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Gary Naylor
Friday, 20 September 2024
Iconic is a word the meaning of which is moving from the religious world into popular culture - win a reality TV show dressed as a teapot, and you can be sure that your 15 minutes...
Rachel Halliburton
Friday, 20 September 2024
The high level of entries for this year’s Leeds Piano Competition – 366, almost twice the number who entered in 2018 – is just one reminder that any young pianist wanting to make...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 20 September 2024
Miranda Lambert is one of those country stars who’s massive in the States but no-one’s heard of this side of the Atlantic. Famous since her early twenties, she’s had a quarter...
Hugh Barnes
Thursday, 19 September 2024
The trial of the left-wing intellectual Pierre Goldman, who was charged in April 1970 with four armed robberies, one of which led to the death of two pharmacists, was known as “...
Veronica Lee
Thursday, 19 September 2024
You have to admire the ambition of a show called Every Single Thing in My Whole Entire Life, the latest from Zoe Coombs Marr, which she performed at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe...
Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 19 September 2024
British theatre has a proud heritage of science plays. From 1990s classics such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1993) and Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998) to more recent examples such...
Jenny Gilbert
Thursday, 19 September 2024
You need to be fairly long in the tooth to feel nostalgia for the heyday of London City Ballet. The group was set up in 1978...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 19 September 2024
There’s been a lot of early 90s rave aesthetics in popular culture lately, but an awful lot of it has been at the level of...
Tim Cumming
Wednesday, 18 September 2024
Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes...
Thomas H Green
Wednesday, 18 September 2024
Real-life couple Graham Coxon and Rose-Elinor Dougall are both musicians of some profile in their own rights. The former,...
Robert Beale
Tuesday, 17 September 2024
A little piece of musical history was made last night at Manchester Chamber Concerts Society’s season-opening concert. Two...
Boyd Tonkin
Monday, 16 September 2024
It takes stiff competition to outshine Yuja Wang, who last night at the Barbican complemented her spangled silver sheath...
Hugh Barnes
Monday, 16 September 2024
The taxi cab has become a recurring motif in modern Iranian cinema, perhaps because it approximates to a kind of dissident...
David Nice
Monday, 16 September 2024
A happy, lucid and bright pianist, a forbidding Everest among piano sonatas: would Boris Giltburg follow a bewitching,...
Gary Naylor
Monday, 16 September 2024
We meet Joe first at the keys, singing a pretty good song, but we can hear the pain in the voice – but is that the...
Kathryn Reilly
Monday, 16 September 2024
You don’t need me to tell you that this particular law enforcer has served up yet another meaty helping of genius...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 15 September 2024
Although Dagenham’s Sean Buckley & The Breadcrumbs are less than a footnote in the story of beat boom-era Britain,...
Justine Elias
Saturday, 14 September 2024
The setting is the lively 1930s London theatre world, but any sense that The Critic will be a lighthearted thriller should...
Sarah Kent
Saturday, 14 September 2024
Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers includes many of his best known pictures and, amazingly, it is the first exhibition the...
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disc of the day
Album: Miranda Lambert - Postcards From Texas
On her ninth solo album, the US country star is still on peak songwriting form
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 Perfect Couple, Netflix review - an inconvenient death ruins lavish Nantucket wedding
Liev Schreiber steals the show in adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand's novel
Sambre: Anatomy of a Crime, BBC Four review - satisfying novelistic retelling of a French true crime saga
Compelling story of a rapist who hid in plain sight for 30 years
Kaos, Netflix review - playing fast and profuse with the Greek myths
A rainbow of acting talent, but too many ideas thrown into the labyrinth
film
The law's sick voyeurism - director Cédric Kahn on 'The Goldman Case'
Kahn's drama about the 1976 trial of Pierre Goldman mirrors confllicts in modern France
My Favourite Cake review - woman, love, and freedom
A 70-year-old widow liberates herself in authoritarian Iran
The Critic review - beware the acid-tipped pen
Ian McKellen's vicious scribe terrorises the 1930s West End
new music
Album: Miranda Lambert - Postcards From Texas
On her ninth solo album, the US country star is still on peak songwriting form
Album: Jamie xx - In Waves
Get right on one, matey, with a glorious capturing of dancefloor dissolution of self
Here comes the flood: Bob Dylan's 1974 Live Recordings
Night after night: Sony's latest gargantuan release from the vaults
classical
theartsdesk Q&A: young pianist Ignas Macknickas on appearing at the Roman River Festival and beyond
A rising talent who first performed with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra aged 9
Donohoe, Roscoe, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - two great pianists celebrate 50 years
The special chemistry of two-piano duet, with virtuosity, humour and depth
Wang, Lapwood, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - grace and power from two keyboard heroines
Full-strength fun on an evening of spectacle and swagger
opera
Prom 68, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Garsington Opera review - eerie beauty sometimes faintly glittering
Strong cast and top orchestra project as best they can in a fine company's first Proms visit
La traviata, Royal Opera review - a charismatic soprano in a serviceable revival
Richard Eyre's classic production looks great but lacks fizz
Prom 52, Carmen, Glyndebourne Festival review - fine-tuning a masterpiece
No loss of vivid focus as the Albert Hall becomes Bar Lillas Pastia
theatre
The Truth About Harry Beck, London Transport Museum Cubic Theatre review - mapping the life of the London Underground map's creator
An English eccentric quietly re-invents our view of the capital
The Lightest Element, Hampstead Theatre review - engrossing, but fragmentary
Slender new play about political and gender prejudice in 1950s American science
The Band Back Together, Arcola Theatre review - three is a dangerous number
The second album is still tough, even if you never recorded the first
dance
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
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, ZooNation, Linbury Theatre review - a joyous celebration of differentness
Kate Prince's hip hop take on Lewis Carroll is energetic, charming and moving by turns
Ballet Nights #006, Cadogan Hall review - a mixed bag of excellence
Gala enterprise, 12 months on, will be a stayer if it keeps up this level of excitement
comedy
Zoë Coombs Marr, Soho Theatre review - stock checks and spreadsheets
Australian comic's autobiographical show
Adam Sandler, Netflix Special - songs, silliness and deconstructing stand-up
The comic and director Josh Sadie have fun with the form
Blu-ray: Laurel and Hardy - The Silent Years
Always watchable, occasionally hysterical collection of silent shorts
Books
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
Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop - The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year review - setting the record straight
Busting myths in this sensitive appraisal of a jazz legend
visual arts
Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, National Gallery review - passions translated into paint
Turmoil made manifest
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent, Whitechapel Gallery review - photomontages sizzling with rage
Fifty years of political protest by a master craftsman
Dominique White: Deadweight, Whitechapel Gallery review - sculptures that seem freighted with history
Dunked in the sea to give them a patina of age, sculptures that feel timeless
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