THE CRITICAL LIST: THIS WEEK'S RECOMMENDATIONS

Natacha Atlas is a founding member of Trans Global Underground, the ethno-hip hop unit you can rely on, and lends her astonishing voice regularly to Jah Wobble. She is happening in the best sense of the word. Look out for an excellent debut solo album in the summer and limber up with a jaunt to London's Dingwalls on Wednesday to hear Egyptian love songs rendered in a heavy dubwise style.

n Dingwalls: 0171-267 1999

Rejected in 1928 by WB Yeats, then artistic director at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, Sean O'Casey's coruscating anti-war play The Silver Tassie has never enjoyed quite the popularity of his other works, such as The Plough and the Stars (now at the Garrick Theatre). This sorry state of affairs is rectified at the Almeida this week, where Irish director Lynne Parker has assembled a fine cast for an oblique adjunct to VE Day.

n Almeida: 0171-359 4404

Bullets over Broadway might not have been the box-office hit Woody Allen had hoped for, but several Oscar nominations (and an Oscar for Dianne Wiest) suggest he's back in fair odour in Hollywood. It centres on the dilemmas of a precocious writer (John Cusack) whose new play is produced by a gangster. Sterling acting and a bubbly script make it one of Woody's more enjoyable films of recent years.

n Opens Friday

Next Sunday sees that Rolls-Royce of orchestras, Herbert von Karajan's Berlin Philharmonic, sliding into London's Royal Festival Hall under its new music director, Claudio Abbado (can it really be a whole six years since he took over?), for two evenings of Mahler symphonies: the Fifth, and songs from Anne Sophie von Otter, on Sunday; the Ninth the day after.

n Sun / Mon 7.30 RFH, SBC, London SE1 (0171-928 8800)