theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Adam Sweeting
Thursday, 26 May 2022
With Jurassic World: Dominion due in June, which will mark the end of the “Jurassic” movie franchise, here’s Apple TV’s alternative, science-based history of dinosaurs and their...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 26 May 2022
This album starts and ends so brilliantly. It kicks off with a salvo of three tracks that remind you exactly why Def Leppard became one of the biggest bands in the world in the...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 25 May 2022
The challenge for the makers of Das Boot is to keep finding new ways to move the show forwards and outwards without losing touch with its foundations in World War Two submarine...
Marianka Swain
Wednesday, 25 May 2022
The 2001 Reese Witherspoon-starring film Legally Blonde, upon which Heather Hach, Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin’s peppy Broadway musical is based, was something of a Trojan...
Sebastian Scotney
Wednesday, 25 May 2022
Wigmore Soloists is such a good idea, and still at an early stage of its development. The group brings together top players to perform the wider chamber music repertoire, normally...
Laura De Lisle
Wednesday, 25 May 2022
When Bliss, a new play adapted from an Andrei Platonov short story by Fraser Grace, made its debut in Russia in early 2020, Cambridge-based company Menagerie were told that their...
Gavin Dixon
Wednesday, 25 May 2022
Dresden is filled with music at this time of year. The Dresden Music Festival runs through May and early June, with concerts...
Thomas H Green
Wednesday, 25 May 2022
While Britpop was a retrogressive media construct, Oasis were a genuine socio-musical phenomenon (albeit also retrogressive...
Miranda Heggie
Tuesday, 24 May 2022
After two years of Covid-affected performances – even though there was a full season last year – Glyndebourne's annual...
Graham Rickson
Tuesday, 24 May 2022
Parallel Mothers unfolds at a daringly slow pace, and there are moments in the first half of Pedro Almodóvar’s 2021 drama...
Sarah Kent
Monday, 23 May 2022
Cornelia Parker’s early installations are as fresh and as thought provoking as when they were made. Her Tate Britain...
Sebastian Scotney
Monday, 23 May 2022
“I suppose you’re going to ask all the usual questions...?” When Keith Jarrett was interviewed by Alyn Shipton for the very...
Aleks Sierz
Monday, 23 May 2022
Theatre is slowly recovering from the effects of the pandemic, and many shows which were cancelled because of the first...
Tim Cumming
Monday, 23 May 2022
As break-up albums go, Heidi Talbot’s new set knocks that tightly wound ball of heartbreak, separation and release into the...
David Nice
Sunday, 22 May 2022
Interesting for the history of music, but not for music? Passing acquaintance with Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers, a grand opera...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 22 May 2022
“Touched by Rodin in a Paris Museum” is a 14-minute consideration of exactly what its title says: the impact of encountering...
Saskia Baron
Saturday, 21 May 2022
One of the more heartwarming images in the news recently has been seeing Ukrainian refugees being welcomed by their eastern...
Mert Dilek
Saturday, 21 May 2022
First staged in 2018, Bartlett Sher’s Lincoln Center Theater production of My Fair Lady is London’s latest import...
Graham Fuller
Saturday, 21 May 2022
Terence Davies’s Benediction is a haunting but uneven biopic of the World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon and a drama about the...
disc of the day
Album: Def Leppard - Diamond Star Halos
Sheffield's glam-metal master craftsmen can still deliver... mostly
tv
Prehistoric Planet, Apple TV+ review - David Attenborough presents life on earth, 66 million years ago
Technology brings dinosaurs to life in microscopic detail
Das Boot, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - submarine warfare finds new horizons
Look out U-boats, Commander Swinburne is coming for you
The Essex Serpent, Apple TV+ review - tradition and superstition versus the march of progress
The battle of ideas comes to the East Coast in exquisitely shot treatment of Sarah Perry's novel
film
The Deathless Woman review - the overlooked persecution of the Roma people
A brave exploration of forgotten Nazi victims
Benediction review - the world's worst wounds
Terence Davies leavens his sombre biopic of Siegfried Sassoon with Wildean badinage
new music
Album: Def Leppard - Diamond Star Halos
Sheffield's glam-metal master craftsmen can still deliver... mostly
Album: Liam Gallagher - C'Mon You Know
Lots of big-sounding sonic detail but a lack of great songs on the latest from Liam
classical
Wigmore Soloists, Wigmore Hall review - superb Janáček
A new group starting to make its stylish and confident mark
theartsdesk at the Dresden Music Festival - orchestral abundance in a spectacular setting
The Saxon city’s world-famous orchestras front and centre in a full programme of events
Berrut, ECO, Guzzo, Cadogan Hall review - Schubert with a smile
Sparkling symphony makes up for a slightly lacklustre concerto
opera
Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - fabulous singing and a classy production
Superb music making against the backdrop of a sumptuous Sevillian set
The Wreckers, Glyndebourne review - no masterpiece, but vividly sung and played
Blowsy, intriguing grand opera by Ethel Smyth has full theatrical impact
'How that music was created remains to me a complete mystery': John Tomlinson on fellow Lancastrian Harrison Birtwistle
The great bass remembers the composer who wrote two roles with his voice in mind
theatre
Legally Blonde, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - a joyous Gen-Z musical makeover
Lucy Moss puts the 'camp' into campus with her riotous, inclusive revival
Bliss, Finborough Theatre review - bleak but tender
Fraser Grace adapts a Russian story of love and survival in a world turned upside-down
Lotus Beauty, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs review – uneasy mix of comedy and tragedy
Tamasha play about a Punjabi family-run salon could do with a makeover
dance
Classical CDs: Toyshops, begging gods and a good year for Austrian music
Classical piano music, French symphonies and a big box of ballets
Dance for Ukraine, London Coliseum, online review - a gala to remember
Swiftly-assembled charity effort demonstrates dancers' engagement with the world
The Weathering/Solo Echo/DGV, Royal Ballet review - the dancer as chameleon
Strong one-act works by Kyle Abraham and Crystal Pite show the dancers at their adaptive best
comedy
Andy Zaltzman, Soho Theatre review - satire on the hoof
Setting the world to rights, one joke at a time
Stratagem With Alan Partridge, touring review - he's back as a lifestyle guru
Steve Coogan's creation doesn't quite hit the spot
Books
Alyn Shipton: On Jazz - A Personal Journey - digging jazz deeply and musically
Alyn Shipton is a meticulous historian
Joanna Walsh: Girl Online - A User Manual review - how 'beatifoul' it is to be online
Into the glitchy, liminal space of the woman-cum-girl
Laura Beatty: Looking for Theophrastus review - adventures in psychobiography
A portrait of Lesbos and its ‘lost’ philosopher
visual arts
Ming Smith: A Dream Deferred, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery review - snapping the Blues
Previously unseen "overpainted photographs" take pride of place
latest comments
What a sad old man. Sure the music is great, but...
He does want us to take it THAT seriously, and...
I came from Vancouver, BC, Canada to see this...
Errr ...... There's quite a lot of humour...
I beg to differ. Hey, I don't care for EVERY Van...
Rather a harsh review. I attended the first night...
What's happened to him? He's exercising his...
Yes, but not this one. Not by a long shot. Sad.