theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Veronica Lee
Monday, 20 September 2021
Anuvab Pal may be a new name to some UK audiences (although many will know him from the global satirical podcast The Bugle), but he is well known in his native India. And it is...
Guy Oddy
Monday, 20 September 2021
Public Service Broadcasting’s latest addition in their on-going string of concept albums could reasonably be described as an impressionistic musical portrait of Weimar-era Berlin...
Thomas H Green
Monday, 20 September 2021
As the summer folds away on itself, theartsdesk on Vinyl returns. Beset by backlogs at pressing plants and delayed by COVID, it's finally here, jammed to the gunwales with...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 19 September 2021
“Reaffirmation” is the sound of a San Francisco ballroom in 1968. The 12-minute long track opens mysteriously with what might be a Mellotron on the flute setting. A bubbling bass...
Sarah Kent
Saturday, 18 September 2021
Mark Cousins, the multi-award winning director of this strange film, is lying in bed watching Ray Charles speaking on the Dick Cavett Show in 1972. The singer went blind in...
Theartsdesk
Saturday, 18 September 2021
They must have been especially overjoyed to be back in front of (or with back to the greater part of) a live audience. But inspiring musicians is what conductors are there to do...
Markie Robson-Scott
Saturday, 18 September 2021
Rose (Ann Skelly; The Nevers) is adopted. The name on her birth certificate is Julie and the possibility of a different...
Alexandra Coghlan
Saturday, 18 September 2021
Rarely has the revolving door of opera twirled so efficiently. David McVicar’s venerable production of Rigoletto may have...
Katie Colombus
Saturday, 18 September 2021
For those amongst you who listened obsessively to the soundtrack of Call Me By Your Name, the idea of an album by cult...
Jenny Gilbert
Friday, 17 September 2021
If I had to sum up in a single impression the work I’ve seen of Brighton-based, Israeli-born choreographer Hofesh Shechter (...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 17 September 2021
Despite an alluring cast which includes Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd and Kevin Kline, The Starling is doomed to be...
Florence Hallett
Friday, 17 September 2021
When you stand in front of Helen Frankenthaler’s Freefall, 1993, in your mind you drop into its gorgeous, blue abyss. It is...
Joe Muggs
Friday, 17 September 2021
Lil Nas X is good at being a pop star. Like, what could pop culture need more than a young, flamboyant, witty gay rapper...
Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 16 September 2021
God is a tricky one. Or should that be One? And definitely not a He. So when she says take revenge, then vengeance is...
Joseph Walsh
Thursday, 16 September 2021
On its surface, a biopic of a late-Victorian artist starring big British talents including Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrea...
Guy Oddy
Thursday, 16 September 2021
Incredibly it’s now 40 years since the release of Duran Duran’s debut album. To mark this event, the remaining members of...
David Nice
Thursday, 16 September 2021
What a way for the Multi-Story Orchestra, conductor Christopher Stark and composer Kate Whitley to celebrate 10 years of...
Kieron Tyler
Thursday, 16 September 2021
Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of Journey instantly sets its controls for an excursion into the interstellar void...
Tim Cumming
Wednesday, 15 September 2021
This was, said bassist Michael Janisch, his first gig since January last year, and his crack group’s Monday evening set,...
tv
Schumacher, Netflix review - authorised version of the life of an F1 legend
Portrait of German race ace doesn't dig deep enough
The North Water, BBC Two review - a terrible voyage into the great beyond
Director Andrew Haigh brings cinematic heft to this bloody whaling odyssey
The Blood Pact, All 4 review - a (tax) inspector falls
Themes and characters entwine in the third series' masterly denouement
film
The Story of Looking review – bedside musings on how and what we see
A lifetime of looking recalled in words and pictures
Rose Plays Julie review - a sombre story of rape, adoption and a search for identity
In Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor's third feature, revenge is served very cold
The Starling, Netflix review - a slender idea unsatisfyingly executed
Alluring cast can't save Theodore Melfi's trite melodrama
new music
Reissue CDs Weekly: Help Yourself - Passing Through, The Complete Studio Recordings
Box-set tribute to the idiosyncratic Seventies British band
Album: Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine - A Beginner's Mind
An intriguing album of music inspired by film
Album: Lil Nas X - Montero
For better or worse, the Georgia-born star brings consistency to an extraordinary array of sound
classical
Podium odes to joy: conductors at the 2021 BBC Proms
Comsummate photographer Chris Christodoulou's annual gallery yields more treasures
Our Future in Your Hands, Peckham School Choirs, Multi-Story Orchestra, Stark, Bold Tendencies review - blazing community epic
Kate Whitley's latest work involving local schoolchildren is a big symphonic eco-plea
Last Night of the Proms, BBC review - a feast of unusual morsels in a traditional wrapper
15 composers and more in the latest take on a worldwide phenomenon
opera
The Magic Flute, Royal Opera review - all but a guarantee of a great night out
Opera's classiest pantomime looks better than ever in this handsome revival
Rigoletto, Royal Opera review - routine clouds the best in this season opener
Orchestra and chorus pass with flying colours, but tradition weighs heavy elsewhere
Summer seasons in a Covid world: five opera company movers and shakers reflect
The admins are the heroes now: how festivals surmounted all obstacles
theatre
Is God Is, Royal Court review – blister, flare and burn, baby, burn
Aleshea Harris’s award-winning play is a thrillingly satirical mash up
Indecent, Menier Chocolate Factory review - cabaret-style depiction of a rapidly changing world
An intriguing if flawed evening, boosted by ebullient ensemble work
First Person: theatre director Christopher Haydon on how the Rose Theatre, Kingston, can bloom anew
The former artistic director of the Gate Theatre moves his theatrical vision further west
dance
Hofesh Shechter Company, Double Murder, Sadler's Wells review - a well-intentioned but misjudged double bill
After the killing spree, a warm group hug. How to send an audience home feeling numb
Beauty Mixed Programme, Royal Ballet review - no dancers? No problem
The company's 90th anniversary celebration triumphs over setbacks
theartsdesk Q&A: choreographer Christopher Scott
The creator of the sizzling dance scenes for 'In The Heights' on how they came about
comedy
Anuvab Pal, Soho Theatre review - Empire and Bollywood collide
Shaggy dog story with some history thrown in
Olga Koch, Soho Theatre review - personal, political and playful
What nationality and belonging mean
Dead Ringers Live, London Wonderground review - impressionists on great form
Radio 4 show's cast in Underbelly residency
Books
Claire-Louise Bennett: Checkout 19 review - coming to life
A genre-bending novel about reading, living, writing and returning
Christopher Clark: Prisoners of Time review - from Kaiser Bill to Dominic Cummings
A leading historian finds the past busily at work in the present
Thora Hjörleifsdóttir: Magma review - love burns in debut novel from Iceland
A raw examination of the destructiveness of a toxic relationship
visual arts
Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty, Dulwich Picture Gallery review - adventures in print
A fresh look at the American painter's reimagining of woodcut
The Lost Leonardo review - an incredible tale as gripping as any thriller
The machinations of the art market laid bare
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Tate Modern review - a creative talent that knew no bounds
Jack of all trades and master of every one
latest comments
Great gig, to be fair there was no room for...
Dave Greenfield didn't play on "If Something’s...
Carlos Álvarez's singing "one-dimensional"? WRONG...
I am a regular concert-goer and opera lover but...
A profoundly memorable experience. Not just one...
I agree. A wholly enthralling evening. But I also...
Love Williams' rich tones and facial...
Yes indeed. Williams strangely subdued in lower...