theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Joe Muggs
Saturday, 23 February 2019
It's 18 years since the last Royal Trux album, but it might just as well be 18 months, so easily have they slipped back into their sound. OK, Neil Hegarty and Jennifer Herera have...
Jasper Rees
Friday, 22 February 2019
Curfew (Sky One) is a new drama that begins as it means to go on, roaring from nought to 60 with a wildly implausible car chase. An electric blue McLaren is haring and weaving...
Alexandra Coghlan
Friday, 22 February 2019
Hel, heroine of Gavin Higgins and Francesca Simon’s new opera, is the illegitimate daughter of the Norse god Loki. In many ways The Monstrous Child itself feels like a bastard...
Aleks Sierz
Friday, 22 February 2019
There is no doubt that Peter Shaffer's Equus is a modern classic. But does that justify reviving this 1973 hit play in our current social circumstances? And what can it say to us...
Owen Richards
Friday, 22 February 2019
It’s always interesting to see how presenters make their presence known in documentaries. Louis Theroux hovers on the sidelines like an ethereal presence, Stacey Dooley connects...
Matt Wolf
Friday, 22 February 2019
An entirely electric leading performance from the fast-rising Ukweli Roach is the reason for being for revisiting Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, back in London for the first major...
Heather Neill
Friday, 22 February 2019
Here's a recipe for a successful National Theatre production: take a well-loved classical comedy, employ an outstanding...
Saskia Baron
Friday, 22 February 2019
It’s another night in an emergency services dispatch room in Copenhagen. Policeman Asger Holm has been taken off active...
Markie Robson-Scott
Thursday, 21 February 2019
An angry little boy, in jail after stabbing someone, stands in a Beirut courtroom and tells the judge that he wants to sue...
David Nice
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Give me some air! Stop screaming at me! Those are not exclamations I'd have anticipated from the prospect of a Vienna...
Matt Wolf
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Just when you think you may have heard (and seen) enough of Donald J Trump to last a lifetime, along comes Anne Washburn's...
Tim Cornwell
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Breathe in the love and breathe out the bullshit. After the Arcola Theatre's founder and artistic director Mehmet Ergen read...
Steve O'Rourke
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Did you play videogames back in 2010? If you did, there’s a reasonable chance you played Crackdown 2. Only a reasonable...
Laura De Lisle
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Bodies is the latest in Two's Company's series of what they deem "forgotten masterworks", this one making a less-than-...
Tom Birchenough
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time is an intoxicating cinematic collage-compilation that embraces social history – in...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
It was TV gold-dust. The original seven series of Only Fools and Horses were broadcast on BBC One from 1981-1991, and a...
Miranda Heggie
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
For its first ever performance in this country, the Symphony Orchestra of India - formed in only 2006 - kicked off its UK...
Saskia Baron
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
Time once again to roll out that line about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The creators of All in a Row...
Owen Richards
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
A British boys boarding school in the 1980s. Not the most obvious setting for a romantic comedy, especially one based on the...
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tv
Curfew, Sky One review - belt up for a budget-price Mad Max
Sci-fi car race stars Sean Bean, Phoebe Fox and a nasty virus
Sleeping with Extremists: The Far Right, Channel 4 review - insightful but flawed documentary
Alice Levine follows far right activist Jack Sen with mixed results
Traitors, Channel 4 review - Cold War thriller fails to reach room temperature
Battling Stalin's secret infiltration of Whitehall
film
Capernaum review - sorrow, pity and shame in the Beirut slums
Reality and fiction collide in Nadine Labaki's powerful exposé of Lebanese street children
DVD/Blu-ray: Dawson City - Frozen Time
Gold Rush social history seen through revelatory silent cinema documentary
new music
Joshua Redman Still Dreaming, Barbican review - world-class quartet
Spell-binding and joyous playing
classical
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Ádám Fischer, Barbican review - ferocious Mahler 9 without inscape
Brutally brilliant playing, but inwardness only came at the end of this performance
Hussain, Symphony Orchestra of India, Dalal, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - new sounds from a new band
Vigorous, fresh playing from India’s only professional symphony orchestra
Tynan, Appl, Burnside, Wigmore Hall review - the music of domesticity explored in song
Wide-ranging duet recital covers the joys and trials of home and family
opera
The Monstrous Child, Royal Opera, Linbury Theatre review - fresh operatic mythology for teenagers
Move over Wagner, there's a new set of operatic gods in town
The Rite of Spring/Gianni Schicchi, Opera North review - unlikely but musically satisfying pairing
Odd-couple double bill of Stravinsky and Puccini with plenty to delight ear and eye
The Magic Flute, Welsh National Opera review - charming to hear, charmless to look at
Mozart's pantomime about Nature and Reason stuck in a box
theatre
Equus, Theatre Royal Stratford East review - thrilling physicality
Brilliant revival of the 1970s classic about pagan worship and repressed sexuality
Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, Young Vic review - shards of power amidst much that is overwrought
Stephen Adly Guirgis play is best when most reflective
Tartuffe, National Theatre review - morality-heavy version of the comedy classic
Brexit provides an unwelcome motor for John Donnelly's Molière-with-a-twist
dance
The Rite of Spring/Gianni Schicchi, Opera North review - unlikely but musically satisfying pairing
Odd-couple double bill of Stravinsky and Puccini with plenty to delight ear and eye
Brighton Festival 2019 launches with Guest Director Rokia Traoré
The south-coast's arts extravaganza reveals its 2019 line-up
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, London Coliseum review - a solid, go-to production
Traditional stagings don't come much more satisfying than Derek Deane's for ENB
comedy
Sheeps, Soho Theatre review - sketch comedy with a touch of the surreal
Friendship, fake gurus and fun
Brighton Festival 2019 launches with Guest Director Rokia Traoré
The south-coast's arts extravaganza reveals its 2019 line-up
Adam Riches Is The Guy Who..., Drink, Shop & Do review - super-suave Lothario on the prowl
Immersive show examines male-female engagement in the #MeToo era
gaming
Crackdown 3 review - spectacular super-powered action that was great fun many years ago
Nearly a decade has passed since the last incarnation but little has changed in this stagnant shooter
Battlefield V review - WWII on an epic scale
The veteran series returns for another ambitious tour of duty
Fallout 76 review - how to wreck a perfectly good legacy with one messy game
When home runs go horribly wrong
visual arts
Don McCullin, Tate Britain review - beastliness made beautiful
The darkest, most compelling exhibition you are ever likely to see
Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory review, Tate Modern - plenty but empty
A major retrospective of the French post-impressionist is huge, but unilluminating
Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, Victoria & Albert Museum - sumptuous
Daring, flair and elegance over 80 years
latest comments
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The song at the end of s01e04 when kids go on...
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In 2007 when I have a release the best damn thing...
At the CBSO we've got a long tradition of...
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