theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Robert Beale
Tuesday, 03 October 2023
The Basel Chamber Orchestra’s 21 string players on tour are an extraordinary set of musicians. Not only did they begin their programme in Manchester with Vaughan Williams’...
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
Tuesday, 03 October 2023
Priya Hein’s debut novel, Riambel, is an excoriating examination of Mauritius’ socio-political structures and the colonial past from which they have sprung. Centred around Noemi,...
Mark Kidel
Tuesday, 03 October 2023
Targets (1968), Peter Bogdanovich’s first feature is generally regarded as a great film. And yet, it came out of a mixture of false starts and opportunism. Could it be that its...
Helen Hawkins
Monday, 02 October 2023
The problem facing any chef series is that its daily dramas are essentially rooted in the same small, sweaty space. It’s like one of the reductions prepared there, all the...
David Nice
Monday, 02 October 2023
Is Gounod’s Faust really a “complex and multi-layered work”, as director Jack Furness claims? Goethe’s original and Berlioz’s Damnation, absolutely; this tuneful concoction, half...
Sarah Kent
Monday, 02 October 2023
I think of Sarah Lucas as the bad girl of British art, the one who uses her wicked sense of humour to point to rampant misogyny and call out the perpetrators. Of her generation of...
Robert Beale
Monday, 02 October 2023
The opening concert of a new season often tends to be a statement of intent, and this was John Storgårds’ opener of the...
Mark Kidel
Monday, 02 October 2023
Sufjan Stevens, so we’ve heard, has just been struck down with a rare and immobilising disease – the Guillain-Barré syndrome...
Bernard Hughes
Sunday, 01 October 2023
It was great to see Kings Place full on Saturday night for I Fagiolini’s take on the Monteverdi Vespers, added, rock’n’roll...
Mark Kidel
Sunday, 01 October 2023
London’s Roundhouse is a very special venue. For decades the circular shed, with its elegant ironwork supporting structures...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 01 October 2023
The acronym “HCA” in the title stands for Hornsey College of Art, the North London college which, in late May 1968, was...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Saturday, 30 September 2023
James Blake’s sold-out show at Ally Pally is his only UK stop this tour and it feels like a homecoming of sorts – while...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 30 September 2023
Grażyna Bacewicz: Piano Concerto, Concerto for Two Pianos, Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion Peter Jablonski...
Tom Carr
Saturday, 30 September 2023
Towering drums, seering and furious guitars, vocals that are powerful and often throat-scorching; metal, hard rock, and all...
Helen Hawkins
Friday, 29 September 2023
The Biba dresses are way too colourful, the shop’s interior about 10 times too bright… and did anybody really say ”happening...
Demetrios Matheou
Friday, 29 September 2023
It has been seven years since Gareth Edwards directed, for me, the best of the new generation of Star Wars films, Rogue One...
Robert Beale
Friday, 29 September 2023
There’s a charmingly retro feel to Opera North’s new Falstaff, which comes from it being done as part of their new “green”,...
Graham Fuller
Friday, 29 September 2023
Ken Loach has occasionally invested his realist TV dramas and movies with moments of magical realism – football inspiring...
Gary Naylor
Friday, 29 September 2023
Unbelievable is a strange title for a slightly strange show, the brainchild of Derren Brown, Andrew O’Connor and Andy Nyman...
disc of the day
Blu-ray: Targets
Serial killer meets his nemesis - a horror movie star - in Peter Bogdanovich’s first feature
tv
Boiling Point, BBC One review - chef drama that's simmering nicely
Terrific drama series has been whipped up from Stephen Graham's hit film
The Continental, Prime Video - welcome to the expanding John Wick universe
Origin story of the hitman's hotel makes a sluggish start
Wilderness, Prime Video review - twisty thriller that leaves a nasty aftertaste
Gilded couple explore the barren lands of their blighted marriage
film
Blu-ray: Targets
Serial killer meets his nemesis - a horror movie star - in Peter Bogdanovich’s first feature
The Creator review - bold, beautiful, flawed sci-fi epic
John David Washington goes on the run with a child AI
The Old Oak review - a searing ode to solidarity
Syrian refugees polarise Durham villagers in Ken Loach's affecting drama
new music
Music Reissues Weekly: Bowes Road Band - Back in the HCA
Delightful but previously unknown early Seventies British art-school album
PJ Harvey, Roundhouse, London review - incandescent perfection
Breathtaking set from Britain's Top Girl
classical
Hewitt, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Bard, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - 22 extraordinary musicians
Rewarding Bach and Mozart and ingenuity in abundance
Connolly, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - beginning with a fanfare
Things both rich and rare in the season opener
I Fagiolini, Hollingworth, Kings Place review - magnificent Monteverdi Vespers
Small-scale performance offers both grandeur and delicacy
opera
Faust, Irish National Opera review - world-class singing turns the musical-dramatic screw
Fabulous principals and some good ideas to elevate Gounod's old-fashioned melodrama
Falstaff, Opera North review - going green and having fun
Verdi’s comic masterpiece with a retro feel of its own
First Person: Director Sir David Pountney on creating a new 'Masque of Might' from the music of Purcell
Launching Opera North’s Green Season with a climate sceptic as villain
theatre
Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical, Menier Chocolate Factory review - a tourist's view of a Sixties icon
Ben Elton has written an odd musical-documentary, part comic-strip, part lecture
Unbelievable, Criterion Theatre review - Derren Brown-directed show misses his otherworldly danger
Pantomime vibe undermines the unique frisson of the magician's art
Frank and Percy, The Other Palace review - two-hander fails to escape a very short leash
Ian McKellen and Roger Allam as the lonely men who bond over their dogs
dance
Black Sabbath: The Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham Hippodrome review - two very different art forms merge
Carlos Acosta creates shining gold from heavy metal and ballet
Ailey 2, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury review - young, black and fabulous
The younger sibling of the Alvin Ailey family visits for the first time in 12 years
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
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
'The people behind the postcards': an interview with Priya Hein, author of 'Riambel'
The writer discusses her prize-winning debut novel, the power of fragments, and the motivations that drive her work
Michael Peppiatt: Giacometti in Paris review - approaching the impossible
The artist’s life winds along the streets of Paris in a sprawling study of influence and resistance
Annie Ernaux: Shame review - the translation of pain
Tanya Leslie gracefully translates the Nobel Prize winner’s treatise on the traumas that make us
visual arts
Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas, Tate Britain review - overcrowding muffles the voice of the wildest of the YBAs
Too many bunnies spoil the sculpture broth
Marina Abramović, Royal Academy review - young performers stand in for the absent artist
This pioneer of performance art is the first woman to show in the main galleries
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
latest comments
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