theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Helen Hawkins
Monday, 27 March 2023
There’s no point in being upset with the writer Steven Knight for doing what he usually does; even so, many viewers will find what he has done with Charles Dickens’s Great...
Thomas H Green
Monday, 27 March 2023
As Inspiral Carpets play “She Comes in the Fall”, a great song and one of their signature tunes, its martial drumming drags me into my own past. Seeing them play it at a 600-...
David Nice
Monday, 27 March 2023
Is Korngold a second-rank composer with some first-rate ideas? Most performances of the 23-year-old Viennese prodigy's Die tote Stadt make it seem so. Nearly smothered in glitter...
Bernard Hughes
Monday, 27 March 2023
Last night at the Barbican was my first experience of a film with live orchestra, which has become a big thing in the last few years. The film in question was Alexander Korda’s...
Sarah Kent
Monday, 27 March 2023
“I believe Ayahuasca is something very deep,” says spiritual leader José López Sánchez in the documentary Antidote. “It’s not like selling palm oil or rubber. How many...
Robert Beale
Monday, 27 March 2023
It was very much the formula as before, as Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy moved their edition of the Mozart piano concertos a step closer to completion with Nos. 11,...
Mark Kidel
Monday, 27 March 2023
This is an enchanting album which brings together four outstanding musicians, brilliant in their own right, but also adept...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 26 March 2023
From around July 1977, Jeremy Gluck began contributing to the UK music weekly Sounds. Amongst his pieces were features on...
Saskia Baron
Saturday, 25 March 2023
Last month’s Storyville: Sex on Screen (available on BBC iPlayer) was a slick, speedy (and repetitive) canter...
Nick Hasted
Saturday, 25 March 2023
Francisca Alegría’s debut is an eco-fable about mourning and enduring love, for a mother and Mother Earth. We start by Chile...
Thomas H Green
Saturday, 25 March 2023
Welcome to the church of Mulvey. The sold-out venue is packed with a svelte crowd, mostly ranging in age between about 30...
Sarah Kent
Saturday, 25 March 2023
What a feast! Congratulations are due to the National Gallery for its latest blockbuster After Impressionism: Inventing...
Adam Sweeting
Saturday, 25 March 2023
Since the first John Wick film from 2014 became an unexpected hit, the Wick franchise has blossomed into a booming business...
Aleks Sierz
Saturday, 25 March 2023
The act of idol worship is, at one and the same time, both distantly ancient and compellingly contemporary. Whether it is...
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
Saturday, 25 March 2023
A small cottage vanishes into a surrounding bay, its walls apparitional against pale waters. In the background, a pier juts...
Tim Cumming
Saturday, 25 March 2023
Ten years ago, three leading young English folk musicians got together in a room and swapped some tunes – Rob Harbron, whose...
David Nice
Friday, 24 March 2023
Anna Clyne’s engaging First Person here led me to two of her works in a Philharmonia rainbow. She curated a woodwind-based...
Demetrios Matheou
Friday, 24 March 2023
It starts innocuously, with paint. A woman is sitting in a hardware store, studying a travel guide for colour ideas, while...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 24 March 2023
Director Brandon Cronenberg has inherited his father David’s eye for the twisted and the sinister. After the creepy mind-...
tv
Great Expectations, BBC One review - modernised, muddied and muddled
Steven Knight gives the Dickens classic a Peaky Blinders feel
Endeavour: The Final Episode, ITV1 review - the final bow for Oxford's finest
The curtain falls on a milestone in TV detection
MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, Netflix review - a field day for conspiracy theorists
Will we ever know what really happened to the vanished Malaysian airliner?
film
Things to Come, LSO, Strobel, Barbican review - blissful visions of the future
Landmark film given the live-orchestra treatment
Antidote review - two films in one that lose sight of their message
Taking Ayahuasca becomes a metaphor for saving the planet in Marc Silver's documentary
new music
Inspiral Carpets, Concorde 2, Brighton review - a raucous catalogue of Madchester-era hits
Despite being hampered by a muddy sound the Nineties veterans deliver a solidly entertaining set
Music Reissues Weekly: The Barracudas - Drop Out With The Barracudas
How drawing from the past made the garage-psych-punk-surf rockers pioneers
classical
Things to Come, LSO, Strobel, Barbican review - blissful visions of the future
Landmark film given the live-orchestra treatment
Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - spirit of the 1780s
Historically informed playing and a delight to hear
Fröst, Philharmonia, Lazarova, Kuusisto, Southbank Centre review - congenial new works complemented by live-wire classics
Two concerts revolving around composer Anna Clyne offer plenty of other surprises
opera
The Dead City, English National Opera review - strong dream world, weak love story
Taxing lead roles bravely taken, but Korngold's life-over-death dynamic doesn't quite work
Turandot, Royal Opera review - spectacle and sound wow in this significant revival
Pappano marshals the glitter and a fine cast delivers the goods
La bella dormente nel bosco/L'enfant et les sortilèges, Royal College of Music review - pure theatrical magic
Fairytale operas by Respighi and Ravel come together to create enchantment and danger
theatre
Black Superhero, Royal Court review - ambitious, but messy
Debut play about sex, race and queerness is a disappointing mishmash
Dance of Death, National Theatre of Norway, Coronet Theatre review - straight for the jugular
White-heat Strindberg from Norwegian actors undeterred by technical hitches
The Way Old Friends Do, Park Theatre review - sweet, but flimsy
Mark Gatiss and Ian Hallard’s ABBA tribute is fun, but clunky
dance
'You want to cry from loving to do it so much' - Lynn Seymour 1939-2023
Remembering the unique ballerina who injected me with her poison
Turn It Out with Tiler Peck, Sadler's Wells review - America's ballet wonder-woman raises the barre
On her UK solo debut, New York City Ballet’s queen of speed gives audiences a wild ride
Woolf Works, Royal Ballet review - Wayne McGregor's modern classic impresses all over again
Alessandra Ferri returns as the moving focus of this powerful piece
comedy
Bridget Christie, The Haymarket, Basingstoke review - making the menopause funny
Turning 50 can be fun
Books
Margaret Atwood: Old Babes in the Wood review - bookending the short story
Semi-autobiographical tales of loss and love sit oddly among snails and aliens
Janet Malcolm: Still Pictures - On Photography and Memory review - a rare glimpse at a guarded personal history
Old photographs catalyse this evasive and poignant book of memoirs
Nicole Flattery: Nothing Special review - returning to the Factory
The social isolation of Andy Warhol’s typist
visual arts
After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art, National Gallery review - an impressive tour de force
But many names are missing from this international survey
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Paths to Abstraction, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle review - secret worlds revealed
A journey of artistic and personal discovery like no other
The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance, National Gallery review - put in context, a much-loved picture reveals its complexity
An aged, would-be seductress is reunited with her reluctant partner
latest comments
I agree with you. With all my heart.
Not a single song out of the 40 is mentioned....
Great critique
I'm no great U2 fan but they deserve better than...
This is a pathetic display. I would think the...
I also loved the way that the “who are the real...
Seymour's silent scream of pain in The Invitation...
Thanks a lot for the crap review. You obviously...