theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
David Nice
Thursday, 07 December 2023
It could have been a winner: a charismatic star soprano of great emotional and interpretative intelligence, a top pianist given a little space to shine on his own, a programme...
Tim Cumming
Thursday, 07 December 2023
The cat in the hat with the mellifluous voice delivers his Christmas Wish for the festive season, his first Christmas album, and it sounds more or less as you would imagine it –...
Ed Vulliamy
Wednesday, 06 December 2023
A decade has passed since Paul Lewis concluded an endeavour of a kind never previously undertaken: to perform, over two and a half years and across four continents, every work...
Heather Neill
Wednesday, 06 December 2023
As the audience enters, thick mist envelopes the thrust stage and jazz music fills the theatre. The set, designed by Moi Tran, consists of a sparsely furnished but spacious room,...
Nick Hasted
Wednesday, 06 December 2023
The Boxing Day release of Michael Mann’s first feature in eight years, Ferrari, finally follows up Blackhat, a Chris Hemsworth-starring cyber-thriller dismissed on its 2015...
Adam Sweeting
Tuesday, 05 December 2023
Folklore tends to depict Dublin as a convivial and picturesque city, with a bar on every corner full of revellers on wild stag weekends, but that’s not what we find in Kin. This...
Bernard Hughes
Tuesday, 05 December 2023
There’s a game called Whamageddon, where people see how deep into December they can go without hearing “Last Christmas”. I’m...
Helen Hawkins
Tuesday, 05 December 2023
Kwame Owusu’s 55-minute one-hander does just what it says on the tin: it features a young student who dreams he is drowning...
Helen Hawkins
Monday, 04 December 2023
A sun deck with seven pale-green padded loungers is the latest setting for the latest National Theatre premiere from ...
David Nice
Monday, 04 December 2023
If ever a marriage was made in heaven, it would have to be the one between Lucy Crowe’s beleaguered Queen Rodelinda and...
Gary Naylor
Monday, 04 December 2023
It’s 2012 and the London Olympics might as well be happening on the Moon for Jen and Stacey. In fact, you could say the same...
Natalia Franklin Pierce
Monday, 04 December 2023
Despite my double-barrelled surname (my parents weren't married when I was born – so I was given both their names), a career...
Liz Thomson
Monday, 04 December 2023
Down memory lane, taking us back some six decades to the Buffalo Springfield, the latest Neil Young album's almost 50...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 03 December 2023
Myriam Gendron's debut album Not So Deep As A Well was originally released in 2014 by Feeding Tube, a US label run by the...
Nick Hasted
Saturday, 02 December 2023
There’s a thread of bright magic running through British cinema, from Powell and Pressburger through Nic Roeg, Derek Jarman...
Graham Fuller
Saturday, 02 December 2023
As the title character in Eileen, set in a miserable Massachusetts backwater in the days before Christmas 1964, Thomasin...
Aleks Sierz
Saturday, 02 December 2023
It’s an elementary fact that Dickens sells at this time of year — look at all the perennial Christmas Carols sprouting up...
Saskia Baron
Saturday, 02 December 2023
Fallen Leaves is Aki Kaurismäki’s 20th film, the one the Finnish director made after he said he’d retired from cinema...
Kieron Tyler
Saturday, 02 December 2023
The realisation that Shirley Hurt is the name assumed by Canada’s Sophia Ruby Katz for recording helps explain why her debut...
tv
Kin, BBC One review - in Dublin's not-so-fair city
Superb cast and powerful writing fuel this gripping gangland drama
Boat Story, BBC One review - once upon a time in Yorkshire
New Williams brothers thriller is violent, far-fetched and extremely watchable
The Crown, Season 6, Netflix review - royal epic in a vain search for authenticity
It looks like news photos coming to life, but the dialogue and concept still jar
film
Blu-ray: Blackhat
A Chris Hemsworth-starring, bone-jarringly physical cyber-thriller is the Michael Mann that got away
Powell and Pressburger: In Prospero's Room
A magical day at Derek Jarman’s Dungeness cottage, dancing with the ghosts of Shakespeare, Powell and Pressburger
Eileen review - a dank fairytale film noir
A naive prison worker crushes on a chic colleague in William Oldroyd's disturbing thriller
new music
Music Reissues Weekly: Myriam Gendron - Not So Deep As A Well
The surprise reappearance of the Canadian stylist’s interpretations of Dorothy Parker’s poems
classical
Natalie Dessay, Philippe Cassard, Milton Court review - flashes of magic
More downtime than expected in an intelligent programme
Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review - Schubert sonatas revisited
A meditation on how the pianist handles what he calls 'inconsequentiality'
Voces8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra, Smith, Voces8 Centre review - joyous Christmas music by Bach
Seasonal greatest hits selection with a spotlight on spectacular trumpeting
opera
Rodelinda, The English Concert, Bicket, Saffron Hall review - perfect team helps us stay the long Handel course
Saffron Hall celebrates its 10th anniversary in the greatest possible style
Gazzaniga's Don Giovanni, Royal College of Music review - a modest one-acter overloaded
Good young singers get more opportunities than the actual work offers
Jephtha, Royal Opera review - uncomfortable sacrifice oratorio not seismic enough
Sobriety and darkness eclipse Handel's dramatic vividness, despite strong performances
theatre
The Homecoming, Young Vic Theatre review - Pinter's disturbing masterpiece is given a low-key revival
Unsettling investigation of patriarchal family and sexual relationships has uneven force
Dreaming and Drowning, Bush Theatre - dense and intense monologue about Black queer identity
Terrific showcase for writer-director Kwame Owusu and his performer
Infinite Life, National Theatre review - beguiling new comedy about a world of pain
Annie Baker delivers a richly satisfying piece about hungry women
dance
The Dante Project, Royal Ballet review - brave but flawed take on the Divine Comedy returns
Hell and Purgatory get vivid if diffuse music from Thomas Adès, but Heaven is pallid
The Limit, Linbury Theatre review - a dance-theatre romcom that lacks both rom and com
An attempt to amplify a playscript with dance suggests the play should be left to speak for itself
Anemoi / The Cellist, Royal Ballet review - a feast of music in a neat double bill
Rachmaninov and Elgar take the laurels in a brace of prize-winning one-act ballets
comedy
Trevor Noah: Off the Record, O2 review - welcome return to standup for the polyglot motormouth
Back on tour, the former TV host has lost none of his charisma and charm
Michael McIntyre, Brighton Centre review - observational everyman
Jovial comic's first tour in five years
Books
Anne Michaels: Held review - one story across time
Fragments span the genration gap in this daring family saga of inheritance and trauma
Ishion Hutchinson: School of Instructions review - learning against estrangement
A vivid eulogy for the Jamaican soldiers of the British West Indies Regiment
Jesse Darling: Virgins review - going straight
A Turner Prize-nominee turns his hand to poetry with this visceral first collection
visual arts
Mark Rothko, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris review - a show well worth the trip across the Channel
Abstraction with emotion and soul in a landmark retrospective
Women in Revolt!, Tate Britain review - a super important if overwhelming show
Women protesting with all their might in both art and life
A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, Tate Modern review - pulling out the stops to address issues around cultural identity
Thirty-six African artists reconnect with their heritage in dramatic and moving images
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