theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
David Nice
Tuesday, 05 December 2023
If ever a marriage was made in heaven, it would have to be the one between Lucy Crowe’s beleaguered Queen Rodelinda and Iestyn Davies’ King Bertarido, the husband she believes...
Helen Hawkins
Monday, 04 December 2023
A sun deck with seven pale-green padded loungers is the latest setting for the latest National Theatre premiere from American playwright Annie Baker to people in her...
Gary Naylor
Monday, 04 December 2023
It’s 2012 and the London Olympics might as well be happening on the Moon for Jen and Stacey. In fact, you could say the same for everyone else scrabbling a living in Bradford – or...
Natalia Franklin Pierce
Monday, 04 December 2023
Despite my double-barrelled surname (my parents weren't married when I was born – so I was given both their names), a career within contemporary classical music definitely wasn't...
Liz Thomson
Monday, 04 December 2023
Down memory lane, taking us back some six decades to the Buffalo Springfield, the latest Neil Young album's almost 50 minutes of continuous music, each song segueing into the next...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 03 December 2023
Myriam Gendron's debut album Not So Deep As A Well was originally released in 2014 by Feeding Tube, a US label run by the prominent music writer Byron Coley. When it came out, he...
Nick Hasted
Saturday, 02 December 2023
There’s a thread of bright magic running through British cinema, from Powell and Pressburger through Nic Roeg, Derek Jarman...
Graham Fuller
Saturday, 02 December 2023
As the title character in Eileen, set in a miserable Massachusetts backwater in the days before Christmas 1964, Thomasin...
Aleks Sierz
Saturday, 02 December 2023
It’s an elementary fact that Dickens sells at this time of year — look at all the perennial Christmas Carols sprouting up...
Saskia Baron
Saturday, 02 December 2023
Fallen Leaves is Aki Kaurismäki’s 20th film, the one the Finnish director made after he said he’d retired from cinema...
Kieron Tyler
Saturday, 02 December 2023
The realisation that Shirley Hurt is the name assumed by Canada’s Sophia Ruby Katz for recording helps explain why her debut...
Gary Naylor
Friday, 01 December 2023
Next door to the beautiful Art Deco Littlewoods Pools Building, nearly 30 years standing derelict, a set of grey sheds stand...
Helen Hawkins
Friday, 01 December 2023
Mischief Theatre set themselves a big challenge when they evolved their brand of knowing slapstick. And not just about how...
Sarah Kent
Friday, 01 December 2023
It takes a brave or a foolhardy person to walk the streets wearing almost nothing but barbed wire and platform shoes,...
Guy Oddy
Friday, 01 December 2023
Ghost Woman’s 2022 self-titled album and this January’s swift follow-up Anne, If were both fairly laidback and spaced out...
Demetrios Matheou
Thursday, 30 November 2023
Rebecca Frecknall opened 2023 with a youthful, visceral, and brutal Streetcar Named Desire at The Almeida; she...
Thomas H Green
Thursday, 30 November 2023
A deathless trend in pop is taking great songs, slowing them down, doing orchestral versions, or rendering them raw acoustic...
David Nice
Wednesday, 29 November 2023
This is the show that launched a thousand puns, mostly ancient-Greek-oriented, and just as many corny rhymes, all delivered...
Bernard Hughes
Wednesday, 29 November 2023
Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Piano Quartet was astutely described by his student Benjamin Britten as “Brahms tempered with Fauré...
tv
Boat Story, BBC One review - once upon a time in Yorkshire
New Williams brothers thriller is violent, far-fetched and extremely watchable
The Crown, Season 6, Netflix review - royal epic in a vain search for authenticity
It looks like news photos coming to life, but the dialogue and concept still jar
Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story, Disney+ review - classic underdog tale of the little team that could
Inside story of Jenson Button's amazing championship year
film
Powell and Pressburger: In Prospero's Room
A magical day at Derek Jarman’s Dungeness cottage, dancing with the ghosts of Shakespeare, Powell and Pressburger
Eileen review - a dank fairytale film noir
A naive prison worker crushes on a chic colleague in William Oldroyd's disturbing thriller
Fallen Leaves review - deliciously dry Finnish romcom
Aki Kaurismaki returns to the cinema with a touching tale of love
new music
Music Reissues Weekly: Myriam Gendron - Not So Deep As A Well
The surprise reappearance of the Canadian stylist’s interpretations of Dorothy Parker’s poems
classical
First Person: Natalia Franklin Pierce, Executive Director of Nonclassical, on 'creating a sense of belonging'
On bringing classical music to wider audiences - and appealing for help in a good cause
Grosvenor, Park, Ridout, Soltani, Wigmore Hall review - chamber music supergroup in perfect accord
Thoughtful programming puts quirky novelty alongside big beasts
Dariescu, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - sounds of unquenchable optimism
Conductor is his own violin soloist in one of two UK premieres
opera
Rodelinda, The English Concert, Bicket, Saffron Hall review - perfect team helps us stay the long Handel course
Saffron Hall celebrates its 10th anniversary in the greatest possible style
Gazzaniga's Don Giovanni, Royal College of Music review - a modest one-acter overloaded
Good young singers get more opportunities than the actual work offers
Jephtha, Royal Opera review - uncomfortable sacrifice oratorio not seismic enough
Sobriety and darkness eclipse Handel's dramatic vividness, despite strong performances
theatre
Infinite Life, National Theatre review - beguiling new comedy about a world of pain
Annie Baker delivers a richly satisfying piece about hungry women
£1 Thursdays, Finborough Theatre review - dazzling new play is as funny and smart as its two heroines
Seldom does one see a writer's vision so perfectly realised on stage
A Sherlock Carol, Marylebone Theatre review - merry, but mirthless
Seasonal Eng Lit mash-up returns with its festive message of forgiveness
dance
The Dante Project, Royal Ballet review - brave but flawed take on the Divine Comedy returns
Hell and Purgatory get vivid if diffuse music from Thomas Adès, but Heaven is pallid
The Limit, Linbury Theatre review - a dance-theatre romcom that lacks both rom and com
An attempt to amplify a playscript with dance suggests the play should be left to speak for itself
Anemoi / The Cellist, Royal Ballet review - a feast of music in a neat double bill
Rachmaninov and Elgar take the laurels in a brace of prize-winning one-act ballets
comedy
Trevor Noah: Off the Record, O2 review - welcome return to standup for the polyglot motormouth
Back on tour, the former TV host has lost none of his charisma and charm
Michael McIntyre, Brighton Centre review - observational everyman
Jovial comic's first tour in five years
Books
Anne Michaels: Held review - one story across time
Fragments span the genration gap in this daring family saga of inheritance and trauma
Ishion Hutchinson: School of Instructions review - learning against estrangement
A vivid eulogy for the Jamaican soldiers of the British West Indies Regiment
Jesse Darling: Virgins review - going straight
A Turner Prize-nominee turns their hand to poetry with this visceral first collection
visual arts
Mark Rothko, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris review - a show well worth the trip across the Channel
Abstraction with emotion and soul in a landmark retrospective
Women in Revolt!, Tate Britain review - a super important if overwhelming show
Women protesting with all their might in both art and life
A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, Tate Modern review - pulling out the stops to address issues around cultural identity
Thirty-six African artists reconnect with their heritage in dramatic and moving images
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