theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Sebastian Scotney
Monday, 10 August 2020
It has taken a good half-decade for the Dutch series Overspel (The Adulterer) to make it on to TV screens in the UK. Its 32 episodes were made in 2011-2015, but the third and...
Aleks Sierz
Monday, 10 August 2020
Wowee! Twenty weeks after the last time I set foot in a theatre, I was able to visit a venue once more. Hello again Donmar! It’s great to see you again. Not for a show featuring...
Boyd Tonkin
Monday, 10 August 2020
As Dvořák’s "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka rose to its impassioned climax, Natalya Romaniw had to battle a helicopter thumping overhead. The helicopter lost (well, of...
Liz Thomson
Monday, 10 August 2020
It’s exciting to come to an album with no preconceptions and no context and find you fall immediately in love with it. Tanya Donelly is probably less well-known in Britain than...
Daniel Lewis
Sunday, 09 August 2020
Poet Sharon Dolin’s memoir Hitchcock Blonde ends (no spoilers) in the same way as the famous English director’s Vertigo begins: with a cliffhanger. Of sorts. In the film, a...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 09 August 2020
Whether explicitly or indirectly, what’s written on a master tape box can tantalise. Revealing part of a picture creates a desire to want to know more. Take the example seen above...
Graham Rickson
Sunday, 09 August 2020
Every great artist can have an off day, and the the best moments in Eureka’s latest collection of Buster Keaton features are...
David Nice
Saturday, 08 August 2020
Nostalgia of all kinds played a part in this summer evening’s divertissement. Some audience members were probably...
Matt Wolf
Saturday, 08 August 2020
We first see Leigh (Frankie Box), the cheeky heroine of Scottish writer-director Eva Riley’s debut feature Perfect 10,...
India Lewis
Saturday, 08 August 2020
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a collective examination of its past, with Nobel Prize-winner...
Joe Muggs
Saturday, 08 August 2020
This documentary is bittersweet viewing on quite a number of levels. First, it’s got all the glory and tragedy of the most...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 08 August 2020
William Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony, Ulysses Kay: Fantasy Variations, Umbrian Scene ORF Vienna Radio Symphony...
Barney Harsent
Saturday, 08 August 2020
After 2016’s A Shot in the Light, DJ, producer and Disco Halal labelrunner Chen Moscovici has leaned full-tilt into synth-...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 07 August 2020
New Heavy Sounds is one of Britain’s most exciting and undersung labels. Founded in 2011, they have consistently released...
Veronica Lee
Friday, 07 August 2020
We live in strange times, so it's appropriate that a socially distanced pop-up arts festival – of theatre, comedy, improv,...
David Nice
Friday, 07 August 2020
Out of a silent and empty City of London, unusually still even for a Sunday afternoon, it felt surreal to come upon a centre...
Nick Hasted
Friday, 07 August 2020
Mike Skinner got out just in time, pulling the plug on The Streets at the point of exhaustion. After Original Pirate...
Matt Wolf
Friday, 07 August 2020
Filmed, as one would, well, imagine, prior to lockdown, Imagine .... My Name is Kwame hearkens to what now seems a...
Guy Oddy
Friday, 07 August 2020
That Deep Purple are still putting out albums over 50 years since they first got together and still have three members of...
tv
The Adulterer, Channel 4 review – atmospheric, addictive and bingeworthy
This top-quality Dutch series from 2011-15 deserved to be seen sooner
Everything: The Real Thing Story, BBC Four review - brilliant but long overdue
The breakthrough Liverpudlian band's story told lovingly and not before time
Imagine... My Name is Kwame, BBC One review - interesting but incomplete
Profile of Young Vic artistic director could go still further
film
Perfect 10 review - a small movie with a big heart
Eva Riley's debut feature is by turns sentimental and spiky
An American Pickle review - sweet and sour screwball comedy
Seth Rogen doubles up for a time-hopping tale that sets the past against the present
new music
Reissue CDs Weekly: Dudu Phukwana and the "Spears"
Dudu Pukwana’s Joe Boyd-produced debut album reappears, with added Fairport Convention input
Everything: The Real Thing Story, BBC Four review - brilliant but long overdue
The breakthrough Liverpudlian band's story told lovingly and not before time
classical
Classical CDs Weekly: William Dawson, Ulysses Kay, Janáček, Norwegian Trombone Ensemble
20th century American orchestral music, Czech pianism and four trombones
A masked elegy: portraits of string players at the Fidelio Orchestra Café
Young talent captured by Nick Rutter during sessions for Strauss's 'Metamorphosen'
'Rehearsing Beethoven with Barenboim felt like an historical moment': Vienna Philharmonic trombonist Kelton Koch on a new normal
As the Salzburg Festival flourishes, a Texan in Austria welcomes a musical rebirth
opera
The Encore, Opera Holland Park review – stylish return for a squad of old friends
A moving and delightful al fresco feast of opera favourites
Heart's Delight, Opera Holland Park review - a classy hour of operetta pops
Five fine singers and a small orchestra deliver hits at a high level
Moses und Aron, Komische Oper Berlin, OperaVision review – complex and powerful memorial
Schoenberg’s opera of unanswerable questions proves a fitting Holocaust epitaph
theatre
Blindness, Donmar Warehouse review – a beautifully haunting parable
Simon Stephens and Juliet Stevenson create the perfect installation for our times
Imagine... My Name is Kwame, BBC One review - interesting but incomplete
Profile of Young Vic artistic director could go still further
Theatre Unlocked 3: Signs of activity after a long siesta
Theatre comes to life, albeit gently, and some familiar names crop up online
dance
'She was Paris': RIP Zizi Jeanmaire (1924-2020)
Ballet or cabaret, Zizi's passion was for performance - preferably with her husband
Dancing at Dusk: A Moment with Pina Bausch’s 'The Rite of Spring' review - an explosive African rite
Continents collide in a film documenting an inspired re-staging of a 20th-century masterpiece
'If they had been any closer my face would have misted up': filming 'Men at the Barre'
The director Richard Macer had exclusive access to the male stars of the Royal Ballet. He describes what he discovered
comedy
The New Normal, Royal Victoria Patriotic Building review - strong mixed bill
Pop-up arts festival in a lovely Gothic venue
John Cleese, livestream from Cadogan Hall review - abandon all hope, says the former Python
More of an erudite lecture than a show
gaming
Rage 2 review – garish but great post-apocalyptic shooter
Challenge The Authority in this 'Mad Max on mushrooms' renegade romp
World War Z review - bloodthirsty fun with the zombie apocalypse
Chainsawing the brain-eaters as you battle against the tide of the undead
The Lego Movie 2 Videogame review - everything is not awesome
Few fresh ideas means this movie adaptation treads the same old ground
visual arts
George IV: Art & Spectacle, The Queen's Gallery review - all is aglitter
A sumptuous display from the Royal Collection heralds a top class reopening
Khadija Saye: In This Space We Breathe, 236 Westbourne Grove review - a celebrated series finds new resonance
The artist's most celebrated works launch a new public art project in west London
The Golden Age of Modern Spanish Art, Colnaghi review - the sun shines in the City of Light
A celebration of little known Spanish painters as the London art world emerges again
latest comments
Corrected, with thanks.
It was indeed an enjoyable evening and lovely to...
Hitler is recorded using his normal voice in...
Corrected, with thanks, since the author doesn't...
Complete tripe. The only thing I wonder about is...
Leanne alerted McGuire, whom she didn't know; the...
Correction:The composer was Giovanni Fusco,...
Thanks for letting me know - duly corrected.