theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Marianka Swain
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
The most thrilling revivals interrogate a classic work, while revealing its fundamental soul anew. Marianne Elliott’s female-led, 21st-century take on George Furth and...
Aleks Sierz
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
In 2017, playwright Nina Raine's Consent, an excellent National Theatre play about lawyers and rape victims, was hugely successful, winning a West End transfer, as well as...
Ralph Moore
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
A three-hour show? There’s no doubt that The Smashing Pumpkins give good bang for the buck but it’s rare to see a band of this size and stature play for more than two hours in...
Saskia Baron
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
What do you do after playing Doctor Who, the dream dad of the nation, quirky and compassionate, the adult who every child knows will be fun? Does it seem like a good idea to...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
The “portmanteau” form of film-making is almost guaranteed to deliver patchy results, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen brothers’ six-pack of tall tales from the Old West...
Steve O'Rourke
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
For the first time in the 15-year history of Call of Duty games, the developer Treyarch has decided to completely do away with the single player story campaign for its latest...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
Thanks heavens not all police officers spend their time trying to find “hate crime” on Twitter, or not going to the...
Guy Oddy
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
There is no doubt that the hippies of the late Sixties and early Seventies gifted the world a horde of beautiful music...
Matt Wolf
Tuesday, 16 October 2018
Shakespeare exists to be refracted and filtered through the age in which he is presented. So there's every good reason for...
Marina Vaizey
Tuesday, 16 October 2018
You had to keep your eyes skinned. Was that Iris Murdoch or AS Byatt, Kingsley Amis or John Banville, Margaret Atwood or Val...
Tom Birchenough
Tuesday, 16 October 2018
“There’s a lot of weirdness I didn’t want explained,” Paul Schrader reveals at one point in a new director’s commentary to...
David Nice
Monday, 15 October 2018
Its roots are in an emotional truth: Matthew Lopez saw the film, then read the book, of Howards End when he was 15 and 11...
Robert Beale
Monday, 15 October 2018
Edward Gardner was back amongst friends when he opened the Hallé’s Thursday series concerts. This was the place where he...
Veronica Lee
Monday, 15 October 2018
The Edinburgh Fringe does throw up some oddities – in comedy shows, of course, but also in its dishing out of awards. And so...
Tim Cumming
Monday, 15 October 2018
Karine Polwart has a stellar track record as a pop and folk songwriter and interpreter of traditional songs, from Malinky...
Markie Robson-Scott
Sunday, 14 October 2018
“When men fear the loss of what they know, they will follow any tyrant who promises to restore the old order.” Mary Treat,...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 14 October 2018
One marker arrived on 1 August 1981, when MTV began broadcasting. With its format based around screening pop videos,...
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tv
There She Goes, BBC Four review - mining disability for family comedy?
Writer Shaun Pye's family experience makes for less than parental paradise
Informer, BBC One review - keeping tabs on terror
Going underground with the Confidential Informant Programme
Barneys, Books and Bust Ups, BBC Four review - the Booker Prize at 50
The award's half-century has brought scandals aplenty, welcome publicity pay-offs, too
film
DVD/Blu-ray: The Comfort of Strangers
Paul Schrader channels Pinter and McEwan in mesmeric tale of Venetian macabre
1945 review - Hungarian holocaust drama
Overly artful Hungarian drama tackles the aftermath of World War Two
new music
Smashing Pumpkins, Wembley Arena review - Corgan and company deliver the goods
Nineties alt-rockers reconstitute to shine a light on all the hits and more
CD: Karine Polwart – Laws of Motion
Powerful new songs on movement and migration from the award-winning singer
classical
Hallé, Gardner, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review – drama and humanity
Happy return and powerful results in Strauss and Janáček
The Music of Harry Potter, CBSO, Seal, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - orchestral wizardry
Quidditch match of two halves has enough magic to charm the Muggles
Classical CDs Weekly: Handel, William Howard, Professor Chill
Baroque harpsichords and modern love songs, plus some prehistoric bagpipes
opera
Porgy and Bess, English National Opera review - strength in depth on Catfish Row
A heroic cast steers Gershwin's masterpiece home in style
Solomon, Royal Opera review - an awkward compromise of a performance
Handel's oratorio given a handsome but frustrating account
Opolais, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Nelsons, RFH review - splendid and awful stretches
New work excepted, this second Southbank concert from Germans and Latvians shone
theatre
Stories, National Theatre review - comic conception capers
Nina Raine's follow-up to her very big hit Consent is often funny but rarely deep
Company, Gielgud Theatre review - here's to a sensational musical rebirth
Marianne Elliott's gender-swapped Sondheim is a revelation
dance
'It’s more fun to dance in a tutu': Tory Dobrin of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
The artistic director of the Trocks explains how he keeps his ballet parodists on their toes
theartsdesk in Riga - 43,290 Latvians sing and dance for their country
Individual souls conjoined with a passionate belief in peace and music achieve miracles
comedy
Ivo Graham, Soho Theatre review - the perils of growing up
Going deep into personal material unearths lots of laughs
Nish Kumar, Soho Theatre review - the state we're in
He's angry – but he has a lot to be angry about
gaming
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 review – less is more
Solo rations have been relegated from this benchmark war series
Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, V&A review - gaming for all
A comprehensive look at gaming present and future has surprisingly broad appeal
visual arts
Modern Couples, Barbican review - an absurdly ambitious survey of artist lovers
Exhibition revises the notion of the artist as lone genius, but reveals little else
The Best Exhibitions in London
From the Turner Prize shortlist to the future of gaming: our guide to what to see in the city
Mantegna and Bellini, National Gallery review - curated for curators
An intriguing tale undone by loose ends