TheMet Online’s guide of cultural things to do in Leeds this week (Monday 1st – Sunday 7th October 2012).

Theatre

It’s almost 60 years since the world-famous variety show The Good Old Days first aired on the BBC from City Varieties. It was a huge success and ran for 30 years; the audience would dress up in Victorian garb and have a good old-fashioned knees-up and with big name stars. The show helped to put Leeds on the world map, Friday 5th the show returns to start its four-weekend run bringing a host of acts that make it the legendary Music Hall experience it is famous for.

Opera North’s Don Giovanni is at Leeds Grand Theatre on Friday 5th. As he seduces his way across Europe, bedding 1003 women in Spain alone, Don Giovanni’s libertinism is a challenge not only to human morality, but also to God. Dark comedy vies with tense drama, and the beauty and terror of the score are evidence of a supreme musical dramatist at the height of his powers, divinely (and perhaps diabolically) inspired.

Steptoe & Son continues at West Yorkshire Playhouse. The plot follows Albert and Harold Steptoe; joined at the hip and heart, the production will run until Saturday13th. Darkly comic and deeply moving, this is a 20th century icon re-imagined for the new generation.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof begins at West Yorkshire Playhouse on Saturday the 6th. Brimming with emotional intensity, family politics, greed, hypocrisy and suppressed sexuality, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer prize in 1955 and was made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.

Film

Looper (15)

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Directed byRian Johnson

Plot: In futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented – but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. Joe is getting rich and life is good – until the day the mob decides to “close the loop,” sending back Joe’s future self for assassination.

Showing at: Vue /Hyde Park Picture House from Monday 1st

There Will Be Blood (15)

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O’Connor, Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Plot: A towering, hypnotic, fever-dream of a film, There Will Be Blood follows oil-man Daniel Plainview from the very bowels of the earth as he strikes black-gold for the first time through to his eventual tyrannical domination of the oil business. An epic, pulsating vision of greed, power and obsession utterly unlike anything else you’ve ever seen.

Showing at: Hyde Park Picture House on Saturday 6th

Jaws (12A)

Starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Directed by Steven Spielberg

Plot: The new digital print of a classic. The peaceful resort town of Amity, Massachusetts has always depended on its thriving summer tourist trade to get through the lean winter months. So when a swimmer is killed by a great white shark, Sheriff Brody faces much opposition to his suggestion of closing the beaches just before the 4th of July weekend. Based on the novel by Peter Benchley, this is the film that really put Spielberg on the map.

Showing at: Hyde Park Picture House on Sunday 7th

Poetry/Literature

Al Kennedy and Peter Hook are both at City Varieties on Saturday 6th as part of the Morley Literature Festival. Now in its seventh year, Morley Literature Festival is an annual week-long festival in October celebrating books, reading and writing. The programme includes author events, workshops, comedy, music and family shows, see everything offer this year on their website.

Also of interest

Light Night Leeds is a spectacular celebration of Leeds’ creativity. This year’s event will be on Friday the 5th and for the first time will have a theme: ‘Dead of Night’. For one evening, Leeds’ artists and performers pool their talents in many city centre locations, including Leeds Art Gallery.

CSI Discovery – human remains uncovered takes place at Leeds Museum Discovery Centre on Saturday 6th from 10am – 12pm. Discover stories of skeletons and skulls from the museums Human Remains collections. PLEASE NOTE – REAL human remains will be used and there will be discussion of injury, death and disease!