theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
James Saynor
Thursday, 21 September 2023
If you think we’ve got culture wars, then welcome to Transylvania. This rugged Romanian region is home to a bewildering overlap of ethnicities and tongues – Hungarian, a bit of...
Ismene Brown
Thursday, 21 September 2023
This powerful play’s immediate backstory, with Moscow sentencing its author to eight years’ jail and its director going into forced exile, is not its immediate theme – and all the...
Graham Fuller
Thursday, 21 September 2023
A shot of a dead field mouse sets the tone for this sobering “slow cinema” documentary, narrator-director Christopher Morris’s response, simultaneously aghast and philosophical,...
Thomas H Green
Thursday, 21 September 2023
Had Devendra Banhart been born between 1940 and 1950, he’d likely be a household name. His output– very loosely – sits between Cat Stevens, Syd Barrett and Richie Havens, studded...
David Nice
Wednesday, 20 September 2023
Many of us have perhaps grown too accustomed to the friendly face of My Fair Lady. George Bernard Shaw’s very original play is sharper, less sentimental yet ultimately more...
Hugh Barnes
Wednesday, 20 September 2023
François Truffaut said that there is no such thing as an anti-war film because cinema inevitably glorifies the horror of conflict. The premise was robustly challenged over the...
Demetrios Matheou
Wednesday, 20 September 2023
With more than 20 plays under her belt, San-Francisco based Lauren Gunderson is one of the most produced playwrights in the...
Kieron Tyler
Wednesday, 20 September 2023
Nothing Lasts Forever opens with a drone, a weightless prologue of guitar feedback evoking the initial moments of the...
Boyd Tonkin
Tuesday, 19 September 2023
These days British orchestras count themselves lucky if they can see, and plan, five years ahead. In Bavaria they do things...
Paul Vale
Tuesday, 19 September 2023
It's rare that a new musical or play opens in the West End with as much positive word-of-mouth as The Little Big Things....
Guido Gärtner
Tuesday, 19 September 2023
Nine cities in seven countries; all in all, eleven concerts, on top of that, an appearance at home in Munich. Celebrating...
CP Hunter
Tuesday, 19 September 2023
Celia Dale published 13 novels between 1944 and her death in 2011. A majority of her these are often categorised – albeit...
Tim Cumming
Tuesday, 19 September 2023
It was more than a decade ago when I first saw Rachel Sermanni in concert, in the upstairs room at The Old Queen’s Head in...
Helen Hawkins
Monday, 18 September 2023
You can imagine the thought processes that brought Kenneth Branagh’s latest adventure as Poirot, his third, to the big...
David Nice
Monday, 18 September 2023
To master even one of Brahms’s three early sonatas is a colossal task for any pianist. To play them all with towering...
Veronica Lee
Monday, 18 September 2023
In 2017, Bolton comic Peter Kay had to cancel his planned tour because of “family circumstances”. But then, when he...
Helen Hawkins
Monday, 18 September 2023
Jenna Coleman has had a mostly upbeat acting CV to date, notably playing Clara in Doctor Who and the young Queen in ITV’s...
Rachel Halliburton
Monday, 18 September 2023
It’s proving to be an extraordinary year for Cairo-born soprano Fatma Said, one of the most exciting musicians to bridge the...
Mark Kidel
Monday, 18 September 2023
Partie de Campagne (1946), while not being one of French cinema giant Jean Renoir’s best-known films, unfinished and just...
