MondayThe first day of Pride month and friends in New York report a textbook encounter between one of the straightest forces in this world – hen night energy – and one of the gayest, the Rocky Horror Show, currently in revival on Broadway, where for the past three months, Tony-nominated Luke Evans has been knocking it out of the park as Frank-N-Furter.Into the seats in front, reports my traumatised friend, stagger five women, tanked out of their minds, shrieking and swaying and hell-bent on destruction. Had they stumbled into a performance of Mamma Mia, they may have found themselves among like-minded souls. As it was – and I almost pity them for this – they washed up in a sea of increasingly thin-lipped gays.There has always been tension between the deep, emotional resonance that pieces like Rocky Horror, or more recently Oh, Mary, have with gay people and the theme-park appeal they exert on elements of the straight community. This is why hen parties get banned from gay clubs, but in a theatre, you can’t kick people out until they’ve actually done something.In the first 20 minutes, the women stood up, waved their arms, screamed, bounced around and generally carried on until, eventually – high fives all round – they were asked to leave. As one of the women lurched out, she threw up a middle finger at my pal, a mild mannered New Yorker in ordinary circumstances, but he’d been pushed beyond the very limits of his tolerance and invited her nastily to “go back to Long Island”. Happy start of Pride!TuesdaySpeaking of trauma, we probably need to talk about Anne Hathaway. The 43-year-old actor – who, in her defence, is probably still recovering from the embarrassment of The Devil Wears Prada 2 – has managed to insert herself into Arsenal’s victory this week with a video that is almost a work of art in its ability to trigger strong feelings in the viewer.Wearing the Arsenal strip, Hathaway, head swaying, hair flowing, smiling whimsically to herself as if to say, yes, I’m pretty sure this is how normal people behave when they’re into things and, boy, they’re gonna love me for being into this, sings a version of North London Forever in what appears to be “sea-shanty” or “Irish [trad]” style.And by sings, I mean really gives it some flourish; watch out or Eva Perón over there will put out a record. In the short piece of dialogue the Hollywood star subsequently delivers to camera, referencing the “group chat” and grinning wolfishly – “congratulations, lads!” – I can feel her vowel sounds pulling, inexorably, in the extremely dangerous direction of the Yorkshire accent she did in One Day, a possibly unconscious nod to ideas about “Englishness”. Anyway, while she name checks Declan Rice and her mum, we can at least be grateful she doesn’t have a crack at the word gooner.‘Quick, everyone hide, here comes Anne Hathaway!’ Photograph: Toby Shepheard/AFP/Getty ImagesWednesdayJonathan Franzen’s last novel, Crossroads, was published in 2021, and there is excitement this week when a long story worked up from his novel in progress drops in the New Yorker. After a slightly creaky start that feels like heavy machinery levitating into action, there it is, the old magic. The story focuses on Adele, a young girl with a difficult family and strong passions that she initially directs towards religion. “She enjoyed the feeling that God, unlike her mother, paid attention to everything she did,” writes Franzen. After a night in which, “she’d felt Christ’s living presence in her bedroom, a night she’d been agreeably rewarded for talking about in church,” Adele worries that “in her secret heart … she hadn’t felt the presence of anything but her yearning to feel something.”This is exactly what we want from Franzen, who is never stronger than when calling out the gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us. It’s hard to imagine where the novel as a whole might go, and, in remarks to the magazine, the 66-year-old pointed out that the full arc is “far from finished”. Words to make a publisher gulp.Towards the end of the piece, there is a sudden swerve in what feels like an unusual direction for the author: Adele, a talented actor, becomes suddenly, inexplicably famous and acquires an agent, a woman who, writes Franzen, “had welling eyes and a crooning sentimentality, a related fondness for a bottle of Chablis at lunchtime, but at the mention of a larger East or West Coast agency, for which a client might leave her, her eyes dried and her voice lost its croon”. “When you’re in with me, you’re in,” she said. “And when you’re out with me you’re dead.” Do you know who this passage made me miss like crazy? Jackie Collins.ThursdayI was going to write something offhand about Rosamund Pike telling off an audience member this week for texting during a performance of her hit West End play, Inter Alia. And then by chance, on Thursday, I happened to get tickets to go see it. The play, by Suzie Miller, is a follow-up to Prima Facie, her brilliant legal drama starring Jodie Comer, and from the reviews I’d imagined Inter Alia would be a good but slightly weaker version of that play.Well, ha! It’s not often one has cause to say this but Pike’s performance, in which she plays a judge whose son is accused of a crime, justifies all the hysteria, money, and attention that can accrue to actors. I had thought Comer’s performance in Prima Facie was unmatchable, but Pike goes toe to toe with her, carrying the entire production without intermission in a way that it is so wild with comedy and agony and levity and sheer physicality, it impossible to imagine how, night after night, she is able to pull it off.Miller’s play meanwhile, despite its culture war subject – sexual violence and toxic masculinity – somehow manages to tell a story with extremely complicated dynamics without villainising anyone. Earlier this week, Pike returned to the stage after curtain call to admonish an audience member she’d seen texting – “Maybe it was very important, and maybe you’re a doctor, and you’re saving someone’s life, and I hope you are, but we do see these, we do feel them” – and I had thought, vaguely, quite right. Now, after experiencing the sheer bravura of the show, all I can think is how admirable Pike was in her restraint; whoever the texter, he should’ve been hauled up on stage and made to explain himself.FridayAfter the sun, the rain. What a time to be alive for a people who like to talk about weather. It must qualify as a significant life stage when one’s response to a week of unbroken rain after a week of unbroken sun is relief not disappointment. While my children grumble about getting back into raincoats and sweaters, I find I’ve become the person who says, “the trees need it.” For all I care it can rain until September.‘Would someone with centrist dad politics dress head to toe in black with spy glasses?’ Photograph: Temilade Adelaja/Reuters‘Do you know, I think it might be a pig!’ Photograph: James Glossop/Reuters