fri 14/02/2025

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Theartsdesk
Wednesday, 01 October 2025
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic...
Nick Hasted
Friday, 14 February 2025
In his first weeks in office, Harrison Ford’s US president survives an assassination attempt inside the White House, goes to war with Japan and mutates into Red Hulk when he gets...
Gary Naylor
Friday, 14 February 2025
Russia.It’s impossible to be ambivalent towards that word, that country, indeed that idea, one so very similar to our own, yet so very different. You feel it in Moscow, where I...
David Nice
Friday, 14 February 2025
Does any living composer write better for choirs, or more demandingly when circumstances allow, than James MacMillan? Admirable as it is to have extant words and music for a music...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 14 February 2025
Ridley Scott’s 2001 film Black Hawk Down was a technically superb blockbuster bristling with thunderous action sequences and famous actors, though its gung-ho depiction of the...
Katie Colombus
Friday, 14 February 2025
Having recently watched the charming animation Marcelle The Shell With Shoes On with my nine-year-old son, I was going to suggest for our next movie night we check out Memoir of a...
James Saynor
Friday, 14 February 2025
The Refugee Movie is rapidly becoming a genre unto itself, with elements of suspense and humanism woven together into...
Ibi Keita
Friday, 14 February 2025
After more than 10 years away, Rizzle Kicks are finally back, and it feels long overdue. Their music was a huge part of my...
Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 13 February 2025
Playwrights who work for decades often acquire a moniker. In the case of Howard Brenton, who began his career as a left-...
Helen Hawkins
Thursday, 13 February 2025
Bridget Jones has grown up: v.v.g. Our heroine is still prone to daft pratfalls and gaffes and bursts of sensational...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 13 February 2025
This album is SHORT. At 27 minutes and just five tracks, one might wonder why Julienne Dessagne (this is a solo act) didn’t...
David Nice
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
So the Royal Opera had assembled a dream cast, conductor (Edward Gardner) and director (Richard Jones). The only question...
Kieron Tyler
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
The exhortations don’t seem necessary as the audience is already letting off the steam which has built up in anticipation of...
Nick Hasted
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is now an Oscar-nominated refugee, in a bittersweet harvest for his film The Seed of the...
Thomas H Green
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
Manic Street Preachers’ earnest and literate pretentiousness is both their Achilles Heel and their superpower. Their...
David Nice
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
For all its passing British sea shanties and folksongs, Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony does Walt Whitman’s determinedly...
Ellie Roberts
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Bowling For Soup are celebrating their iconic album, A Hangover You Don’t Deserve, on a fun-filled, energetic tour for its...
Jon Turney
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Working on materials was basic to human culture from the start: chipping at flint to make a hand-axe; fashioning bone or...
Graham Rickson
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Akira Kurosawa’s mastery of different genres is a given and one of High and Low’s strengths is a seamless blending of...

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★★★★ BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY Michael Morris's deft direction produces a maturer kind of romcom

★★★★★ FESTEN, ROYAL OPERA No slack in Mark-Anthony Turnage's operatic treatment of the visceral first Dogme film 

★★★★★ BOWLING FOR SOUP, CIVIC HALL, WOLVERHAMPTON Texan pop-punk legends filled the sold-out Civic Hall with pure joy

★★★★★ NINA CONTI, BRIGHTON DOME A melee of jubilant spontaneity

★★★★★ THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, WNO No concessions and no holds barred

NORTHERN WINTER BEAT 2025, AALBORG Danish city hosts the festival imbued with a cool which doesn’t need expressing

★★★ PHILIP MARSDEN: UNDER A METAL SKY Myths, mines, and mankind combine in this wide-eyed reading of the earth beneath our feet

★★★★ PHAEDRA + MINOTAUR, LINBURY THEATRE A double dose of Greek myth

★★★★ GILLIVER, LIVERMAN, RANGWANASHA, LSO, PAPPANO, BARBICAN Poetic Maconchy and Walton, surging Vaughan Williams bursting its confines

★★★★★ THE YEARS, HAROLD PINTER THEATRE A bravura, joyous feat of storytelling

disc of the day

Album: Rizzle Kicks - Competition Is For Losers

Brass, beats, and pure fun: the UK has missed this

The future of Arts Journalism

 

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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

Surviving Black Hawk Down, Netflix review - the real story behind Ridley Scott's Oscar-winner

Documentary series looks at the 1993 'Battle of Mogadishu' from both sides

Paradise, Disney+ review - enigmatic drama with an unknown destination

Dan Fogelman's new series has an excellent cast but a recycled premise

film

Captain America: Brave New World review - talking loud, saying nothing

Muddled filler between Avengers films which hardly deserves Harrison Ford

Memoir of a Snail review - deliciously offbeat Australian animation

A darkly whimsical stop-motion masterpiece examining the shells we create for ourselves

To a Land Unknown review - the migrant hustle

A slick tale of two refugees striving and surviving in Athens

new music

Album: Rizzle Kicks - Competition Is For Losers

Brass, beats, and pure fun: the UK has missed this

Album: Fantastic Twins - Suite of Rooms

Dramas within dramas and rooms within rooms in this elegant little puzzle box

Northern Winter Beat 2025, Aalborg review - The Courettes, Dungen and Lubomyr Melnyk confront ideas of how to play

Danish city hosts the festival imbued with a cool which doesn’t need expressing

classical

MacMillan's Ordo Virtutum, BBC Singers, Jeannin, Milton Court review - dramatic journey of a medieval soul

Choral music's finest advocate runs the gamut in an epic battle of heaven and hell

Gilliver, Liverman, Rangwanasha, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a rainbow of British music

Poetic Maconchy and Walton, surging Vaughan Williams bursting its confines

Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Fernandes, Gent, 229 review - a beguiling trip around the world

Engagingly humble and empathetic work from three talented musicians

opera

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Festen, Royal Opera review - firing on every front

No slack in Mark-Anthony Turnage's operatic treatment of the visceral first Dogme film

Phaedra + Minotaur, Royal Ballet and Opera, Linbury Theatre review - a double dose of Greek myth

Opera and dance companies share a theme in this terse but affecting double bill

theatre

Churchill in Moscow, Orange Tree Theatre review - thought-provoking language and power games
Howard Brenton’s new play about Winston and Stalin is both intelligent and fun
The Years, Harold Pinter Theatre review - a bravura, joyous feat of storytelling
The Almeida’s all-women hit transfers to the West End

dance

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Phaedra + Minotaur, Royal Ballet and Opera, Linbury Theatre review - a double dose of Greek myth

Opera and dance companies share a theme in this terse but affecting double bill

Onegin, Royal Ballet review - a poignant lesson about the perils of youth

John Cranko was the greatest choreographer British ballet never had. His masterpiece is now 60 years old

comedy

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Nina Conti: Whose Face Is It Anyway?, Brighton Dome review - a melee of jubilant spontaneity

The ventriloquist-comedian's improvised hour-long outing is skilful and fabulously entertaining

Books

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Philip Marsden: Under a Metal Sky review - rock and awe

Myths, mines, and mankind combine in this wide-eyed reading of the earth beneath our feet

Jacqueline Feldman: Precarious Lease review - living on the edge

The trials and triumphs of a city’s margins are observed by an outside eye

visual arts

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Best of 2024: Visual Arts

A great year for women artists

latest comments

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