sun 22/06/2025

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...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 22 June 2025
“Theirs is truly rock in extremis, a précis of the youthful impetuosity and cathartic chaos at the heart of real rock ’n roll.”This extract from the essay in the booklet coming...
Nick Hasted
Saturday, 21 June 2025
The 23 years since 28 Days Later and especially those since Danny Boyle’s soulful encapsulation of Britain’s best spirit at the 2012 Olympics have offered rich material for a film...
Robert Beale
Saturday, 21 June 2025
Two concerts in the BBC Philharmonic’s series in their own studio form the climax of studies at the Royal Northern College of Music for a small number of soloists on the...
Adam Sweeting
Saturday, 21 June 2025
With Brad Pitt’s much-trumpeted F1 movie about to screech noisily into the multiplexes, it’s not a bad time to be reminded of the career of one of the sport’s indisputable greats...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 21 June 2025
 Michel Béroff: Complete Erato Recordings (Erato)My associating French pianist Michel Béroff with ‘modern’ music says more about my age than it does about Béroff’s actual...
Guy Oddy
Saturday, 21 June 2025
Yungblud has declared his fourth album, Idols, to be a “a project with no limitations”. This is quite a claim.So, what...
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...
Kieron Tyler
Friday, 20 June 2025
After the evening’s second song “The Last of England,” Patrick Wolf cautions “I’ve got nothing left to say.” During the...
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...
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...
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...
Ibi Keita
Friday, 20 June 2025
Loyle Carner’s Hopefully! is a luminous, deeply personal exploration of fatherhood, identity, and artistic reinvention,...
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...
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...

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★★★ BONNIE RAITT, BRIGHTON DOME The US star concludes her UK tour with a rockin' south coast send-off

★★★★ HAIM - I QUIT The Californian trio continue their ascent to the top of the pop-rock tree

ALDEBURGH FESTIVAL Past passions return to life by the sea

★★★★★ THE MIDNIGHT BELL, SADLER'S WELLS A first reprise for one of Matthew Bourne's most compelling shows to date

★★★★ HIDDEN DOOR FESTIVAL 2025 Art and machinery align in former paper factory

★★ THE BUCCANEERS, APPLE TV+, SEASON 2 American adventuresses run riot in Cornwall

★★★★ MAZEPPA, GRANGE PARK OPERA Unbalanced drama with a powerful core

★★★ EDWARD BURRA, TATE BRITAIN Social satire with a nasty bite

disc of the day

Album: Yungblud - Idols

Dominic Harrison’s latest disc fails to live up to the hype

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

Prost, BBC 4 review - life and times of the driver they called 'The Professor'

Alain Prost liked being world champion so much he did it four times

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

film

28 Years Later review - an unsentimental, undead education

Allegorical mayhem in an eerily familiar zombie Britain

Red Path review - the dead know everything

A compelling story of a trail of Tunisian tears

Blu-ray: Darling

John Schlesinger's Sixties classic now feels problematic, but retains an icky fascination

new music

Music Reissues Weekly: The Sonics - High Time

Handsome box set of seven-inchers celebrating the ferocious Sixties rockers

Album: Yungblud - Idols

Dominic Harrison’s latest disc fails to live up to the hype

Patrick Wolf, Rough Trade East review - the Kent-based bard refashions his new album ‘Crying the Neck’

Despite its record shop setting, this magnetic performance is a show as such

classical

RNCM International Diploma Artists, BBC Philharmonic, MediaCity, Salford review - spotting stars of tomorrow

Cream of the graduate crop from Manchester's Music College show what they can do

Classical CDs: Bells, whistles and bowing techniques

A great pianist's early recordings boxed up, plus classical string quartets, French piano trios and a big American symphony

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 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

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

latest comments

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

You mean James Ford. Not James Frost. x

Italodisco is not "Italian disco" and, as a huge...

I am an American and I'm fascinated by the...

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