theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Ed Vulliamy
Wednesday, 23 October 2024
Ten years ago, Ian Page launched his and the Mozartists’ (then Classical Opera’s) remarkable endeavour to play music by WA Mozart 250 years after it was written, starting with a...
Nick Hasted
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
“The street I grew up in had no name and is in a country that no longer exists,” director Milisuthando Bongela begins her meditation about growing up in Transkei, a semi-fictional...
Sarah Kent
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
The Bloomsbury group’s habit of non-binary bed-hopping has frequently attracted more attention than the artworks they produced. But in their Vanessa Bell retrospective, the MK...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
You may have heard the phrase “elevated horror” being used to describe horror films that lean more toward arthouse cinema, favouring tension and psychological turmoil over jump-...
Issy Brooks-Ward
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
In his first of a series of meditations on the sickness that was consuming him, John Donne reflected upon the special kind of paranoia that attends the ill individual. Each person...
Nick Hasted
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
The missing element is magic, the swooning sense of the romantic, spiritual and supernal which Michael Powell’s partnership with Emeric Pressburger found in the British and...
Adam Sweeting
Monday, 21 October 2024
Delirium has greeted Disney’s eight-part adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s 1988 novel Rivals (part of her Rutshire Chronicles...
India Lewis
Monday, 21 October 2024
Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland's Girl Bands is one of those films that, perhaps embarrassingly, feels very...
Autumn, Park Theatre review - on stage as in politics, Brexit drama promises much, but loses its way
Gary Naylor
Monday, 21 October 2024
Theatre is a strange dish. A recipe can be stacked with delicious ingredients, cooked to exacting standards, taste-test...
Pamela Jahn
Monday, 21 October 2024
Is it mere coincidence or already a new trend? Animated films about the unlikely friendships between robots and animals are...
Kieron Tyler
Monday, 21 October 2024
Tess Parks’ fourth solo album is suffused with otherness. When lyrics are direct, they are destabilised by the etiolated,...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 20 October 2024
The Undertakers were central to the Merseybeat boom. The best of what they issued on single in 1963 and 1964 captured the...
Boyd Tonkin
Saturday, 19 October 2024
Every lover of folk-tales knows that the seeker has to endure dangers and setbacks before they finally win the prize. Last...
Jonathan Geddes
Saturday, 19 October 2024
The years may go by and the albums might change, but there are always a few constants with Public Service Broadcasting....
Bernard Hughes
Saturday, 19 October 2024
Last Monday my colleague Boyd Tonkin was delighted by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective’s playing at Hatfield House – and...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Saturday, 19 October 2024
No film tackles the knotty topic of inherited mental illness with as much gleeful abandon as Smile. Mental health has been a...
Katie Colombus
Saturday, 19 October 2024
If there’s a rough-hewn tinge to Laura Marling’s eighth album, then there’s a wildly valid reason for it. It was written...
Helen Hawkins
Friday, 18 October 2024
There is star casting, and there is casting the right star – not the same thing. The Donmar’s new production, The Fear of 13...
Helen Hawkins
Friday, 18 October 2024
John Webster’s sour, bloody tale of brotherly greed and vice has been updated by the playwright Zinnie Harris, who also...
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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
Rivals, Disney+ review - adultery, skulduggery and political incorrectness
Back to the Eighties with Jilly Cooper's tales of the rich and infamous
Disclaimer, Apple TV+ review - a misfiring revenge saga from Alfonso Cuarón
Odd casting and weak scripting aren't a temptation to keep watching
Ludwig, BBC One review - entertaining spin on the brainy detective formula
David Mitchell is a perfect fit for this super-sleuth
film
Milisuthando review - exorcising apartheid
Poetic consideration of a complex girlhood in white South Africa's black 'homelands'
theartsdesk Q&A: Anna Bogutskaya on her new book about the past decade of horror cinema
In time for Halloween, the author discusses 'Feeding the Monster' - and why she thinks horror cinema has entered a new phase
new music
Since Yesterday review - championing a neglected female music scene
A chronological journey through the unjustly underrated world of Scotland's women bands
Album: Tess Parks - Pomegranate
With the Brian Jonestown Massacre association concluded, psychedelic auteur reintegrates with the wider world
Music Reissues Weekly: Rain - Tomorrow Never Comes: The NYC Sessions 1967-1968
The final chapter in the story of Merseybeat pioneers The Undertakers
classical
Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Drumsheds review - surround-sound magic in the super-club
On a vast dancefloor, the chance to listen from inside the orchestra
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Wigmore Hall review - warm and colourful Bartók and Brahms
Versatile chamber ensemble excels in clarinet-focused repertoire
Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford review - an unforgettable recital
The great German baritone in glorious voice at the Oxford International Song Festival
opera
Le nozze di Figaro, The Mozartists, Page, Cadogan Hall review - cogency, intelligence and reverence
A celebration of Mozart from the supreme stylists
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opera North review - one of the best and funniest
Perspex and bubblewrap for a Sixties take on Britten's Shakespeare
The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera review - Jamesian ambiguities chillingly preserved
Pity and terror in Ailish Tynan’s anguished Governess and Isabella Bywater’s production
theatre
Autumn, Park Theatre review - on stage as in politics, Brexit drama promises much, but loses its way
Promising production, beautifully acted, slides into side plots and confusion
The Fear of 13, Donmar Warehouse review - powerful analysis of a gross injustice
A magnificent Adrien Brody leads a moving production by Justin Martin
The Duchess [of Malfi], Trafalgar Theatre review - actors imprisoned by confused time travelling
Zinnie Harris's modern take robs the play of its tragic potential
dance
National Ballet of Canada, Sadler's Wells review - see this, and know what dance can do
Yet again, Crystal Pite proves herself a ferocious creative force, alongside fellow Canadian exports James Kudelka and Emma Portner
Nobodaddy, Teaċ Daṁsa, Dublin Theatre Festival review - supernatural song and dance odyssey
Michael Keegan-Dolan’s genius guides us through death, separation and loss
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Ballet review - big, bold and ultimately brash
It may be box-office gold, but Christopher Wheeldon's adaptation fails to find a beating heart down the rabbit hole
comedy
Rose Matafeo, Arcola Theatre review - Starstruck star muses on love
Kiwi comic on dating, phone apps and Taylor Swift
Ellen DeGeneres, Netflix Special review - no mea culpa and few jokes
Former chatshow host’s bizarre take on cancellation
Joe Rogan, Netflix Special review - US podcaster leaves the controversy - and the jokes - at home
Nothing edgy about this hour
Books
theartsdesk Q&A: Anna Bogutskaya on her new book about the past decade of horror cinema
In time for Halloween, the author discusses 'Feeding the Monster' - and why she thinks horror cinema has entered a new phase
Olga Tokarczuk: The Empusium review - paranoid prose
Antonia Lloyd-Jones translates a contagious work from a Nobel Prize winner
Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning review - riding the wave
This slim and stylish new edition can't quite dispel some lurking doubts
visual arts
Vanessa Bell, MK Gallery review - diving into and out of abstraction
A variation of styles as the Bloomsbury artist breaks free from Victorian mores
Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation, Whitechapel Gallery review - breaking boundaries
Two artists, 50 years apart, invite audience participation
Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Tate Modern review - adolescent angst indefinitely extended
The artist who refused to grow up
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