theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Tom Birchenough
Friday, 14 November 2025
We are bowled over! We knew that theartsdesk.com had plenty of supporters out there – we’ve always had a loyal readership of arts lovers and professionals alike – but the...
Boyd Tonkin
Friday, 20 June 2025
In the Saxony of 1725 – still in the grip of Europe’s “Little Ice Age” – Bach and his musicians would seldom have had to deal with the sort of midsummer sauna that enveloped...
Aleks Sierz
Friday, 20 June 2025
Sarah Kane is the most celebrated new writer of the 1990s. Her work is provocative and innovative. So it seems oddly unimaginative to mark the 25th anniversary of her final play,...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 20 June 2025
Edith Wharton hadn’t finished her novel, The Buccaneers, when she died in 1937, but it was completed in 1993 by Marion Mainwaring. The result was not considered an unalloyed...
James Saynor
Friday, 20 June 2025
Here’s a film you might not feel like seeing. After all, Red Path tells of a 14-year-old in Tunisia who is forced to carry home the head of his teenage cousin after the cousin is...
Ibi Keita
Friday, 20 June 2025
Loyle Carner’s Hopefully! is a luminous, deeply personal exploration of fatherhood, identity, and artistic reinvention, marking the south London rapper’s most tender and...
Jenny Gilbert
Thursday, 19 June 2025
Rarely has a revival given a firmer thumbs-up for the future of dance-theatre. Yet Matthew Bourne’s latest show, first aired...
Thomas H Green
Thursday, 19 June 2025
Haim’s profile just grows and grows. Since their last album, youngest sibling Alana’s starring role in Paul Thomas Anderson’...
Boyd Tonkin
Wednesday, 18 June 2025
This year’s Aldeburgh Festival – the 76th – takes as its motto a line from Shelley‘s Prometheus Unbound. The poet speaks of...
Bonnie Raitt, Brighton Dome review - a top night with a characterful, very American blues rock queen
Thomas H Green
Wednesday, 18 June 2025
If you walked into a bar in the US, say in one of the southern states, and Bonnie Raitt and her band were playing, you’d...
Miranda Heggie
Wednesday, 18 June 2025
"When I was your age, I worked in a corrugated cardboard factory!" is a phrase my father was fond of telling me as a...
Sarah Kent
Wednesday, 18 June 2025
It’s unusual to leave an exhibition liking an artist’s work less than when you went in, but Tate Britain’s retrospective of...
David Nice
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
It amuses me that Dubliners dress up in Edwardian finery on 16 June. After all, this was the date in 1904 when James Joyce...
Helen Hawkins
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
The tag “the most Tony-nominated play of all time” may mean less to London theatregoers than it does to New Yorkers, but...
Sarah Kent
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
Tate Britain is currently offering two exhibitions for the price of one. Other than being on the same bill, Edward Burra and...
Veronica Lee
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
Death can be a powerful driver for comedy, as countless stand-ups and sitcom writers will affirm, but it has to be...
Demetrios Matheou
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
A look at Darling on its 60th anniversary offers a sobering reality check on the "Swinging Sixties", a...
Nick Hasted
Monday, 16 June 2025
Jarvis Cocker is proudly holding the No 1 trophy handed to him on the day Pulp topped the album chart for the first time in...
Stephen Walsh
Monday, 16 June 2025
Tchaikovsky has precisely two operas in the standard repertoire (including The Queen of Spades, currently playing at...
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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
The Buccaneers, Apple TV+, Season 2 review - American adventuresses run riot in Cornwall
Second helping of frothy Edith Wharton adaptation
The Gold, Series 2, BBC One review - back on the trail of the Brink's-Mat bandits
Following the money to the Isle of Man, Spain and the Caribbean
Dept. Q, Netflix review - Danish crime thriller finds a new home in Edinburgh
Matthew Goode stars as antisocial detective Carl Morck
film
Blu-ray: Darling
John Schlesinger's Sixties classic now feels problematic, but retains an icky fascination
Tornado review - samurai swordswoman takes Scotland by storm
East meets West meets North of the Border in a wintry 18th-century actioner
new music
Album: HAIM - I Quit
The Californian trio convincingly continue their ascent to the top of the pop-rock tree
Bonnie Raitt, Brighton Dome review - a top night with a characterful, very American blues rock queen
The US star concludes her UK tour with a rockin' south coast send-off
classical
Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Suzuki, St-Martin-in-the-Fields review – the perfect temperature for Bach
A dream cantata date for Japanese maestro and local supergroup
Aldeburgh Festival, Weekend 1 review - dance to the music of time
From Chekhovian opera to supernatural ballads, past passions return to life by the sea
Dandy, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a destination attained
A powerful experience endorses Storgårds’ continued relationship with the orchestra
opera
Mazeppa, Grange Park Opera review - a gripping reassessment
Unbalanced drama with a powerful core, uninhibitedly staged
Saul, Glyndebourne review - playful, visually ravishing descent into darkness
Ten years after it first opened Barrie Kosky's production still packs a hefty punch
Così fan tutte, Nevill Holt Festival/Opera North review - re-writing the script
Real feeling turns the tables on stage artifice in Mozart that charms, and moves
theatre
4.48 Psychosis, Royal Court review – powerful but déjà vu
Sarah Kane’s exceptionally groundbreaking play gets a nostalgic anniversary reboot
Joyceana around Bloomsday, Dublin review - flawless adaptations of great dramatic writing
Chapters and scenes from 'Ulysses', 'Dubliners' and a children’s story vividly done
Stereophonic, Duke of York's Theatre review - rich slice of creative life delivered by a 1970s rock band
David Adjmi's clever and compelling hit play gets a crack London cast
dance
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
The Midnight Bell, Sadler's Wells review - a first reprise for one of Matthew Bourne's most compelling shows to date
The after-hours lives of the sad and lonely are drawn with compassion, originality and skill
Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works, Royal Ballet review - the impressive range and reach of Christopher Wheeldon's craft
The title says it: as dancemaker, as creative magnet, the man clearly works his socks off
comedy
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Sarah Silverman, Netflix Special review - finding the funny in losing a parent
Affectionate memorial to her dad
Dara Ó Briain, Soho Theatre Walthamstow review - master storyteller spins a family yarn
Search for his birth father takes a few turns
Books
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages
A wide-eyed take on our digital world can’t quite dispel the dangers
Zsuzsanna Gahse: Mountainish review - seeking refuge
Notes on danger and dialogue in the shadow of the Swiss Alps
visual arts
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Ithell Colquhoun, Tate Britain review - revelations of a weird and wonderful world
Emanations from the unconscious
latest comments
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