theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Justine Elias
Monday, 09 September 2024
Blame the high cost of city housing, or killer smog. What else can explain a bright young couple’s move from 1970s Leeds to Starve Acre, an isolated, near-derelict farm in rural...
Alexandra Dariescu
Monday, 09 September 2024
This year, I am delighted to be supporting the Alexandra Dariescu Award at the Leeds International Piano Competition for an outstanding performance of a work by a female composer...
David Nice
Monday, 09 September 2024
The Proms’ Indian summer of big visiting orchestras is over – and what a parade it’s been – but renewal hit on the last Saturday before the Last Night with a rainbow of choral...
Kieron Tyler
Monday, 09 September 2024
Although it takes seconds to discern that Juniore are French, a core inspiration appears to be the echoing surf-pop instrumentals of Californian studio band The Marketts, whose...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 08 September 2024
After the March 1969 UK release of the “Return of Django” single, prospective performers of the song could buy it transcribed as sheet music. On the record, the credit was “...
David Nice
Saturday, 07 September 2024
Mahler’s Sixth is one of those apocalyptic megaliths that shouldn’t be approached too often by audiences or conductors. It’s been a constant in Simon Rattle’s treasury since 1989...
Jenny Gilbert
Saturday, 07 September 2024
It’s exactly a year since Ballet Nights, the self-styled taster platform for dance, started offering chirpily compered...
David Nice
Saturday, 07 September 2024
The ancient Greeks would probably have liked a lot about Charlie Covell‘s manipulation of mythic material. After all,...
Guy Oddy
Saturday, 07 September 2024
The Allergies kicked off their Freak the Speaker tour in Birmingham this week. However, the album that they were promoting...
Gary Naylor
Saturday, 07 September 2024
One of the Finborough Theatre’s Artistic Director, Neil McPherson’s, gifts is an uncanny ability to find long-forgotten...
Joe Muggs
Saturday, 07 September 2024
This album only has one serious flaw: LL COOL J didn’t open it with “OK you can call it a comeback”. Sorry, cheap joke (if...
Boyd Tonkin
Friday, 06 September 2024
Hot on the glittering heels of the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko, Sir Simon Rattle brought another stellar German...
Jonathan Geddes
Friday, 06 September 2024
Beth Ditto protests too much. 'Do you feel young" she hollered early on, before adding "I don't", one of several references...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 06 September 2024
It was originally released in Britain 75 years ago this month, making its debut in a small cinema in Hastings on 1 September...
James Saynor
Friday, 06 September 2024
Life in Tudor times is a gift that keeps giving to film and TV people, even if the history has to be bent a little for...
Art, Theatre Royal Bath review - Yasmina Reza's smash hit back on tour 30 years after Paris premiere
Gary Naylor
Friday, 06 September 2024
For men, navigating through life whilst maintaining strong friendships is not easy (I’m sure the same can be said for women...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 06 September 2024
As a live sensation, Fat Dog have been the talk of the year. The London five-piece offer a dementedly energized night out....
Demetrios Matheou
Wednesday, 04 September 2024
When it was first produced in 1982, The Real Thing was a turning point for Tom Stoppard, the play that added to...
David Nice
Wednesday, 04 September 2024
Never mind the Last Night, it’s always the preceding Proms weeks which lead us through different rooms of a dream palace as...
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disc of the day
Album: Juniore - Trois, Deux, Un
Parisian trio showcase an elegant if deliberate retro-futurist garage-pop
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.
