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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...
Stephen Walsh
Sunday, 16 March 2025
There’s a lot to be said for the planning that clearly went into this concert by the Cardiff-based new music ensemble, Uproar. Starting with Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto, it added...
Alexandra Coghlan
Sunday, 16 March 2025
Memorably described by Gramophone magazine as the “new kids on the classical block…with lavish pocket money”, Apple’s London-based label Platoon is busy cementing its street cred...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 16 March 2025
After scoring a hit in 1966 with the distinctive folk-pop of her jazz-inclined debut single "Walkin' my Cat Named Dog," US singer-songwriter Norma Tanega (1939–2019) seemed to...
Robert Beale
Saturday, 15 March 2025
Manchester Collective, now very much a part of the establishment world of new music, are still enlarging their territory. For this set, performed in Leeds and Manchester and...
Jon Turney
Saturday, 15 March 2025
Henry Gee’s previous book, A Brief History of Life on Earth, made an interestingly downbeat read for a title that won the UK’s science book prize. He emphasised that a constant...
John Carvill
Saturday, 15 March 2025
Director Haroula Rose’s gentle, good-hearted new comedy-drama All Happy Families takes its title from the famous...
Kieron Tyler
Saturday, 15 March 2025
“Sitting on a sofa, cigarettes and beer, ten years disappear…agreeing to agree, just to get along.” By going into the...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 14 March 2025
Michael Fassbender recently starred in Paramount+’s rather laborious spy drama The Agency, but here he finds himself at the...
Helen Hawkins
Friday, 14 March 2025
Can Francesca Moody do it again? Fleabag’s producer has brought Weather Girl to London, after a successful run at last year’...
Rachel Halliburton
Friday, 14 March 2025
Before there was Barbie: The Movie, before there was Legally Blonde, there was Clueless, the Valley Girl movie that measured...
Joe Muggs
Friday, 14 March 2025
America – the pro-wrestling-ass nation, the ultimate society of the spectacle – famously likes things big, and modern...
David Nice
Thursday, 13 March 2025
Not to be overshadowed by the adrenalin charges of the Budapest Festival Orchestra the previous evening, the BBC Symphony...
David Gray
Thursday, 13 March 2025
Occasionally, when I pass my own reflection, out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the likeness of my father,...
James Saynor
Thursday, 13 March 2025
Marriage is not often presented in cinema as a bowl of mangoes, but it’s rarely shown as so morbidly strange as in this...
Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 13 March 2025
“The exercise of fantasy is to imagine other ways of life,” says one of the role-players during a Dungeons & Dragons...
Graham Fuller
Thursday, 13 March 2025
Steven Wilson’s cinematic concept album The Overview is named for the cognitive shift required of astronauts and others who’...
David Nice
Wednesday, 12 March 2025
A showstopper for starters followed by dark depths, a quirky compilation after the interval: it’s what you might expect from...
Helen Hawkins
Wednesday, 12 March 2025
When Yasmina Reza’s cerebral play Art arrived in London in 1996, we applauded it as a comedy. Now another French hit, Jean-...
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disc of the day
Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same
Belated debut album from the early Creation Records mainstays
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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.
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tv
Drive to Survive, Season 7, Netflix review - speed, scandal and skulduggery in the pitlane
The F1 documentary series is back on the pace
A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, ITV1 review - powerful dramatisation of the 1955 case that shocked the public
Lucy Boynton excels as the last woman to be executed in Britain
Towards Zero, BBC One review - more entertaining parlour game than crime thriller
The latest Agatha Christie adaptation is well cast and lavishly done but a tad too sedate
film
All Happy Families review - unhappy in their own way
Indie comedy-drama tackles toxic masculinity in the post-#MeToo era
Black Bag review - lies, spies and unpleasant surprises
Steven Soderbergh's spy drama is cool, cynical and sometimes very funny
Sister Midnight review - the runaway bridegroom
Goats, vampirism and weird marriage in a madcap Mumbai
new music
Music Reissues Weekly: Norma Tanega - I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You Smile
Cult album from 1971 which deserves its status as a lost classic
Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same
Belated debut album from the early Creation Records mainstays
Album: Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow
Small stories, big talent from the Alabaman storyteller extraordinaire
classical
Uproar, Rafferty, Royal Welsh College, Cardiff review - colourful new inventions inspired by Ligeti
Unfussy professionalism from Wales-based new music ensemble
Attacca Quartet, Kings Place review - bridging the centuries in sound
Grammy-winning quartet bring more American punch than Gallic je-ne-sais-quoi to Ravel
Manchester Collective, RNCM review - exploring new territory
The string quartet – plus percussion and electronics – goes on a journey
opera
Mansfield Park, Guildhall School review - fun when frothy, chugging in romantic entanglements
Jonathan Dove’s strip-cartoon Jane Austen works well as a showcase for students
Uprising, Glyndebourne review - didactic community opera superbly performed
Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis go for the obvious, but this is still a rewarding project
theatre
Weather Girl, Soho Theatre review - the apocalypse as surreal black comedy
A Californian weather girl copes with fires inside and outside her head
Clueless: The Musical, Trafalgar Studios review - a perfectly manicured update
KT Tunstall's new score brings bite and momentum to a high octane evening
The Habits, Hampstead Theatre review - who knows what adventures await?
New play about the game of Dungeons & Dragons explores fact and fantasy
dance
Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - Crystal Pite’s cosmic triptych powers back
Total music theatre takes us from the hell of exile to separation at heaven’s gates
Vollmond, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris Charmatz, Sadler's Wells review - clunkily-named company shows its lighter side
A new generation of dancers brings zest, humour and playfulness to late Bausch
comedy
Harry Hill, Wilton's Music Hall review - madcap comic on terrific form
Utterly daft mix of new material and favourite old characters
Books
Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction review - survival instincts
A science writer looks to the stars for a way to dodge our impending doom
Jonathan Buckley: One Boat review - a shore thing
Buckley’s 13th novel is a powerful reflection on intimacy and grief
visual arts
Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage, Stonehenge Visitor Centre review - young photographers explore ancient resonances
The ancient monument opens its first exhibition of new photography
Hylozoic/Desires: Salt Cosmologies, Somerset House and The Hedge of Halomancy, Tate Britain review - the power of white powder
A strong message diluted by space and time
latest comments
This reworking of the original is soulless and...
A bit of a stretch. Could have been done in 2...
Thank you for this fantastic review. While I...
Stopped watching about half an hour in because...
An eagle-eyed reader, Katja von Schuttenbach,...
Disappointing portrayal of Mayne. He was not the...
Excellent review. I saw this production in York...
Thanks - I only found this out today. Clearly the...