Royal Albert Hall, London
He may be well into his ninth decade but his seasoned sidemen are still racing to keep up with mercurial twists on new and old songs

You could infer a lot from the way Bob Dylan’s backing band arrange themselves on stage. They form a kind of huddle around their leader, who these days performs mostly at a grand piano centre stage: sometimes seated, more often standing, occasionally not playing it all, but leaning against it, elbows on the lid, as he sings or plays harmonica. Perhaps there’s something protective about this formation. After all, Dylan is now 83; quite an age to be on the ninth leg of a three-year world tour. But even as an octogenarian, Dylan very much gives off the air of someone who can look after himself, thank you.

It seems more likely their position speaks of a state of high alert. These are musicians for whom the term seasoned professional was invented – longstanding crack sessioneers, men whose collective CV encompasses everyone from Paul Simon to Steely Dan to sundry former Beatles – and yet you somehow get the impression that even they aren’t quite certain exactly what’s going to happen next. An artist who pronounced himself freewheelin’ in 1963 seems no more inclined to keep to any script 61 years on. Best to stick close to the guy in charge and keep your eyes peeled for clues as to where he’s headed. As they hawkishly follow his unpredictable vocal phrasing and a piano style that’s simultaneously florid and ragged – Art Tatum by way of Les Dawson – he’s still capable of wrongfooting them: there are moments when you could swear the band start building to a climax or slowing to a conclusion, only to discover their leader has other ideas.

Delayed accounts reveal cost of sacking 786 seafarers and replacing them with lower-paid agency staff

P&O Ferries spent more than £47m sacking hundreds of UK seafarers in 2022, according to its long overdue accounts that will be published in the coming days.

The filings, which the Guardian has seen, confirm the financial cost of the company’s actions two and a half years ago when it outraged the public and parliament by dismissing 786 mainly British ferry workers – and then largely replacing them with low-cost agency staff from countries including India, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Washington Post art critic says Édouard Manet launched into ‘painful’ incident with fellow painter Berthe Morisot

Almost 140 years before a term was belatedly coined for the practice of men patronisingly setting women right on how certain things ought to be seen or done, it seems that a certain French painter had already become adept at the art of what must inevitably be called Manetsplaining .

Details of this late 19th-century case of mansplaining are laid out in a new book by the Pulitzer prize-winning Washington Post art critic Sebastian Smee, which explores how impressionism emerged as a response to the siege of Paris and the attendant civil and political tumult of the time.

Albion took a risk when appointing the Premier League’s youngest manager but it is paying off so far this season

By Ben McAleer for WhoScored

Three points separate the teams third and 11th in the Premier League during this final international break of the year. Although Liverpool are five points clear at the top, the battle to finish in the top four could be tighter than ever.

Much has been made of Nottingham Forest’s fine start and deservedly so after they flirted with relegation last season but with them on 19 points are Chelsea, Arsenal and Brighton. Four goals separate the quartet.

A co-production between the Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada, MaddAddam opens at the Royal Opera House, London

Park theatre, London
The real-life story of Frankie Lucas, a fighter spurned by Britain’s boxing establishment, is wrenchingly sad but loses power in this telling

Frankie Lucas might not be a household name as a boxer but he could have been a contender for it. A Windrush-era child from St Vincent, he joined his north London boxing club at nine, showing clear talent. He went on to win a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games, against the odds, before tragic derailment into bad mental health.

This production, written by Lisa Lintott, charts his rise and fall but is so much in thrall to biographical chronology and blow-by-blow fight reports that the drama fails to come to life. We hear from his girlfriend, Gene (Llewella Gideon), and son, Michael (Daniel Francis-Swaby), but they are narrators offering summaries rather than roundly drawn characters with inner worlds. We never access the emotional world of Lucas (Jazz Lintott, the writer’s son) either.

At Park theatre, London , until 30 November

An interactive documentary from Digital Eclipse goes deep on the 40-year history of Tetris

Believe me when I say: I truly thought I knew the story of Tetris. The puzzle game’s journey from behind the iron curtain in 1980s Moscow to multi-million-selling video game has been the subject of countless articles , a greatly entertaining book and a recent film . I have played Tetris in various forms for more than 30 years, from the Game Boy to the Nintendo Switch, even in VR . So when I loaded up Tetris Forever, an interactive documentary on Tetris’s 40-year history from the developers-slash-archivists at Digital Eclipse, I wasn’t expecting to learn anything new. I was proven very wrong.

Did you know about Hatris, the 1990 Tetris follow-up that involved stacking colourful hats on top of heads? I did, vaguely, but I did not know about the semi-authorised twist on that game put out by Spectrum Holobyte the same year, a mildly horrifying swap-and-drop puzzler that had players stacking up mouths, noses and eyes to try to make human faces. They called it Faces…tris III, which suggests that whoever named it gave up halfway through. No wonder it wasn’t a hit. I didn’t know that Henk Rogers, the charismatic Dutch-American who played a huge part in turning Tetris into a global phenomenon, spent his student years surfing and diving in Hawaii before (his words) chasing a girl to Japan and coding the country’s first bestselling RPG in 1984.

Work and pensions secretary says ‘scandal’ of pensioners not claiming credit entitlement is bigger problem

• UK politics live – latest updates

Liz Kendall has said she sees “no tension” in government over plans to make savings from restricting winter fuel payments to vulnerable pensioners and an increase in people securing pension credit.

The work and pensions secretary stressed she wanted all people eligible for pension credit to have the benefit, regardless of whether it could limit the government’s attempt to repair the “dire state” of public finances.

The archbishop’s resignation for failing to respond to abuse complaints speaks of deeper issues in the Church of England

• Catherine Pepinster is a writer on religion and a former editor of the Tablet, the Catholic weekly

When you look at a high-up cleric – someone like Justin Welby, say, dressed in all his finery, vestments trimmed with gold thread and a bejewelled clasp on his cope, as he was at the coronation of King Charles III – it’s hard to believe this has any connection with a wandering rabbi on the shores of the Sea of Galilee with his band of 12 followers.

But Welby and his fellow Church of England prelates take as their guiding light the teachings of that rabbi, Jesus. His words were not all milk and honey. Take, for example, this passage from the gospel of Matthew: “If anyone causes one of these little ones – those who believe in me – to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Catherine Pepinster is a writer on religion and a former editor of the Tablet, the Catholic weekly