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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disc of the day
Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry
The Bristol agit-prop hero on philosophical form on his final album
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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
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
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
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
Kieran Hodgson, Soho Theatre review - a love affair soured by Trump
Can America be great again for the comic?
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
Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, National Portrait Gallery review - a protégé losing her way
A brilliant painter in search of a worthwhile subject
latest comments
The whole review is stange and lazy. ...
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Thanks for this wonderful tribute to one of my...
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A truly excellent review. It completely expressed...
Why is the opening song "infamous"?
The Beach Boys finally retired from touring as it...
Just saw this yesterday. A very gripping and...