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Theartsdesk
Wednesday, 01 October 2025
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic...
Adam Sweeting
Monday, 24 February 2025
Steven Knight is beginning to resemble the British version of Taylor Sheridan. While Sheridan has been saturating our screens with Yellowstone, 1923, Landman etc, Knight has been...
David Nice
Monday, 24 February 2025
Let’s finally face the elephant in the room: the most popular Viennese operetta, packed with hit numbers, no longer works on the stage as a whole. The central party, yes, never...
Robert Beale
Monday, 24 February 2025
The second of the Philharmonic’s Boulez-Ravel celebrations (birth centenary of the former, 150th of the latter) brought Bertrand Chamayou back: after his performance of the G...
Boyd Tonkin
Monday, 24 February 2025
A year ago, after a deeply disappointing Manon Lescaut at Hackney Empire, I wrote here that English Touring Opera had often excelled in the past, and would do so again. The...
Veronica Lee
Monday, 24 February 2025
Harry Hill reminds us at one point during his latest touring show that he’s 60, but there’s no let-up in the energy he brings to New Bits and Greatest Hits, a pleasing mixture of...
Guy Oddy
Monday, 24 February 2025
Sol Abrahams, singer and guitarist for Essex rock’n’rollers Bilk, was suffering from a bit of guitar trouble in Birmingham...
Sebastian Scotney
Monday, 24 February 2025
Spare a thought – please – for Leipzig-born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003). In 1956, she became the very first woman to...
Jonathan Geddes
Sunday, 23 February 2025
Hinds don't believe in God. They declared this as they surveyed the converted church that is St Luke's, and given the past...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 23 February 2025
In 1964, the Norwegian division of Philips Records began issuing singles labelled “Bergen Beat.” The picture sleeves of 45s...
Nick Hasted
Saturday, 22 February 2025
Longlegs’ trapdoor ending snapped tight on its clammy Lynchian mood, reconfiguring its Silence of the Lambs serial-killer...
Matt Wolf
Saturday, 22 February 2025
Screen stardom is generally anointed at the box office so it's a very real delight to find the fast-rising Jonathan Bailey...
Helen Hawkins
Saturday, 22 February 2025
The theatre director Anna Mackmin has written and directed an extraordinary play about a mother and daughter relationship:...
Sarah Kent
Saturday, 22 February 2025
Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the palm...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 22 February 2025
Snow Dance for the Dead: Choral Music by Seán Doherty New Dublin Voices/Bernie Sherlock (Voces8 Recordings)I have come...
Katie Colombus
Saturday, 22 February 2025
With her 13th studio album, Heather Nova delivers what you might expect from one of the 90s' most distinctive alternative...
Boyd Tonkin
Friday, 21 February 2025
If not quite his last will and testament, the work now known as Bach’s Mass in B Minor represents a definitive show-reel or...
David Nice
Friday, 21 February 2025
“Cry sorrow, sorrow, but let the good prevail”. The refrain of Aeschylus’s chorus near the start of the Oresteia is alive...
Rachel Halliburton
Friday, 21 February 2025
“Who’d be a woman?... Who in their right mind would choose all that?” The question comes towards the end of a conversation...
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Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
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tv
A Thousand Blows, Disney+ review - Peaky Blinders comes to Ripper Street?
The prolific Steven Knight takes us back to a squalid Victorian London
Zero Day, Netflix review - can ex-President Robert De Niro save the Land of the Free?
Panic and paranoia run amok as cyber-hackers wreak havoc
The White Lotus, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - hit formula with few surprises but a new bewitching soundtrack
Thailand hosts the latest bout of Mike White's satirical takedown of the rich and privileged
film
The Monkey review - a grisly wind-up
Oz Perkins’ Longlegs follow-up plays Stephen King's killer toy for bloody laughs
I'm Still Here review - powerful tale of repression and resistance
Brazilian director Walter Salles reflects on his country’s dark history under dictatorship
new music
Bilk, O2 Academy 2, Birmingham review - Essex rock'n'rollers blast into the weekend
Sol Abrahams’ crew whip up a storm
Hinds, St Lukes and the Winged Ox, Glasgow review - Spanish garage rockers surviving and thriving
After a difficult few years, the group sounded resurgent, delivering a frantic show.
classical
Chamayou, BBC Philharmonic, Morlot, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - blasts of Boulez, magical Ravel
Celebration of the two French masters continues in big bangs and gentleness
Classical CDs: Snow, shards and swinging oars
Contemporary choral works, revamped lieder plus piano music from Ireland and Scotland
Bach's Mass in B minor, The English Concert, Bezuidenhout, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - solemnity and splendour
The greatest of choral anthologies smoulders, then flies
opera
Fledermaus, Irish National Opera review - sex, please, we're Viennese/American/Russian/Irish
Vivacious company makes the party buzz, does what it can around it
The Capulets and the Montagues, English Touring Opera review - the wise guys are singing like canaries
There's a bel canto feast when Bellini joins the Mob
theatre
Richard II, Bridge Theatre review - handsomely mounted, emotionally muted
Jonathan Bailey makes a petulant stage return in Shakespeare's most luxuriant play
Backstroke, Donmar Warehouse review - a complex journey through a mother-daughter relationship
Tamsin Greig and Celia Imrie shine in a multifaceted portrait of motherhood
Otherland, Almeida Theatre review - a vivid, beautifully written take on the trans experience
Bush's writing is as fresh as a sea breeze and as lyrical as birdsong
dance
Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - Crystal Pite’s cosmic triptych powers back
Total music theatre takes us from the hell of exile to separation at heaven’s gates
Vollmond, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris Charmatz, Sadler's Wells review - clunkily-named company shows its lighter side
A new generation of dancers brings zest, humour and playfulness to late Bausch
comedy
Harry Hill, Wilton's Music Hall review - madcap comic on terrific form
Utterly daft mix of new material and favourite old characters
Nina Conti: Whose Face Is It Anyway?, Brighton Dome review - a melee of jubilant spontaneity
The ventriloquist-comedian's improvised hour-long outing is skilful and fabulously entertaining
Books
Shon Faye: Love in Exile review - the greatest feeling
Love comes under the microscope in this heartfelt analysis of the personal and political
Philip Marsden: Under a Metal Sky review - rock and awe
Myths, mines, and mankind combine in this wide-eyed reading of the earth beneath our feet
visual arts
Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Whitechapel Gallery review - absence made powerfully present
Illness as a drive to creativity
latest comments
Hello Mark, Thoroughly decent review but you...
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I could not agree more with this review. Festen...