disc of the day
Album: Devendra Banhart - Flying Wig
Offbeat singer-songwriter's latest is an electronically adventurous misfire
tv
Wilderness, Prime Video review - twisty thriller that leaves a nasty aftertaste
Gilded couple explore the barren lands of their blighted marriage
Top Boy, Season 5, Netflix review - grime and punishment
Ronan Bennett's Hackney crime epic reaches a fiery conclusion
Who Is Erin Carter?, Netflix review - secrets and ultra-violence under the Catalan sun
Anglo-Spanish thriller is daft but addictive
film
R.M.N. review - ethnic cleansing in rural Romania
Cristian Mungiu's tale from Transylvania has bite but may not be his best
A Year in a Field review - exemplary eco-doc
Filmmaker Christopher Morris keeps vigil near Land's End as the planet goes to hell
Side By Side Ukrainian Film Festival, Curzon Soho - cameras of courage and resistance
The festival shows war-torn Ukraine in turmoil but unbowed
new music
Album: Devendra Banhart - Flying Wig
Offbeat singer-songwriter's latest is an electronically adventurous misfire
Album: Teenage Fanclub - Nothing Lasts Forever
The indie immortals generate optimism from melancholy
classical
Frang, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Jurowski, Barbican review - on the summit
Munich's mountaineers scale the heights
First Person: the Bayerisches Staatsorchester's Managing Director Guido Gärtner on its 500th anniversary
Reflections as the Bavarians give two Barbican concerts under Vladimir Jurowski
Brahms Piano Sonatas, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall review - when giants meet
The young composer's epic-lyric genius revealed and clarified
opera
The Yellow Wallpaper, Lilian Baylis Studio review - a tense and intimate monodrama
New opera re-works classic short story with committed performances and striking staging
Das Rheingold, Royal Opera - knotty, riveting route to destruction
Barrie Kosky and Antonio Pappano work superbly with a true team of singer-actors
First Person: mezzo Stephanie Wake-Edwards on open dialogue and shared goals in the new show 'FEAST'
On class, identity and the joy of true collaboration
theatre
The White Factory, Marylebone Theatre review - what price dignity in hell?
Dazzling Russian production finds fresh relevance in the Lodz ghetto massacre
Pygmalion, Old Vic review - zappy wit and emotional intelligence
Patsy Ferran's vibrant Eliza Doolittle sparks Bertie Carvel's Henry Higgins into human life
anthropology, Hampstead Theatre review - AI thriller runs out of code
Lauren Gunderson’s new play is timely, tantalising but doesn’t quite hit its mark
dance
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Sadler's Wells review - exhilarating display of a full deck of dance styles
From stately to sexy, these fabulously physical dancers engage every emotion
Matthew Bourne's Romeo + Juliet, Sadler's Wells review - exhilarating dancing, inventive moves
New Adventures creates lovers with tender appeal for a younger generation
Jewels, The Australian Ballet, Royal Opera House review - a sparkling parade of great dancing
David Hallberg's Australians are pitch perfect in Balanchine's masterpiece
comedy
Peter Kay, O2 Arena review - comeback show is worth the wait
Nostalgia-fest delivers an emotional punch
Kate Berlant Is KATE, Soho Theatre review - glorious spoof of actory types
US comic brings her off-Broadway hit to the UK
Books
Celia Dale: Sheep's Clothing review - unsettling, mundane, and right on-trend
Daunt Books continues its mission to bring Dale’s witty amorality to modern light
Lutz Seiler: Pitch & Glint review - real verse power
A seminal work of German verse translated into radiant English for the first time
Zadie Smith: The Fraud review - the trials we inherit
In her first foray into historical fiction, Smith pens a prescient and well-researched retelling
visual arts
Beatriz Milhazes: Maresias, Turner Contemporary review - the taste and sight of Brazil
A retrospective of the Brazilian artist's career transports us to Rio de Janeiro
Differently Various, The Curve, Barbican review - a step in a shared direction
Richly engaging exhibition by artists who have experienced brain injuries
Anselm Kiefer: Finnegans Wake, White Cube Bermondsey review - an awe-inspiring show
Germany's greatest living artist draws from Joyce
latest comments
She shouldn't talk about things she knows nothing...
Great to receive a comment that gives a very...
This review seems a little mean-spirited. Cavassa...
Artistically fine he might be, but Keller, like...
Bolan's tragedy was that he died at 29. His music...
What a tragicslly sad and narrow worldview. You'd...
Kathryn I really don't understand your tone...
What a lovely review, Rachel!