the boulevardiers of Buenos Aires to the descendants of liberated slaves in Portobello, Panama. Tanya Harrod

OPERA

The Force of Destiny, London Coliseum (071 836 3161), from 16 September. One of Verdi's most sprawling and variable grand operas, rarely seen in London, is given a new production by ENO, directed by Nicholas Hytner, designed by Richard Hudson. The cast is led by Josephine Barstow in the challenging role of Leonora. Mark Elder conducts.

The Duenna, Grand Theatre, Leeds (0532 459351), from 17 September. Roberto Gerhard's comic opera, highly rated in some quarters, is aired in a new production by Helena Kaut-Howson. Gillian Knight takes the title role; the text is adapted from Sheridan's play. A typically enterprising project of Opera North.

Elektra, New Theatre, Cardiff (0222 394844), from 19 September. Strauss's massive and overwhelming setting of Hofmannsthal's Freudian reading of the classical text. The notorious American director David Alden is unleashed on Welsh National Opera, whose new music director Carlo Rizzi will conduct. Janet Hardy sings the title role, with Felicity Palmer as her tormented mother }Clytemnestra.

Rupert Christiansen

DANCE

Vivaria: Revolutionary

Manoeuvres, from 11 September. New festival of contemporary South Asian dance and performance work spread over five weeks in three cities — Leicester (Phoenix Arts, 0533 554854), London (The Place, 071 387 0031) and Manchester (Green Room, 061 236 1677). Visiting companies include those of Kathak dance experimentalist Kumudini Lakhia and India's most radical Bharata Natyam choreographer, Chandralekha.

Siobhan Davies Dance Company, The Tramway, Glasgow (041 422 2023), 24-26 September. Autumn tour commences with Davies's new double bill, White Bird Featherless and make-Make (world premiere),

featuring recent recruits Jeremy James and Elizabeth Old (both ex- Rambert) and the ever-reliable Paul Douglas. Sophie Constanti

CINEMA

In Patriot Games hotpants Harrison Ford as a CIA agent is on the run from swish Sean Bean as an IRA hitman — you pays your money and you takes your choice of glamorous violence.

Set on an ocean liner, Bitter Moon (18) explores the byways of a writer's heart. Roman Polanski fearlessly examines the little extras that make life worth living.

Further proof that the Americans have no sense of history comes to us in the form of California Man (PG), a comedy in which two LA youths dig a Neanderthal man out of a local slime-pit. Right Said Fred can be heard grumbling on the soundtrack. Vanessa Letts

CRAFTS

Base over Apex: the Decline of the British Motorcycle Industry, Design Musum. In the Fifties Britain's tough, utilitarian bikes led the world. Then the Japanese swept in. An everyday story of British manufacturing.

1961 Triumph Tigress

Photo courtesy of the Notional Motor Museum

Sheffield Metal, Ruskin Craft Gallery, Sheffield. Contemporary metal-workers trained in Sheffield.

Textiles by Sculptors, V & A. Sculptor/design collaborations of the Thirties and Forties — work by Moore, Dobson, Nicholson and Hepworth. Tanya Harrod

THEATRE

Tamburlaine, Swan, Stratford (0789 295623), 1 September. Terry Hands returns to RSC to direct Antony Sher in the Marlowe classic.

June Moon, Hampstead (071 722 9301), 8 September. Alan Strachan directs little-known Kaufman/Hart 1920s comedy, seen last year at Scarborough.

The Thebans, Barbican (071 638 8891), 10 September. Sophocles trilogy, highly acclaimed last season at Stratford, in Timberlake Wertenbaker adaptation.

Hamlet, Riverside Studios (081 748 3354), 15 September. Alan Also recommended: John Martyn, Town & Country, 24 September; famous country baldie Dwight Yoakam, Hammersmith Odeon, 27 September; Jah Wobble, Town & Country, 6 September; and get your tickets now for tragic rock dinosaurs Emerson Lake & Palmer, Royal Albert Hall, 2 and 3 October.

Marcus BerIonann Rickman starring for the great Georgian director Robert Sturua.

Medea, Almeida (071 359 4404), 16 September. In a classic month, plena Rigs in Islington.

Sheridan Morley

MUSIC

A succession of world-class orchestras is appearing at the Proms: the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Chailly playing Beethoven and Bruckner on the 2nd and Wehern, Madernas and Tchaikovsky on the 3rd; the ISO under Tilson Thomas with Anne- Sophie Mutter playing Berg's Violin Concerto on the 4th; the Vienna Philharmonic under Abbado on the 9th (Haydn and Mahler) and under Boulez on the 10th (Stravinsky, Debussy, Boulez and Bartok). Also recommended are the BBC Singers under Bo Holten (Josquin, Gombert, Part and Tavener) on the 7th at 10 p.m.

The Nash Ensemble is giving a 20th-century music series in the Purcell Room: Debussy, Dutilleux, Stravinsky, Turnage, Schoenberg (15th); Britten, C. Matthews, Ravel, Harvey (17th); Bartok, Eben, ShostakOvich (22nd); Stravinsky, Smirnov, Osborne, Firsova, Janacek (24th). Of these, the Turnage, Harvey, Eben and Smirnov are world premieres. Peter Phillips

GARDENS

With most gardens having received at least some rain this summer, September promises to be rather more fruitful for inveterate garden visitors than the same month last year. Now that the holidays are over, there are plenty of gardens open, for charity under the National Gardens Scheme, to show off late summer borders. One such is Quoitings (home of the Historiographer Royal to William IV and Queen Victoria, no less), Oxford Road, Marlow, Bucks. It is open on 6 September from 1 till 6. You get teas and a brass band as well. Ursula Buchan

POP MUSIC

Marc Almond, Royal Albert Hall, 30 September. Here's one of pop's odder comebacks: after years of self-conscious arty obscurity, Almond has suddenly realised that huge piles of money aren't that bad after all. The recent Trevor Horn- produced album Tenement Symphony (WEA) is probably his best yet.