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Theartsdesk
Wednesday, 01 October 2025
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic...
Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 27 March 2025
Creatives — or creatures? In the 1660s, women — having been banned from working as actors in previously more puritanical decades — finally arrived on the stage in London theatres...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 27 March 2025
I can’t stop reading and re-reading the review copy I got of a new book, out next week. Liam Inscoe-Jones’s Songs in the Key of MP3: the New Icons of the Internet Age is...
Boyd Tonkin
Wednesday, 26 March 2025
Just now, the notion of a long-term project that concludes in 2041 sounds like an optimistic bet on the far future worthy of some 18th-century Enlightenment philosophe –...
Saskia Baron
Wednesday, 26 March 2025
La Cocina is one of those films that cuts an excellent trailer, succinctly delivering just enough characters, plot and visual flair to entice an audience that enjoyed recent...
Tim Cumming
Wednesday, 26 March 2025
It’s been 14 years since Alison Krauss and Union Station released an album – 2011’s Paper Aeroplane. The world’s shed a few skins since then, and little resembles the way it was....
Robert Beale
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Mariam Batsashvili, the young virtuosa pianist from Georgia, is a star. No doubt about that. Trained at the Liszt Academy in...
Nick Hasted
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Tobe Hooper changed cinema with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) for pennies in rancid Southern heat, but came closest to...
David Nice
Monday, 24 March 2025
So much looked promising for Irish National Opera’s first Wagner: the casting, certainly, the conductor – Music Director...
Helen Hawkins
Monday, 24 March 2025
When the world’s darkness is too much, there is a Netflix rabbit-hole you can disappear down to a kinder place: the Korean...
Jonathan Geddes
Monday, 24 March 2025
It took until the last song before Lauren Mayberry started to well up onstage, which was good going. The singer had...
Kieron Tyler
Monday, 24 March 2025
On the cover of her eponymous debut album, the Bolton-raised Toria Wooff reclines on a church pew located in Stanley Palace...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 23 March 2025
The thrill of hearing “Crawdaddy Simone” never wears off. As the September 1965 B-side of the third single by North London R...
Simon Thompson
Saturday, 22 March 2025
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra has had to put up with its fair share of artist cancellations over the last month, and the...
Saskia Baron
Saturday, 22 March 2025
Brief History of a Family is a psychological thriller with a story familiar to anyone who has seen Ripley, Saltburn or Six...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 22 March 2025
Donizetti: Songs Vols. 3 & 4 Michael Spyres (tenor), Carlo Rizzi (piano) – Vol. 3, Marie-Nicole Lemieux (mezzo-...
Thomas H Green
Saturday, 22 March 2025
Selena Gomez is the enormously successful Disney child star who grew up to be a Hollywood actor and global pop sensation. As...
David Nice
Friday, 21 March 2025
Tamino in the operating theatre hallucinating serpents? Sarastro’s acolytes wheeling lit-up plasma packs? From the central...
Saskia Baron
Friday, 21 March 2025
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other is a documentary portrait of photographer Joel Meyerowitz, acclaimed for...
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Album: Perfume Genius - Glory
Album seven from an artist carving out his own space in the most modernist of ways
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tv
The Potato Lab, Netflix review - a K-drama with heart and wit
Love among Korean potato-researchers is surprisingly funny and ideal for Janeites
Adolescence, Netflix review - Stephen Graham battles the phantom menace of the internet
How antisocial networks lead to real-life tragedy
Drive to Survive, Season 7, Netflix review - speed, scandal and skulduggery in the pitlane
The F1 documentary series is back on the pace
film
La Cocina review - New York restaurant drama lingers too long
Struggles of undocumented immigrants slaving in a Times Square kitchen
Brief History of a Family review - glossy Chinese psychological thriller feels shallow
Immaculately crafted family drama aimed at international art house audiences
new music
Album: Perfume Genius - Glory
Album seven from an artist carving out his own space in the most modernist of ways
Album: Alison Krauss & Union Station - Arcadia
Their first album in 14 years looks hard at the past, and its role in the present
Lauren Mayberry, Barrowland, Glasgow review - solo star stays too close to the day job
The Chvrches singer mixed some great tunes with an overly heavy sound.
classical
Batsashvili, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a star in the piano universe
The Georgian pianist brings precision and freedom to Liszt’s warhorses
Naumov, SCO, Egarr, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - orchestral magic rescues some punishing music
Hard-driven Beethoven, monotonous Eötvös, some light from Kernis
Classical CDs: Shipping lines, sabre dances and sea lice
Neglected piano concertos, Italian art songs and new music for trombones
opera
La finta giardiniera, The Mozartists, Cadogan Hall review - blooms in the wild garden
Mozart's rambling early opera can still smell sweet
Der fliegende Holländer, Irish National Opera review - sailing to nowhere
Plenty of strong singing and playing, but the staging is static or inept
theatre
Playhouse Creatures, Orange Tree Theatre review – jokes, shiny costumes and quarrels, but little drama
April De Angelis’s 1993 play is a delightful if sketchy account of Restoration female actors
Dear England, National Theatre review - extra time for stirring soccer classic
James Graham adds a neat coda to his ode to decency in sport
Weather Girl, Soho Theatre review - the apocalypse as surreal black comedy
A Californian weather girl copes with fires inside and outside her head
dance
Romeo and Juliet, Royal Ballet review - Shakespeare without the words, with music to die for
Kenneth MacMillan's first and best-loved masterpiece turns 60
Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - Crystal Pite’s cosmic triptych powers back
Total music theatre takes us from the hell of exile to separation at heaven’s gates
comedy
Harry Hill, Wilton's Music Hall review - madcap comic on terrific form
Utterly daft mix of new material and favourite old characters
Books
Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction review - survival instincts
A science writer looks to the stars for a way to dodge our impending doom
Jonathan Buckley: One Boat review - a shore thing
Buckley’s 13th novel is a powerful reflection on intimacy and grief
visual arts
Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage, Stonehenge Visitor Centre review - young photographers explore ancient resonances
The ancient monument opens its first exhibition of new photography
Hylozoic/Desires: Salt Cosmologies, Somerset House and The Hedge of Halomancy, Tate Britain review - the power of white powder
A strong message diluted by space and time
latest comments
Finally, someone with some taste. This movie was...
I saw Nureyev and Fonteyn dance this wonderful...
This reworking of the original is soulless and...
A bit of a stretch. Could have been done in 2...
Thank you for this fantastic review. While I...
Stopped watching about half an hour in because...
An eagle-eyed reader, Katja von Schuttenbach,...
Disappointing portrayal of Mayne. He was not the...