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...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 24 September 2025
Fifth time around, Slow Horses continues to show the rest of the field a clean pair of heels. Or hooves. The adventures of Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and his peculiar little band...
Kieron Tyler
Wednesday, 24 September 2025
“Helix” is the ninth track on portals//polarities. With this dramatic, acid house-leaning slab of shoegazing-infused electropop, Night Tapes make the case that they’re the real...
Adam Sweeting
Tuesday, 23 September 2025
Scripted by Belfast-born playwright David Ireland, Coldwater is a smart and addictive thriller, which manages to squeeze some fresh twists out of its murderous narrative. It also...
Veronica Lee
Tuesday, 23 September 2025
Kerry Godliman is livid, she tells us. Spider webs catching in her hair, the state of the world, her teenage children; you name it, they – and much, much more – irritate her. But...
Helen Tyson
Tuesday, 23 September 2025
Writing in her diary just over 100 years ago on 19th June 1923, Virginia Woolf wrote: “In this book I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life & death, sanity &...
David Nice
Monday, 22 September 2025
Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra last seared us in Britten’s amazing Violin Concerto, with Vilde Frang as...
David Nice
Monday, 22 September 2025
Between bouts of that far from shabby, still shocking masterpiece Tosca, Royal Opera music director Jakub Hrůša ...
David Nice
Monday, 22 September 2025
Why are the Irish such good storytellers? The historical perspective is that the oral tradition goes way, way back, allied...
Robert Beale
Monday, 22 September 2025
Concerts need to have themes, it seems, today, and the BBC Philharmonic’s publicity suggested two contrasting ideas for the...
Sebastian Scotney
Monday, 22 September 2025
The tour by the 81-year-old Mulatu Astatke which is currently under way and this album seem to be giving off different...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 21 September 2025
The remarkable The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967 represents the first-ever release of a previously unheard...
David Nice
Saturday, 20 September 2025
35 years ago, persona-now-non-grata John Eliot Gardiner revealed how performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo and La Clemenza di...
Helen Hawkins
Saturday, 20 September 2025
If a classic story is going to be told for the umpteenth time, there is a good bet it will come with a novel spin on it. So...
David Nice
Saturday, 20 September 2025
It was a hefty evening, as it needn't necessarily have been throughout, since Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony can conceal more...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 20 September 2025
Kabalevsky: Cello Concerto No. 2, Schumann: Cello Concerto Theodor Lyngstad (cello), Copenhagen Phil/Eva Ollikainen (...
Mark Kidel
Saturday, 20 September 2025
Robert Plant is magnificently well-equipped to shine as a consummate musical survivor: not only has his voice kept its magic...
Helen Hawkins
Friday, 19 September 2025
Hot on the heels of Goodnight, Oscar comes another fictional meeting of real entertainment giants in Los Angeles, this time...
Markie Robson-Scott
Friday, 19 September 2025
Some time in the not too distant future, there are only two films on offer: Duck Soup, and, if you order the DVD in advance...
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disc of the day
Album: Night Tapes - portals//polarities
Estonian-voiced, London-based electro-popsters debut album marks them as one to watch for
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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
Slow Horses, Series 5, Apple TV+ review - terror, trauma and impeccable comic timing
Jackson Lamb's band of MI5 misfits continues to fascinate and amuse
Coldwater, ITV1 review - horror and black comedy in the Highlands
Superb cast lights up David Ireland's cunning thriller
Blu-ray: The Sweeney - Series One
Influential and entertaining 1970s police drama, handsomely restored
film
Can I get a Witness? review - time to die before you get old
Ann Marie Fleming directs Sandra Oh in dystopian fantasy that fails to ignite
Happyend review - the kids are never alright
In this futuristic blackboard jungle everything is a bit too manicured
new music
Album: Night Tapes - portals//polarities
Estonian-voiced, London-based electro-popsters debut album marks them as one to watch for
Album: Mulatu Astatke - Mulatu Plays Mulatu
An album full of life, coinciding with a 'farewell tour'
Music Reissues Weekly: Sly and the Family Stone - The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967
Must-have, first-ever release of the earliest document of the legendary soul outfit
classical
Jansen, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - profound and bracing emotional workouts
Great soloist, conductor and orchestra take Britten and Shostakovich to the edge
Jakub Hrůša and Friends in Concert, Royal Opera review - fleshcreep in two uneven halves
Bartók kept short, and a sprawling Dvořák choral ballad done as well as it could be
Hadelich, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - youth, fate and pain
Prokofiev in the hands of a fine violinist has surely never sounded better
opera
Tosca, Welsh National Opera review - a great company reduced to brilliance
The old warhorse made special by the basics
BBC Proms: The Marriage of Figaro, Glyndebourne Festival review - merriment and menace
Strong Proms transfer for a robust and affecting show
BBC Proms: Suor Angelica, LSO, Pappano review - earthly passion, heavenly grief
A Sister to remember blesses Puccini's convent tragedy
theatre
The Weir, Harold Pinter Theatre review - evasive fantasy, bleak truth and possible community
Three outstanding performances in Conor McPherson’s atmospheric five-hander
Dracula, Lyric Hammersmith review - hit-and-miss recasting of the familiar story as feminist diatribe
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's version puts Mina Harkness centre-stage
The Code, Southwark Playhouse Elephant review - superbly cast, resonant play about the price of fame in Hollywood
Tracie Bennett is outstanding as a ribald, riotous Tallulah Bankhead
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
How to be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons, Teaċ Daṁsa review - a riveting account of a life in dance
Michael Keegan-Dolan's unique hybrid of physical theatre and comic monologue
A Single Man, Linbury Theatre review - an anatomy of melancholy, with breaks in the clouds
Ed Watson and Jonathan Goddard are extraordinary in Jonathan Watkins' dance theatre adaptation of Isherwood's novel
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
Kerry Godliman, G-Live review - she's livid but delivers the laughs
Perimenopause provides rich seam of gags
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Cat Cohen / Lachlan Werner / KC Shornima
Defying a health scare; a surreal invention & a distinctive new voice
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
Mark Hussey: Mrs Dalloway - Biography of a Novel review - echoes across crises
On the centenary of the work's publication an insightful book shows its prescience
Frances Wilson: Electric Spark - The Enigma of Muriel Spark review - the matter of fact
Frances Wilson employs her full artistic power to keep pace with Spark’s fantastic and fugitive life
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
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