tue 03/10/2023

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...
 

RIP MICHAEL GAMBON - THE CASUAL VACANCY, BBC ONE A Sunday-night treat

★★★★★ PJ HARVEY, ROUNDHOUSE Incandescent perfection

★★★ THE CONTINENTAL, PRIME VIDEO Welcome to the expanding John Wick universe

RIP MICHAEL GAMBON - KRAPP'S LAST TAPE The fingers have it: Gambon faces down the void

★★★★★ I FAGIOLINI, HOLLINGWORTH, KINGS PLACE Magnificent Monteverdi Verspers

★★★★ AILEY 2, MARLOWE THEATRE, CANTERBURY Young, black and fabulous

★ UNBELIEVABLE, CRITERION THEATRE Entertaining show, but short of a little magic

★★★★★ THE OLD OAK Ken Loach's searing ode to solidarity

★★★★★ FALSTAFF, OPERA NORTH Going green and having fun

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

Album: Sufjan Stevens - Javelin

Exquisite songs of love and pain

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

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

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

Edinburgh Fringe 2023 review: Ahir Shah

Deserved winner of prestigious award

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

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

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