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...
Rachel Halliburton
Tuesday, 19 August 2025
For Delius – then a young man, visiting Norway in the late 1880s to walk in its mountains – his first encounter with Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra was nothing less than an...
Graham Rickson
Tuesday, 19 August 2025
"Crazy comedy" was a recognised subgenre in post-war Czech cinema. Turn to this disc’s bonus features first and watch Michael Brooke’s video essay Those Crazy Czechs, an...
Alexandra Coghlan
Monday, 18 August 2025
There’s a Proms paradox that’s familiar to Early Music fans. Some works are too challenging – too big, too expensive, too uncommercial, too obscure – to do anywhere else. The...
Adam Sweeting
Monday, 18 August 2025
What would TV screenwriters do without drugs? In Flight, created by Mike Walden and Adam Randall, is yet another drama depicting the perils and pitfalls of getting sucked into the...
Guy Oddy
Monday, 18 August 2025
Gibby Haynes is the wild-eyed crazy man who used to front the Butthole Surfers back in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, there was none weirder or more out there than the Texan...
Veronica Lee
Monday, 18 August 2025
Cat Cohen, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★★In Broad Strokes Cat Cohen paints a fascinating picture of events leading...
Guy Oddy
Monday, 18 August 2025
UK dub maestro and producer, Adrian Sherwood is hardly what anyone might call a slacker, but it’s 13 years since the release...
Nick Hasted
Sunday, 17 August 2025
Love was the Norwegian climax of Dag Johan Haugerud’s Oslo trilogy, the most lovestruck vision of his city and boldest...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 17 August 2025
George & James was originally released in March 1984. Stars & Hank Forever! emerged in October 1986. The two LPs...
Simon Thompson
Saturday, 16 August 2025
Right from the bracing brass fanfare that began this Sea Symphony, you know exactly where you were: right in the midst of...
David Kettle
Saturday, 16 August 2025
Ordinary Decent Criminal, Summerhall ★★★★★ Frankie learnt a thing or two about the police and how they work from his...
Veronica Lee
Saturday, 16 August 2025
Emmanuel Sonubi, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★This show – Life After Near Death – is not about dying, it is about...
Thomas H Green
Saturday, 16 August 2025
The history of popular music is littered with bands who fulfilled everything needed to make it. Then fate kicked them in the...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 15 August 2025
Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie from 1979 was an all-time sci-fi/horror classic, and even an endless stream of sequels...
Markie Robson-Scott
Friday, 15 August 2025
“When have you ever gone off alone?” scoffs Magnus (Thomas W Gabrielsson) when his wife, Maria (Mirja Turestedt), expresses...
David Kettle
Friday, 15 August 2025
Kinder, Underbelly, Cowgate ★★★ Drag artist Goody Prostate (yes, I know) receives a call from a local library. Garbed...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 15 August 2025
Who’d have guessed that a dude who first came to attention a decade ago guesting on a cheesy Chase & Status drum &...
Gary Naylor
Thursday, 14 August 2025
I have two guilty secrets about the theatre – okay, two I’m prepared to own up to right here, right now. I quite enjoy some...
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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
In Flight, Channel 4 review - drugs, thugs and Bulgarian gangsters
Katherine Kelly's flight attendant is battling a sea of troubles
Alien: Earth, Disney+ review - was this interstellar journey really necessary?
Noah Hawley's lavish sci-fi series brings Ridley Scott's monster back home
The Count of Monte Cristo, U&Drama review - silly telly for the silly season
Umpteenth incarnation of the Alexandre Dumas novel is no better than it should be
film
Oslo Stories Trilogy: Love review - freed love
Gay cruising offers straight female lessons in a heady ode to urban connection
Unmoored review - atmospheric Swedish noir set on Exmoor
Something nasty in the bunker: Caroline Ingvarsson's debut feature leaves us guessing
new music
Gibby Haynes, O2 Academy 2, Birmingham review - ex-Butthole Surfer goes School of Rock
Butthole Surfers’ frontman is still flying his freak flag but in a slightly more restrained manner
Music Reissues Weekly: The Residents - American Composer's Series
James Brown, George Gershwin, John Philip Sousa and Hank Williams as seen through an eyeball-headed lens
classical
BBC Proms: A Mass of Life, BBCSO, Elder review - a subtle guide to Delius's Nietzschean masterpiece
Mark Elder held back from blasting the audience with a wall of sound
BBC Proms: Le Concert Spirituel, Niquet review - super-sized polyphonic rarities
Monumental works don't quite make for monumental sounds in the Royal Albert Hall
Frang, Romaniw, Liverman, LSO, Pappano, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - sunlight, salt spray, Sea Symphony
Full force of the midday sea in the Usher Hall, thanks to the best captain at the helm
opera
Orpheus and Eurydice, Opera Queensland/SCO, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - dazzling, but distracting
Eye-popping acrobatics don’t always assist in Gluck’s quest for operatic truth
MARS, Irish National Opera review - silly space oddity with fun stretches
Cast, orchestra and production give Jennifer Walshe’s bold collage their all
Káťa Kabanová, Glyndebourne review - emotional concentration in a salle modulable
Janáček superbly done through or in spite of the symbolism
theatre
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Ordinary Decent Criminal / Insiders
Two dramas on prison life offer contrasting perspectives but a similar sense of compassion
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Kinder / Shunga Alert / Clean Your Plate!
From drag to Japanese erotica via a French cookery show, three of the Fringe's more unusual offerings
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, RSC, Stratford review - not quite the intended gateway drug to Shakespeare
Shakespeare trying out lots of ideas that were to bear fruit in the future
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
Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby, Rambert, Sadler's Wells review - exciting dancing, if you can see it
Six TV series reduced to 100 minutes' dance time doesn't quite compute
Giselle, National Ballet of Japan review - return of a classic, refreshed and impeccably danced
First visit by Miyako Yoshida's company leaves you wanting more
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
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Cat Cohen / Lachlan Werner / KC Shornima
Defying a health scare; a surreal invention & a distinctive new voice
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Emmanuel Sonubi / Joz Norris
A second chance at life & a fantastical tale about artistic endeavour
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
Natalia Ginzburg: The City and the House review - a dying art
Dick Davis renders this analogue love-letter in polyphonic English
Tom Raworth: Cancer review - truthfulness
A 'lost' book reconfirms Raworth’s legacy as one of the great lyric poets
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
Folkestone Triennial 2025 - landscape, seascape, art lovers' escape
Locally rooted festival brings home many but not all global concerns
Sir Brian Clarke (1953-2025) - a personal tribute
Remembering an artist with a gift for the transcendent
latest comments
I agree. I was seated just about where the first...
The review is a fair one, I was there and liked...
I was half-hoping there'd be a couple of harps in...
Thank you, indeed - corrected now
Thank you, indeed - corrected now
Tom is a conductor, not a composer, as I...
The actor playing Dan is Jyuddah Jaymes not...
I've seen this production, the singing was...