theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Guy Oddy
Monday, 11 December 2023
Gogol Bordello’s gig in Birmingham this week took place on the evening of Shane MacGowan’s funeral and inevitably turned into something of a celebration of that great poet and...
Guy Oddy
Monday, 11 December 2023
The regular appearance of Kate Rusby’s folkie Christmas albums have almost become a Yuletide tradition in themselves at this time of the year. 2023’s Light Years being, somewhat...
Thomas H Green
Monday, 11 December 2023
The first of two December theartsdesk on Vinyls which will appear in quick succession. This one's mostly new artists. The next one will be our Christmas Special, filled with...
Nick Hasted
Sunday, 10 December 2023
Water glassily reflects in a bridal train, the sun moves between trees, giving way to metal book-leaves, and inside a warehouse so vast he cycles through it, stored cliffs of...
Aleks Sierz
Sunday, 10 December 2023
Let’s start with what we know: the climate emergency is the single most burning question facing the planet. Our life on earth depends on tackling it. Right? Well, maybe not,...
Boyd Tonkin
Sunday, 10 December 2023
“Nobody likes a Messiah…”, deadpanned Robert Hollingworth, with the timing of a practised stand-up. After a pause, “…more than I do.” At St Martin-in-the-Fields on Friday evening...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 10 December 2023
On 21 June 1977, listeners to John Peel’s radio show heard a song titled “Pretty Vacant.” It wasn’t a preview of the...
Justine Elias
Saturday, 09 December 2023
Despite an ominous title, there’s always fair weather in the debut comic adventure film featuring Please Don’t Destroy, a...
Helen Hawkins
Saturday, 09 December 2023
As the 117 minutes of Wonka tick by, the question it poses gains momentum: who is this film actually for? Children of all...
Anthony Cecil
Saturday, 09 December 2023
The Smyrna Catastrophe of 1922, in which tens of thousands of Greeks and Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish soldiers...
James Saynor
Saturday, 09 December 2023
After a few years of cinema, the wow factor of seeing actual things moving about on a screen wore off a bit and showmen saw...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 09 December 2023
Winter Breviary St Martin’s Voices/Andrew Earis (Resonus)The music at the St Martin-in-the-Fields in London has been...
Issy Brooks-Ward
Saturday, 09 December 2023
"Death, as a general statement, is so easy of utterance, of belief", wrote Amy Levy, "it is only when we come face to face...
Sebastian Scotney
Saturday, 09 December 2023
This six-track EP on Verve/UMG brings the breakthrough year of 2023 for Samara Joy to a neat close. In February she won two...
Saskia Baron
Friday, 08 December 2023
There’s a rich seam of folk stories about changelings, infants snatched from home and replaced with a substitute child, to...
Katie Colombus
Friday, 08 December 2023
I honestly never thought I'd add a Cher song to my painstakingly curated Christmas Spotify playlist. But after listening to...
David Nice
Thursday, 07 December 2023
It could have been a winner: a charismatic star soprano of great emotional and interpretative intelligence, a top pianist...
Tim Cumming
Thursday, 07 December 2023
The cat in the hat with the mellifluous voice delivers his Christmas Wish for the festive season, his first Christmas album...
Ed Vulliamy
Wednesday, 06 December 2023
A decade has passed since Paul Lewis concluded an endeavour of a kind never previously undertaken: to perform, over two and...
tv
Kin, BBC One review - in Dublin's not-so-fair city
Superb cast and powerful writing fuel this gripping gangland drama
Boat Story, BBC One review - once upon a time in Yorkshire
New Williams brothers thriller is violent, far-fetched and extremely watchable
The Crown, Season 6, Netflix review - royal epic in a vain search for authenticity
It looks like news photos coming to life, but the dialogue and concept still jar
film
Anselm review - post-war German reckonings in 3D
Wim Wenders' uniquely insightful immersion in Anselm Kiefer's monumental, mystic art
Please Don't Destroy: Treasure of Foggy Mountain review - Dude, where's our map?
Laughter is the loot in this amiably silly American comedy
Wonka review - a confusingly mixed bag of bonbons
The Paddington team struggle to make their usual recipe work
new music
Gogol Bordello, O2 Institute, Birmingham review – an incendiary performance by Eugene Hütz’ gang
Multi-cultural gypsy punks let rip in Birmingham
theartsdesk on Vinyl 81: Nobro, Adrian Sherwood, Evian Christ, Ozric Tentacles, Maple Glider, Viken Arman and more
The most mind-blowingly extensive regular record reviews in the galaxy
classical
I Fagiolini, Hollingworth, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - it's not the Messiah...
Festive fun, and fresh discoveries, from an irrepressible ensemble
Natalie Dessay, Philippe Cassard, Milton Court review - flashes of magic
More downtime than expected in an intelligent programme
opera
Rodelinda, The English Concert, Bicket, Saffron Hall review - perfect team helps us stay the long Handel course
Saffron Hall celebrates its 10th anniversary in the greatest possible style
Gazzaniga's Don Giovanni, Royal College of Music review - a modest one-acter overloaded
Good young singers get more opportunities than the actual work offers
Jephtha, Royal Opera review - uncomfortable sacrifice oratorio not seismic enough
Sobriety and darkness eclipse Handel's dramatic vividness, despite strong performances
theatre
Talking About the Fire, Royal Court review – urgent and informative
Chris Thorpe’s one-man show about nuclear weapons is intelligent and humane
The Homecoming, Young Vic Theatre review - Pinter's disturbing masterpiece is given a low-key revival
Unsettling investigation of patriarchal family and sexual relationships has uneven force
Dreaming and Drowning, Bush Theatre - dense and intense monologue about Black queer identity
Terrific showcase for writer-director Kwame Owusu and his performer
dance
The Dante Project, Royal Ballet review - brave but flawed take on the Divine Comedy returns
Hell and Purgatory get vivid if diffuse music from Thomas Adès, but Heaven is pallid
The Limit, Linbury Theatre review - a dance-theatre romcom that lacks both rom and com
An attempt to amplify a playscript with dance suggests the play should be left to speak for itself
Anemoi / The Cellist, Royal Ballet review - a feast of music in a neat double bill
Rachmaninov and Elgar take the laurels in a brace of prize-winning one-act ballets
comedy
Trevor Noah: Off the Record, O2 review - welcome return to standup for the polyglot motormouth
Back on tour, the former TV host has lost none of his charisma and charm
Michael McIntyre, Brighton Centre review - observational everyman
Jovial comic's first tour in five years
Books
Mathias Énard: The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild review - a man of infinite death
A modern morality tale teeming with morbid excess
Anne Michaels: Held review - one story across time
Fragments span the genration gap in this daring family saga of inheritance and trauma
Ishion Hutchinson: School of Instructions review - learning against estrangement
A vivid eulogy for the Jamaican soldiers of the British West Indies Regiment
visual arts
Mark Rothko, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris review - a show well worth the trip across the Channel
Abstraction with emotion and soul in a landmark retrospective
Women in Revolt!, Tate Britain review - a super important if overwhelming show
Women protesting with all their might in both art and life
A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, Tate Modern review - pulling out the stops to address issues around cultural identity
Thirty-six African artists reconnect with their heritage in dramatic and moving images
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