theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
David Nice
Friday, 03 July 2020
It’s begun: very limited access to live music, the chance to sit before one or two players in the same room – as we were doing only three and a half months ago, in some cases...
Aleks Sierz
Friday, 03 July 2020
Lorraine Hansberry’s debut, A Raisin in the Sun, was the first drama written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, where it opened in 1959. It is now an American classic,...
Matt Wolf
Friday, 03 July 2020
Back Roads has languished largely unseen since its completion in 2017, and one can see why: lurid to the point of absurdity, this adaptation of a 1999 novel by co-...
Nick Hasted
Friday, 03 July 2020
Werner Herzog’s appearance in The Mandalorian paid for this deadpan, documentary-like slice of extreme Japanese life, suggesting how the director’s amusingly doomy Teutonic...
Rachel Halliburton
Friday, 03 July 2020
I knew what a Howard Hodgkin painting would look like before I ever saw one because of Nigel Slater. There’s a recipe in one of his very early books, Real Cooking, for “A...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 03 July 2020
A decade ago, Polly Scattergood was Mute Records’ newest, most-likely-to signing and, while she never crossed over like similar unconventional female artists of the period (Bat...
Matt Wolf
Thursday, 02 July 2020
Can this weekly lineup really now be three months old? As we move towards at least some degree of relaxation on the...
Bernard Hughes
Thursday, 02 July 2020
The Opera Story is an enterprising set-up based in London and founded with a mission to commission and stage new operas by...
Joseph Walsh
Thursday, 02 July 2020
British director Fyzal Boulifa makes his feature film debut with a bruising account of female-friendship torn apart by...
Laura De Lisle
Thursday, 02 July 2020
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks’ best-selling First World War novel, has been adapted quite a few times in its twenty-seven years...
Adam Sweeting
Thursday, 02 July 2020
American history of the 1930s and ‘40s suddenly seems to be all the rage on TV, cropping up in the reborn Perry Mason, Das...
Tom Birchenough
Thursday, 02 July 2020
David France’s revelatory film may have been subtitled “The Gay Purge”, but from the start it was clear this wasn’t just...
Katherine Waters
Wednesday, 01 July 2020
With the first round of galleries opening their doors in June and a new round getting ready to open in July, we’ve a half-...
Caspar Gomez
Wednesday, 01 July 2020
Coronavirus blah blah blah. Glastonbury cancelled. What to do? Didn’t go to the 2010 festival for reasons too tedious to go...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 01 July 2020
The second series of Das Boot (Sky Atlantic) began strongly, and by the time we reached this last pair of episodes it was...
Marianka Swain
Wednesday, 01 July 2020
The movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights was meant to hit cinemas this summer, but, in response to Covid-...
Florence Hallett
Wednesday, 01 July 2020
From her fourth floor flat, which is also her studio, the painter Celia Paul looks out over the British Museum, the figures...
Svend McEwan-Brown
Wednesday, 01 July 2020
They say that you discover who your true friends are when you find yourself in direst need. East Neuk Festival, our success...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 01 July 2020
The nightmarishness of the M25 motorway is well known, especially if you get stuck on the Heathrow section on a wet Sunday...
disc of the day
Album: Polly Scattergood - In This Moment
The enigmatic musician's third album takes listeners on a gently experimental journey
tv
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Sky Atlantic review - the good, the bad and the unspeakable
Shape-shifting Natalie Dormer wreaks havoc in a combustible 1930s Los Angeles
Storyville: Welcome to Chechnya, BBC Four review - trauma, tension and resistance
David France's 'guerrilla' documentary charts brave Russian response to extreme anti-LGBTQ campaign
Das Boot, Series 2 Finale, Sky Atlantic review - deeper and darker
The casualties mount as the waters keep getting rougher
film
Back Roads review - nice cheekbones, not much else
Alex Pettyfer's directing debut is more or less DOA
Family Romance, LLC review - the chameleon blues
A faux-documentary about fakes mimics Herzog's virtues
Lynn + Lucy review - a bruising tale of female friendship
Fyzal Boulifa directorial debut is a stark, unforgiving portrait of modern Britain
new music
Album: Polly Scattergood - In This Moment
The enigmatic musician's third album takes listeners on a gently experimental journey
Glastonbury Festival 2020: Beyoncé, Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E., marijuana and time travel
With Glastonbury halted, our intrepid reporter attempts to recreate it, while dreaming of the 1990 Festival
Album: Willie Nelson - First Rose of Spring
Lockdown has made us all a little crazy - Willie Nelson will soothe our souls
classical
‘We are still standing and planning for the brightest future we can’: Svend McEwan-Brown on the survival of a festival
East Neuk Festival Director finds generosity, humanity and a hunger for culture in a crisis
Mark Padmore, Mitsuko Uchida/ Benjamin Baker, Timothy Ridout, Wigmore Hall online/BBC Radio 3 review – hail and farewell
A landmark series closes with majesty, and mischief
Classical CDs Weekly: Enescu, Mendelssohn, Tuur, Sara Stowe
String octets, Estonian orchestral music and an avant-garde vocal disc
opera
Classical music/Opera direct to home 19 – and two before a live audience
Finally, you can be in the room, or space, where it happens in two east London venues
The Opera Story: Episodes review - whimsical takes on lockdown life
Young London company offers snapshots of contemporary living
Classical music/Opera direct to home 17 - festive inventions
Celebrating a maverick conductor, two great artists in recital and home-grown ingenuity
theatre
Les Blancs, National Theatre at Home review – triumphant revival of forgotten classic
NT archive recording of Lorraine Hansberry’s last play is absolutely compelling
Toast, Lawrence Batley Theatre online review - pungent adaptation of Nigel Slater's autobiography
Food crimes of the Sixties and Seventies are revealed here as Michelin-starred memories
Theatre Lockdown Special 12: An American rarity, a British savoury, and fresh Apples
Nigel Slater is back, as is Richard Nelson's Apple family for a second time via Zoom
dance
'If they had been any closer my face would have misted up': filming 'Men at the Barre'
The director Richard Macer had exclusive access to the male stars of the Royal Ballet. He describes what he discovered
The Thread, Sadler's Wells Digital Stage review - Greek folk and contemporary unite
Russell Maliphant breathes fresh life into Hellenic tradition
Palermo, Palermo review - free to view Pina
The Pina Bausch Foundation releases the first in a projected series of digital recordings
comedy
Desiree Burch, Soho Theatre On Demand review - fantastical storytelling
California comic on Burning Man, sex, race – and LSD
Jerry Seinfeld, Netflix review - not bad for a swansong
US comic says this may be his last stand-up show
gaming
Rage 2 review – garish but great post-apocalyptic shooter
Challenge The Authority in this 'Mad Max on mushrooms' renegade romp
World War Z review - bloodthirsty fun with the zombie apocalypse
Chainsawing the brain-eaters as you battle against the tide of the undead
The Lego Movie 2 Videogame review - everything is not awesome
Few fresh ideas means this movie adaptation treads the same old ground
visual arts
Visual Arts Lockdown Special 4: half-way houses
Some galleries prepare to reopen, others remain closed; online still offers riches
Celia Paul: My Studio, Victoria Miro review - sublime isolation
One of the great painters of our time responds to life in lockdown
Shirley Baker: A Different Age, James Hyman Gallery review - the old at leisure
A little-known photographer and an overlooked subject take the spotlight
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