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tv
Kaos, Netflix review - playing fast and profuse with the Greek myths
A rainbow of acting talent, but too many ideas thrown into the labyrinth
Slow Horses, Season 4, Apple TV+ review - Gary Oldman returns as the 'gross and inappropriate' Jackson Lamb
Latest instalment of the Slough House saga exerts a vice-like grip
theartsdesk Q&A: David Morrissey on (among other things) the return of 'Sherwood' and 'Daddy Issues'
Liverpool-born actor reflects on a journey from Everyman Theatre to film and TV stardom
film
Starve Acre review - unearthing the unearthly in a fine folk horror film
Matt Smiith and Morfydd Clark play a couple hexed by an ancient evil
The Third Man rides again - 75th anniversary of Carol Reed's noir classic
Script supervisor Angela Allen on Orson Welles and filming in a war-ravaged Vienna
new music
Album: Juniore - Trois, Deux, Un
Parisian trio showcase an elegant if deliberate retro-futurist garage-pop
Music Reissues Weekly: Lee 'Scratch' Perry and Friends - People Funny Boy: The Upsetter Singles 1968-1969
Meticulous investigation of the early self-determined years of the eminent sonic architect
The Allergies, Hare & Hounds, Birmingham review - funky hip-hoppers fire up the weekend
Breaks, funky basslines, horns and plenty of dancing
classical
First Person: Alexandra Dariescu on highlighting women at the Leeds International Piano Competition
A distinguished pianist fights for more balanced international programming
Proms 63-65, Choral Day review - from Harris to Handel/Mozart via Alabama, with love
British and American beauties crowned by a cornucopial 'Messiah'
Prom 62, Mahler's Sixth Symphony, Bavarian RSO, Rattle review - sound over momentum
Near-perfect playing, but something missing in the overall drama
opera
Prom 52, Carmen, Glyndebourne Festival review - fine-tuning a masterpiece
No loss of vivid focus as the Albert Hall becomes Bar Lillas Pastia
Verdi's Requiem / Capriccio, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - words, music, judgement
Philharmonia Orchestra closes the festival with grandeur and intimacy
The Fabulist, Charing Cross Theatre review - fine singing cannot rescue an incoherent production
Beautiful music, but curious decisions in scripting and staging sink the show
theatre
The Silver Cord, Finborough Theatre review - Sophie Ward is compellingly repellent
Beautifully staged and acted revival of Sidney Howard’s century-old black comedy
Art, Theatre Royal Bath review - Yasmina Reza's smash hit back on tour 30 years after Paris premiere
Male friendships buckle as egos clash, with a resonance for today's culture wars
The Real Thing, Old Vic review - Stoppard classic keeps on giving
James McArdle is immense as Stoppard’s true romantic
dance
Ballet Nights #006, Cadogan Hall review - a mixed bag of excellence
Gala enterprise, 12 months on, will be a stayer if it keeps up this level of excitement
theartsdesk Q&A: Nina Ananiashvili, founder of the State Ballet of Georgia
Bolshoi superstar who made her name in London returns with a new generation
Ashton Celebrated, Royal Ballet review - peerless delights from the master step-smith
A delicious triple bill kicks off a worldwide Fred-fest
comedy
Adam Sandler, Netflix Special - songs, silliness and deconstructing stand-up
The comic and director Josh Sadie have fun with the form
Blu-ray: Laurel and Hardy - The Silent Years
Always watchable, occasionally hysterical collection of silent shorts
Books
Ellen McWilliams: Resting Places - On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution review - finding art in the inarticulable
A violent history finds a home in this impressionistic blend of literary criticism and memoir
Claire Messud: This Strange Eventful History review - home is where the heart was
A brutally honest and epic narrative follows a family doomed to wander the earth
Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop - The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year review - setting the record straight
Busting myths in this sensitive appraisal of a jazz legend
visual arts
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent, Whitechapel Gallery review - photomontages sizzling with rage
Fifty years of political protest by a master craftsman
Dominique White: Deadweight, Whitechapel Gallery review - sculptures that seem freighted with history
Dunked in the sea to give them a patina of age, sculptures that feel timeless
latest comments
Still says Wokomo- not Wokoma.
I think I must have been at a different concert!...
Racist and misogynist for sure, but Bei Mannern,...
I was spellbound by the Bach and have been...
Ah, so it was my idol among oboists (though I...
I hope there were some in the audience who'd...
Albrecht Meyer and Sebastian Jacot were standouts...
we completely agree with this - well said! ...