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We are bowled over! We knew that theartsdesk.com had plenty of supporters out there – we’ve always had a loyal readership of arts lovers and professionals alike – but the…
Helen Hawkins |
The baldness of the titles the writer-director Stefan Golaszewski gives his TV series — Him & Her, Mum, Marriage and now Babies — is a misleading guide to the subtlety of…
Pamela Jahn |
Sergei Loznitsa's historical drama Two Prosecutors, which he adapted from the novella written by the onetime Gulag prisoner Georgy Demidov (1908-87), confronts the horrors…
Adam Sweeting |
The title doesn’t refer to a void into which detectives disappear, but to Harry Hole, the fictional Norwegian sleuth created by novelist Jo Nesbø. Netflix’s nine-part…
Thomas H. Green |
VINYL OF THE MONTHBorokov Borokov World War Too (Rotkat)
Image
Belgian duo Borokov Borokov are described by one source as “…
Robert Beale |
I’ve always liked to think that, when it comes to artistic performance, comparisons are odious (or oderous, as Dogberry had it). There is one glory of the sun and another of the…
Tim Cumming
Poetry and song are related, but they’re not kissin’ cousins, more first cousins at one remove. Composers of art song in the 19th and 20th centuries turned to poets for their song…
johncarvill
It’s hard to describe this hot mess of a film without divulging the entire plot. And even if you did, you’d struggle to convey the scabrous psychosexual atmosphere, or summarise…
Nick Hasted
Immaturity is a virtue in Kirill Sokolov’s action-horror-comedy, a slapstick class satire set in an exclusive New York apartment block where being on the list gains a hellish new…
Helen Hawkins
After Barber Shop Chronicles comes a female slice of pan-African life, set in Harlem in July 2019, at the fag end of Donald J Trump’s first presidency. Playwright Jocelyn Bioh…
Thomas H. Green
Stagefront are two silhouetted figures, heads at a strange angle. Like hanged men. Beside each is a robed demon sentinel with a burning torch. Overseeing all is a gigantic,…
Helen Hawkins
In its heyday, Rodney Ackland’s 1935 play The Old Ladies, adapted from a 1924 novel by Hugh Walpole, was a favourite with doyennes of the theatre world including Edith Evans,…
Mark Kidel
The Kurdish singer Aynur opened her current European tour in Bristol, presenting music that's rooted in ancient tradition but explores contempoary sonorities and styles while…
Tom Carr
José González is one of those musicians who is well known without many recognising it. Until that is, someone plays his most known track “Heartbeats”, which was unavoidable after…
Kieron Tyler
Blackpool Cool is the third and last album by Glasgow’s Head. Issued in 1977 on the band’s own Head Records label, it was preceded by 1973’s GTF and 1975’s Red Dwarf.…
Nick Hasted
The vertigo of lawlessness in Stalin’s Russia carries contemporary resonance in Sergei Loznitsa’s latest Soviet parable. As a Russian dictator invades a neighbour and erases his…
Boyd Tonkin
“Fear death by water,” says the fortune-teller in TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. There were a few moments in Natalie Abrahami’s new production of The Turn of the Screw when I worried…
David Nice
Was it a risk to attend a third Irish Baroque Orchestra Matthew Passion in as many years, given that previous indelible interpretations had come from Helen Charlston, Hugh Cutting…
Body & Soul, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - a surefire hit and an absolute plonker
Jenny Gilbert
If it were true, as Timothée Chalamet has said, that ballet as an art form has become a museum, the job of running a national ballet company would be easy. Ballet never ceases to…
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disc of the day
Third album from Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and friends is propelled by cosmic as well as worldly themes
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tv
The sadness of multiple miscarriages gets a tender treatment and great performances
Tobias Santelmann is perfectly cast as Jo Nesbø's hard-bitten detective
Mark Burt's script takes a measured approach to its potentially incendiary material
film
The Ukrainian writer-director discusses 'Soviet justice' and the trouble with history repeating itself
Russia's Tarantino's Hollywood debut is derivative but delirious
new music
The last great bastion of regular international vinyl record reviewing
Third album from Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and friends is propelled by cosmic as well as worldly themes
With a line-up that includes Exodus and Carcass, a top-notch night of the heaviest metal
classical
Different works call for different gifts in skills and sense of musical coherence
This year’s chorus of soloists has yet more revelations, but the overall vision’s the thing
Norwegian piano miniatures, a capella choral music and an iconic wartime chamber work
opera
Waterworks fail to douse the power of Britten's sinister masterpiece
Orpha Phelan's multi-layered production looks at tyranny over the centuries
Janáček's protagonist is a pure soul, a socialist and a survivor
theatre
Jocelyn Bioh's Tony-nominated play about the lot of modern-day Black women is a treat
Rodney Ackland's 1935 play about loneliness deserves a higher-tech treatment
Electric live music enlivens revival of David Hare’s elegiac gig theatre show
dance
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Body & Soul, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - a surefire hit and an absolute plonker
Getting it very right and very wrong in this contemporary double bill
After 25 years and counting, Cassa Pancho's fine company remains essential
comedy
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
books
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Story of the rise and fall of Sir Roger Casement works on the small and large scale
Saskia Vogel brings a darker than dark tale of rural grief to English for the first time
visual arts
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
A frieze of iPad pictures that sends you hurrying for the door
Photographs of California’s queer community in the 1990s
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