Five Things Listing

Striking the Balance
Play, until 3 September

This touring play by theatre group Mikron looks like a rare treat as it celebrates the struggles of working class women like the Ford machinists or cleaners in Belfast for equal pay.

Though it features special "guest appearances" from Barbara Castle and Margaret Thatcher (rotten fruit is, however, banned from the auditorium) and original music, the real stars of the show are three working women who take on the might of a discriminatory establishment.

The Girl on the Train
Film, 4 June

The White Guard
National Theatre, London, Until 7 July

Against the thunderous backdrop of revolution in Russia, the Turbin household shelters a motley group of exiled aristocrats, hiding from the Reds.

The play promises an orgy of vodka quaffing, guitar plucking, anarchic ensemble action - the last hurrah of a pampered elite that the Bolsheviks are determined to consign to history. And fortunately there's no scarlet pimpernel in sight.

Posh
Royal Court Theatre, London, Until 22 May

East End Film Festival
Various cinemas, London, 22-30 April

This festival features lots of interesting films, new and from the archive, including SUS, written by Barrie Keefe (The Long Good Friday) and based on a true story. SUS refers to the law that allowed police to stop and search on suspicion alone, and led to a generation of young black men being targeted.

Street artist Banksy makes his directorial debut with this new film.

It's the story of a French shopkeeper turned fan who films Banksy at work and then makes a fortune by turning graffiti artist himself, milking buyers for his derivative art. It promises to reveal much about Banksy without actually revealing him.

Yesterday You Said Tomorrow
CD by Christian Scott

This wonderful exhibition brings to London paintings never or rarely seen here alongside Van Gogh's more familiar images and a series of sketches and drawings. Alongside the works of art are 35 letters which give insights into Van Gogh's ideas and methods, his choice of colours and why, for example, he wanted to bend a peasant to the contours of the field he was working.

Slaves
Theatre 503, London, until 20 February

This year's annual competition for press photography received 96,268 entries from 5,508 photojournalists in 124 countries. This exhibition features 196 of the best press photos of the year, and it's free to get in.

District 9
DVD, out 28 December

Pete Jackson's latest science fiction film about aliens stranded in South Africa and the scapegoating they face is a commentary on civil liberties and racism.

The British Museum hosts an exhibition celebrating Mexican printmaking, with work by artists including Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Drawing attention to the political underpinnings of some of the most iconic images of the last hundred years, many produced by communist collectives, the collection locates this upsurge in creative output within the tumult of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

From the much awaited premier of The Men Who Stare at Goats and film master Jacques Audiard's latest work The Prophet to less known rich pickings from world cinema, the London Film Festival 2009 promises to be excellent. We'll report back from the screening rooms in our next issue.

Truelove's Gutter
Richard Hawley

Armando Iannucci's vicious satire against the politicians in Whitehall and the White House. If you are looking for a deeply meaningful dissection of imperialism you won't find it here, but for a satisfying lampooning of modern politicians' spineless self-interest you could do far worse.

It's Valentine's Day 1962, two years after season one ended, Kennedy is now president and the Cuban missile crisis looms. This hugely atmospheric and gripping television series continues with marital breakdowns and looming political upheavals.

Newspaper archive
Online

Read the first issue of The Chartist from 2 February 1839, or accounts of the Matchgirls' Strike, on this massively expanded archive of newspapers both local and national from the 19th century.