fri 04/10/2024

theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews

Helen Hawkins
Saturday, 05 October 2024
What do the cult TV show Squid Game and National Changgeuk Company of Korea’s Lear have in common? Oddly, a K-Pop producer, Jung Jae-il, who has created additional music for Lear....
Sarah Kent
Friday, 04 October 2024
In September 1899, Claude Monet booked into a room at the Savoy Hotel. From there he had a good view of Waterloo Bridge and the south bank beyond. Setting up his easel on a...
James Saynor
Friday, 04 October 2024
“Psychopaths sell like hotcakes,” William Holden observed in Sunset Boulevard in 1950, and those individuals have been doing good business for Hollywood before and since.We root...
Aleks Sierz
Friday, 04 October 2024
Queenie is in trouble. Bad trouble. For about a year now, this 68-year-old Indian woman has been forgetful. Losing her car keys; burning rice in the pan; mixing up memories; just...
Robert Hollingworth
Friday, 04 October 2024
I’m sitting in a café in Kraców, Poland, rehearsals finished for the resurrection of a mass setting written nearly 400 years ago in Rome. Nothing particularly odd about this...
Saskia Baron
Friday, 04 October 2024
The Battle for Lakipia is a beautifully filmed and thoughtfully directed documentary that was made over a two-year period. Its focus is the conflicting claim to Kenyan land made...
Tom Carr
Friday, 04 October 2024
From the very first chords of "Yellow" in 2000, Coldplay have been an ever present at the summit of popular music's...
Graham Fuller
Thursday, 03 October 2024
The Old Man and the Land depicts a worn-out sheep farmer going about his dreary business as the seasons pass, darkly and...
Boyd Tonkin
Thursday, 03 October 2024
“Bold, ambitious, and good for the sector.” So said Charlotte Moore, the BBC chief content officer, who currently earns £468...
David Nice
Thursday, 03 October 2024
Nobodaddy, taking its title from Blake’s violent dark-god “Father of Jealousy”, is much more than a dance piece, and Michael...
Tim Cumming
Thursday, 03 October 2024
The first K-Music festival landed in London for than a decade ago, and has brought an eclectic range of bands and musicians...
David Nice
Wednesday, 02 October 2024
As Fiona Shaw’s shiningly free and easy narration told us, Shakespeare’s sparring Beatrice and Benedick are merely...
Jenny Gilbert
Wednesday, 02 October 2024
In many ways Lewis Carroll’s 1865 compendium of literary nonsense is ideal material for ballet. We all like a story we can...
Jack Barron
Wednesday, 02 October 2024
Last year, Wendy Cope’s poem, "The Orange", went viral on TikTok. I’m not totally certain how a poem goes viral, but it did...
Joe Muggs
Wednesday, 02 October 2024
Dan Snaith’s career has been a joyous thing to watch. Almost a quarter of a century the Canadian started out as Manitoba (...
Adam Sweeting
Tuesday, 01 October 2024
Is there no limit to the number of times the comic book heroes and villains from Marvel and DC can be recycled? HBO’s The...
Helen Hawkins
Tuesday, 01 October 2024
The stock of the late 19th century playwright Arthur Wing Pinero has just received a significant boost, thanks to the...
Stephen Walsh
Tuesday, 01 October 2024
This revival of Puccini’s Trittico a mere three and a half months after it was first shown on the Millennium Centre stage...
Graham Fuller
Tuesday, 01 October 2024
The Smile’s second album Wall of Eyes, released in January, is a thrillingly discomfiting album by Radiohead alumni Thom...

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★★ SUOR ANGELICA, ENO Isolated one-acter lacks emotional inscaping

★★★★★ IL TRITTICO, WELSH NATIONAL OPERA Cast changes but no drop in quality

★★★★ THE PENGUIN, SKY ATLANTIC Colin Farrell makes a beast of himself in Batman spin-off

★★★ LADY GAGA - HARLEQUIN Surprise new film companion is lively, enjoyable, in great voice

★★★★★ ELISABETH LEONSKAJA, WIGMORE HALL Total mastery of epic adventures

★★★★ THE MAGIC FLUTE, OPERA NORTH A fresh vision of Mozart’s masterpiece

★★★ THE TEACHER A Palestinian ex-militant urges a grieving teen to resist revenge

CLASSICAL CDS A star soprano, an unsung conductor, Norwegian jazz, French baroque music

disc of the day

Album: Coldplay - Moon Music

Pop-rock mainstays 10th album is nauseatingly upbeat

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

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.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

tv

The Penguin, Sky Atlantic review - power, corruption, lies and prosthetics

Colin Farrell makes a beast of himself in Batman spin-off

A Very Royal Scandal, Prime Video review - a fairly sound reimagining, but to what end?

The acting is first-rate, but it has no satisfying dramatic goal

film

Joker: Folie à Deux review - supervillainy laid low

Joaquin Phoenix’s clown crim faces a too-long stretch in the slammer

The Battle for Lakipia review - why post-colonial Kenya is a land of unease

Tensions run high between white farmers and the indigenous people

The Old Man and the Land review - dark secrets of a farming family

Film meets radio in an experimental agro-drama

new music

Album: Coldplay - Moon Music

Pop-rock mainstays 10th album is nauseatingly upbeat

10 Questions for Black String’s Youn Jeong Heo

K-Music special: The founder of Korea’s finest quartet discusses their intense and otherworldly music

Album: Caribou - Honey

Almost a quarter century in, the psychedelic indie-dance individualist still setting off fireworks

classical

First Person: conductor Robert Hollingworth on a four-choir rarity by Benevoli

I Fagiolini join with two other choirs for a spectacular in St Martin-in-the-Fields

BBC Singers, BBCSO, Jeannin, Barbican review - from stormy weather to blue skies

An uplifting centenary party for the great choral survivors

theatre

Lear, Barbican Theatre review - a very stormy saga, Korean-style
Changgeuk Company bring an epic poem quality to the familiar tale
A Tupperware of Ashes, National Theatre review - family and food, love and loss
Tanika Gupta’s new play is a beautifully heartfelt mix of comedy and tragedy
The Cabinet Minister, Menier Chocolate Factory review - sparkling tour de force of a farce
Pinero's play emerges fresh-minted in an exquisite production

dance

Nobodaddy, Teaċ Daṁsa, Dublin Theatre Festival review - supernatural song and dance odyssey

Michael Keegan-Dolan’s genius guides us through death, separation and loss

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Ballet review - big, bold and ultimately brash

It may be box-office gold, but Christopher Wheeldon's adaptation fails to find a beating heart down the rabbit hole

Resurgence, London City Ballet, Sadler’s Wells review - the phoenix rises yet again

A new 14-strong company reviving a much-loved name is taking ballet to smaller theatres

Books

Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning review - riding the wave

This slim and stylish new edition can't quite dispel some lurking doubts

Ellen McWilliams: Resting Places - On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution review - finding art in the inarticulable

A violent history finds a home in this impressionistic blend of literary criticism and memoir

Claire Messud: This Strange Eventful History review - home is where the heart was

A brutally honest and epic narrative follows a family doomed to wander the earth

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