thu 10/07/2025

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...
Adam Sweeting
Thursday, 10 July 2025
A mixture of legal drama, medical mystery and psychological thriller with creepy supernatural overtones, Insomnia sometimes seems to be trying to cram too much in, but it’s well...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 10 July 2025
I met Mark Stewart once. It was on a platform at Clapham Junction, I wouldn’t normally approach a famous person like that, but I felt I had to pay my respects. It turned out he...
Aleks Sierz
Wednesday, 09 July 2025
Near the start of Chloë Moss’s latest play, Run Sister Run, one character tells his wife to “Calm your nerves”. A classic moment of emotional illiteracy perhaps, but given the...
Tami Neilson
Wednesday, 09 July 2025
I was born Tamara Lee Neilson. I had an Uncle Kenny and an Aunt Dolly (who played guitar and banjo, respectively). I mean, did I really have a choice to become anything but a...
Kieron Tyler
Wednesday, 09 July 2025
Stylistically, Utopia wears multiple faces. Opening cut “London 1757” drifts by like a twig floating upon an unhurried stream. Next, “Dancing on Volcanoes” swings, employs a...
Adam Sweeting
Tuesday, 08 July 2025
“Bob’s not the kind of guy you can say no to,” said Sting, reminiscing about the origins of 1984’s Band Aid charity single “...
Pamela Jahn
Tuesday, 08 July 2025
Emma Mackey might have had her breakthrough role as a teenage tough cookie in Netflix's hit Series Sex Education (2019-20223...
John Carvill
Tuesday, 08 July 2025
Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-...
Katie Colombus
Monday, 07 July 2025
Has Sabrina Carpenter officially conquered London? A year after bestie and fellow Disney alumni Taylor Swift declared the “...
Tim Cumming
Monday, 07 July 2025
Silken ambience is the name of the game on this set from Icelandic composer-producer Olafur Arnalds and dreampop singer...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 06 July 2025
Manticore was owned by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and their manager. The organisation provided the name for the band’s label....
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 05 July 2025
 Thomas Adès, Oliver Leith, William Marsey: Shanty, Aquifer et al Hallé Orchestra/Thomas Adès (Hallé)This...
Sarah Kent
Saturday, 05 July 2025
When he was a callow youth of 18, German artist Anselm Keifer got a travel grant to follow in the footsteps of his idol,...
Bernard Hughes
Saturday, 05 July 2025
Siglo de Oro are a vocal ensemble who specialise in older music – and especially neglected older music – but they have...
Kathryn Reilly
Saturday, 05 July 2025
Despite being Mercury nominated, Bazza’s hardly a household name. Nevertheless, his debut album When Will We Land ...
Sarah Kent
Friday, 04 July 2025
When in the 1990s, Jenny Saville’s peers shunned painting in favour of alternative media such as photography, video and...
Graham Fuller
Friday, 04 July 2025
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk, adapted from Deborah Levy’s 2016 Man Booker shortlistee, has been described as a "...
Caspar Gomez
Friday, 04 July 2025
MONDAY 30th JUNE 2025“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by dark brown...

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★★★ KIEFER / VAN GOGH, ROYAL ACADEMY A pairing of opposites

★★★★ HOT MILK Emma Mackey shines as a daughter drawn to the deep end of a family trauma

GLASTONBURY 2025 Five Somerset summer days of music, controversy and beautiful mayhem

★★★★ SABRINA CARPENTER, HYDE PARK BST A sexy, sparkly, summer phenomenon

★★★★ SIGLO DE ORO, WIGMORE HALL Electronic Lamentations and Trojan tragedy

★★★★ BARRY CAN'T SWIM - LONER Dive in to some sizzling summer dance music

disc of the day

Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry

The Bristol agit-prop hero on philosophical form on his final album

The future of Arts Journalism

 

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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.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

tv

Insomnia, Channel 5 review - a chronicle of deaths foretold

Sarah Pinborough's psychological thriller is cluttered but compelling

Live Aid at 40: When Rock'n'Roll Took on the World, BBC Two review - how Bob Geldof led pop's battle against Ethiopian famine

When wackily-dressed pop stars banded together to give a little help to the helpless

Hill, Sky Documentaries review - how Damon Hill battled his demons

Alex Holmes's film is both documentary and psychological portrait

film

theartsdesk Q&A: actor Emma Mackey on 'Hot Milk' and life education

The Anglo-French star of 'Sex Education' talks about her new film’s turbulent mother-daughter bind

Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

The 'Citizen Kane' of jukebox musicals? Richard Lester's film captures Beatlemania in full flight

Hot Milk review - a mother of a problem

Emma Mackey shines as a daughter drawn to the deep end of a family trauma

new music

Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry

The Bristol agit-prop hero on philosophical form on his final album

First Person: country singer Tami Neilson on the superpower of sisterhood

The Canadian-born, New Zealand-based artist on how women have empowered her career

Album: Gwenno - Utopia

The Welsh musical explorer surveys her life

classical

Classical CDs: Bells, birdsong and braggadocio

British contemporary music, percussive piano concertos and a talented baritone sings Mozart

Siglo de Oro, Wigmore Hall review - electronic Lamentations and Trojan tragedy

Committed and intense performance of a newly-commissioned oratorio

Alfred Brendel 1931-2025 - a personal tribute

A master of feeling and intellect

opera

Semele, Royal Opera review - unholy smoke

Style comes and goes in a justifiably dark treatment of Handelian myth

Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - perceptive humanity in period setting

Mostly glorious cast, sharp ideas, fussy conducting

Fidelio, Garsington Opera review - a battle of sunshine and shadows

Intimacy yields to spectacle as Beethoven's light of freedom triumphs

theatre

Run Sister Run, Arcola Theatre review - emphatic emotions, overwrought production
Chloë Moss’s latest play about the different lives of two sisters is deeply felt
Intimate Apparel, Donmar Warehouse review - stirring story of Black survival in 1905 New York
An early Lynn Nottage work gets a superb cast and production
Hercules, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - new Disney stage musical is no 'Lion King'
Big West End crowdpleaser lacks punch and poignancy with join-the-dots plotting and cookie-cutter characters

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

Quadrophenia, Sadler's Wells review - missed opportunity to give new stage life to a Who classic

The brilliant cast need a tighter score and a stronger narrative

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

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

Summer Laugh review - five comics gear up for the Fringe

Terrific initiative by Scottish stand-ups

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

Tom Raworth: Cancer review - truthfulness

A 'lost' book reconfirms Raworth’s legacy as one of the great lyric poets

Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - help!

Ian Leslie loses himself in amateur psychology, and fatally misreads The Beatles

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

Kiefer / Van Gogh, Royal Academy review - a pairing of opposites

Small scale intensity meets large scale melodrama

latest comments

The whole review is stange and lazy. ...

It looks like someone has linked the wrong video...

Thanks for this wonderful tribute to one of my...

What a churlish and childish review of Ian Leslie...

A truly excellent review. It completely expressed...

The Beach Boys finally retired from touring as it...

Just saw this yesterday. A very gripping and...

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