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...
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...
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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
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 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
film
28 Years Later review - an unsentimental, undead education
Allegorical mayhem in an eerily familiar zombie Britain
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
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
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
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
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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