theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Rachel Halliburton
Thursday, 15 November 2018
Macbeth has rarely seemed quite as metrosexual as in this gorgeous shadow-painted production that marks Globe artistic director Michelle Terry’s first production in the Sam...
Demetrios Matheou
Thursday, 15 November 2018
Like Ken Loach and the Dardennes brothers, Laurent Cantet is a filmmaker with a keen interest in social issues and themes, often using non-professional actors and a naturalistic...
Nick Hasted
Thursday, 15 November 2018
The first Suspiria was a sensation, and spectacularly, monomaniacally new. Its young heroine Susie Bannon’s ride from an innately hostile airport through eldritch woods in which a...
Marianka Swain
Wednesday, 14 November 2018
The road to full musical theatre production has been a long one for Hadestown. It began back in 2006, with Anaïs Mitchell’s song cycle – a folk/jazz take on the Orpheus and...
Liz Thomson
Wednesday, 14 November 2018
What adjectives best describe a performance of The Ballads of Child Migration? None of those you’d normally expect to see applied to an evening of superlative music-making, for...
Liz Thomson
Wednesday, 14 November 2018
Wow, can it really be 10 years since Mumford & Sons blazed their trail across the musical world with Sigh No More? The release of Delta, the band’s fourth album, marks the...
Matt Wolf
Tuesday, 13 November 2018
The West End is specialising in two-parters of late. To Imperium and The Inheritance we can add the latest duo of Harold...
Boyd Tonkin
Tuesday, 13 November 2018
Even in a large hall, very good things can come in small packages. In advance, partisans of the Wigmore Hall or some other...
Tim Cornwell
Tuesday, 13 November 2018
War Horse at the National Theatre on Sunday’s Armistice Day centenary: there were medalled veterans and at least one priest...
Liz Thomson
Tuesday, 13 November 2018
What to make of The Simon & Garfunkel Story, which began a week-long residency at London’s Vaudeville Theatre last night...
Thomas H Green
Tuesday, 13 November 2018
Enough hyping! This month, without further ado, let’s head straight to the reviews…VINYL OF THE MONTHLOR Lunar Orbit...
Thomas H Green
Tuesday, 13 November 2018
London’s Palace Theatre this week celebrated the thousandth performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened...
Saskia Baron
Monday, 12 November 2018
Peter Jackson has form when it comes to re-examining cinema history. In 1995 he made Forgotten Silver, a documentary about...
Heather Neill
Monday, 12 November 2018
Robert Hastie is a little late for our meeting. Directing Shakespeare's darkest tragedy in London while also running...
Sebastian Scotney
Monday, 12 November 2018
Missa in Angustiis. Mass in troubled times. There was a logic in programming Haydn’s D minor Mass on the Armistice Centenary...
Katherine Waters
Monday, 12 November 2018
When, in 1853, Edward Burne-Jones (or Edward Jones as he then was) went up to Exeter College, Oxford, it could hardly have...
Nick Hasted
Monday, 12 November 2018
Steve McQueen’s progress from video artist to Oscar-winning director has been deceptively smooth. The chasm between Bobby...
disc of the day
CD: Mumford & Sons - Delta
A decade on from their debut, the British darlings of Americana explore new musical territory
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tv
They Shall Not Grow Old, BBC Two review - Peter Jackson's Great War finale
Dazzling reworking of faded footage from the Western front
WW1: The Last Tommies, BBC Four review - Great War stories
Centrepiece of the BBC's World War One season makes for remarkable oral history
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Netflix review - girl power goes supernatural
Bold and politicised update of teenage witch saga
film
Laurent Cantet: 'Young people have different preoccupations nowadays' – interview
The award-winning director discusses his new film, The Workshop, in which some newbie writers get in a tizz over the fine line between fact and fiction
new music
The Ballads of Child Migration, St James's Church, Clerkenwell review - into the heart of darkness
A chronicle of Britain's long and shameful history of child migration in a moving song cycle
CD: Mumford & Sons - Delta
A decade on from their debut, the British darlings of Americana explore new musical territory
theartsdesk on Vinyl 44: Thom Yorke, Primal Scream, Elvis, Noisferatu, R.E.M., Bauhaus, Mo'Wax and more
The wildest, most wide-ranging monthly record reviews under the sun
classical
Thibaudet/Batiashvili/Capuçon Trio, Barbican review – a supergroup to savour
Three solo stars come together in ego-free harmony
LSO, Roth, Barbican - not enough pathos, but a remarkable step-in
Bass William Thomas, still a student, stepped in and shone in Bartók’s Cantata Profana
Classical CDs Weekly: A Walk with Ivor Gurney, Yiddish Glory, For the Fallen
Three discs for Remembrance weekend
opera
The Silver Tassie, BBCSO, Barbican review - a bracing memorial for the WW1 anniversary
An exceptional concert performance brings Turnage's opera back to blistering life
The Rake's Progress, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - supreme fluency from Eden to Bedlam
Toby Spence captures every facet of Tom Rakewell in perfectly detailed Stravinsky
Serse, Fagioli, Il Pomo d'Oro, Barbican review - a night in counter-tenor heaven
Daredevil artistry brings Handel's tragi-comedy to life
theatre
Macbeth, Shakespeare's Globe review - sexually-charged production draws power from the shadows
A daring counterintuitive reading proves richly rewarding
Hadestown, National Theatre review - new folk musical is hotter than hell
An alternative take on a classic myth produces sizzling results
Pinters Three and Four, Harold Pinter Theatre review - double-bill boasts double-acts to treasure
The Pinter season continues, this time in largely comic form
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
Ayesha Hazarika, Soho Theatre review - feminism examined
Fascinating and often funny take on the subject
Ivo Graham, Soho Theatre review - the perils of growing up
Going deep into personal material unearths lots of laughs
gaming
Red Dead Redemption 2 review - the cowboy drama makes a triumphant return
An ambitious Wild West odyssey that matches epic scale with benchmark skill
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 review – less is more
Solo rations have been relegated from this benchmark war series
visual arts
Edward Burne-Jones, Tate Britain review - time for a rethink?
Wide-ranging exhibition of idiosyncratic English artist, both loved and loathed
Klimt/Schiele, Royal Academy review - the line of gauntness
Elegance and brutality converge in drawings from the Albertina Museum, Vienna
The new V&A Photography Centre review - a new museum to make us proud
'Collecting Photography: From Daguerreotype to Digital' launches the V&A's latest project
latest comments
Yet another review where the use of a large...
What a brilliant, thoughtful article. I...
“I suppose your preference regarding these...
Too bad the 'deeply rooted verisimilitude' doesn'...
I attended all three of these experiences - and...
'decimation'? Surely this is a most unfortunate...
Where can I buy this on cd?
Wholeheartedly agree with your review. It was a...