theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Tom Birchenough
Friday, 14 November 2025
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...
Aleks Sierz
Sunday, 20 July 2025
The first rule for brown people, says the main character – played by BAFTA-winner Adeel Akhtar – in this highly entertaining dramedy, is not to let white people know how badly non...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 20 July 2025
Wheels of Fire was Cream’s third album. Issued in the US in June 1968 and in the UK two months later, it was a double LP. One record was of live recordings, the other of studio...
Adam Sweeting
Saturday, 19 July 2025
As a sometime writer of Poirot, Sherlock and Christmas ghost stories, Mark Gatiss is no stranger to enigmatic crimes and bizarre occurrences set in carefully-recreated versions of...
Nick Hasted
Saturday, 19 July 2025
A glamorous black woman sits in a Forties bar under a Vichy cop’s gaze, cigarette tilted at an angle, till two male companions join her in clandestine conversation. The woman is...
Mark Kidel
Saturday, 19 July 2025
There is a freshness about a show by Youssou N’Dour that never seems to lose its glow. He still has one of the great voices of Africa, a versatile and richly-textured tenor that...
Bernard Hughes
Saturday, 19 July 2025
The auditorium and arena were packed – and the stage even more so, bursting at the seams with players and singers: the...
Liz Thomson
Saturday, 19 July 2025
What a great album – and what a great story to lift the heart in these fetid times. A story that crosses oceans and decades...
James Saynor
Friday, 18 July 2025
Lovers of a particular novel, when it’s adapted as a movie, often want book and movie to fit together as a hand in a glove....
Gary Naylor
Friday, 18 July 2025
What am I, a philosophical if not political Marxist whose hero is Antonio Gramsci, doing in Harvey Nichols buying Comme des...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 18 July 2025
The best-selling single so far this year in the UK is Californian singer Alex Warren’s “Ordinary”. It stayed at the top of...
Helen Hawkins
Thursday, 17 July 2025
Before Luigi Illica wrote the libretti for Puccini’s Tosca and Madama Butterfly, he had joined the composer as the...
Robert Beale
Thursday, 17 July 2025
Ambroise Thomas’s version of Hamlet is the flagship production of this year’s Buxton International Festival and was always...
Sebastian Scotney
Thursday, 17 July 2025
The frenetic brand of humour that Tim Robinson brings to Friendship comes from a long lineage. There have been turbo-charged...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 17 July 2025
In the eternal now of the strobe-lit sweatbox, innovation functions in a different way to the rest of culture. Yes of course...
Rachel Halliburton
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
“I still can’t believe that some pseudo-critics continue to accuse me of having murdered tango,” Astor Piazzolla once...
Mark Kidel
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
Brian Clarke died on 1 July 2025, after a long illness. He was one of the most original British artists of our time –...
Tim Cumming
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
“I like guns. At school we had to fight with guns in the army cadets. I’m actually a first-class sniper. I could shoot...
Guy Oddy
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
As the name suggests, the Near Jazz Experience owe a huge musical debt to jazz, but that’s not the full story by any means....
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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
Bookish, U&Alibi review - sleuthing and skulduggery in a bomb-battered London
Mark Gatiss's crime drama mixes period atmosphere with crafty clues
Too Much, Netflix - a romcom that's oversexed, and over here
Lena Dunham's new series presents an England it's often hard to recognise
Insomnia, Channel 5 review - a chronicle of deaths foretold
Sarah Pinborough's psychological thriller is cluttered but compelling
film
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire review - a mysterious silence
A black Caribbean Surrealist rebel obliquely remembered
Harvest review - blood, barley and adaptation
An incandescent novel struggles to light up the screen
Friendship review - toxic buddy alert
Dark comedy stars Tim Robinson as a social misfit with cringe benefits
new music
Music Reissues Weekly: Mike Taylor - Pendulum, Trio
The return of two idiosyncratic, uncompromising Sixties British jazz rarities
Youssou N'Dour and Super Étoile de Dakar, Roundhouse review - the best of Africa
Senegalese musical magic as potent as ever
classical
BBC Proms: First Night, Batiashvili, BBCSO, Oramo review - glorious Vaughan Williams
Spirited festival opener is crowned with little-heard choral epic
Interview: Quinteto Astor Piazzolla on playing in London and why Mick Jagger's a fan
Music Director Julián Vat and pianist Matias Feigin compare notes on Piazzolla
theartsdesk at the Ravenna Festival 2025 - Cervantes, Beethoven and Byron transfigured
Muti revitalised by young musicians, and a three-year theatre project reaches completion
opera
Hamlet, Buxton International Festival review - how to re-imagine re-imagined Shakespeare
Music comes first in very 19th century, very Romantic, very French operatic creation
Falstaff, Glyndebourne review - knockabout and nostalgia in postwar Windsor
A fat knight to remember, and snappy stagecraft, overcome some tedious waits
Salome, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a partnership in a million
Asmik Grigorian is vocal perfection in league with a great conductor and orchestra
theatre
The Estate, National Theatre review – hugely entertaining, but also unconvincing
Comedy debut stars Adeel Akhtar, but is an awkward mix of the personal and the political
Poor Clare, Orange Tree Theatre review - saints cajole us sinners
Funny and clever show illuminated by a dazzling debut from Arsema Thomas
That Bastard, Puccini!, Park Theatre review - inventive comic staging of the battle of the Bohèmes
James Inverne enjoyably reconstructs the rivalry between Puccini and Leoncavallo
dance
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Quadrophenia, Sadler's Wells review - missed opportunity to give new stage life to a Who classic
The brilliant cast need a tighter score and a stronger narrative
The Midnight Bell, Sadler's Wells review - a first reprise for one of Matthew Bourne's most compelling shows to date
The after-hours lives of the sad and lonely are drawn with compassion, originality and skill
comedy
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Kieran Hodgson, Soho Theatre review - a love affair soured by Trump
Can America be great again for the comic?
Books
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Tom Raworth: Cancer review - truthfulness
A 'lost' book reconfirms Raworth’s legacy as one of the great lyric poets
Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - help!
Ian Leslie loses himself in amateur psychology, and fatally misreads The Beatles
visual arts
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Sir Brian Clarke (1953-2025) - a personal tribute
Remembering an artist with a gift for the transcendent
Emily Kam Kngwarray, Tate Modern review - glimpses of another world
Pictures that are an affirmation of belonging
latest comments
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Why is the opening song "infamous"?
The Beach Boys finally retired from touring as it...
Just saw this yesterday. A very gripping and...