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Theartsdesk
Tuesday, 31 December 2024
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic...
Helen Hawkins
Thursday, 05 December 2024
The writer-director of 2017’s I Am Not a Witch, Rungano Nyoni, has come up with another scorcher, this time taking aim at Zambia’s social structures, in which women’s power can...
Veronica Lee
Thursday, 05 December 2024
Ricky Gervais begins by bringing us up to date with the latest “outrage” he has caused; two Netflix specials, SuperNature and Armageddon, upset some people, he tells us, thus...
Jonathan Geddes
Thursday, 05 December 2024
'Tis the season for all manner of bugs, colds and illnesses. One had befallen Katy J Pearson, who struck an apologetic note after the night’s first number to say she had been...
Thomas H Green
Thursday, 05 December 2024
Amid the electro-rock crunch of “Sorry, Etc”, Lauren Mayberry spits out, “I killed myself to be one of the boys/I lost my head to be one of the boys/I bit my tongue to be one of...
Boyd Tonkin
Wednesday, 04 December 2024
“I am not better than my fathers.” Cracked, pained, occasionally rasping, rising to a fearsome roar then subsiding to a throaty whisper, Sir Bryn Terfel’s still-formidable bass-...
Kieron Tyler
Wednesday, 04 December 2024
White Denim’s literally titled 12th album opens with the fidgety “Light on.” Drawing a line between electronica and...
Thomas H Green
Tuesday, 03 December 2024
VINYL OF THE MONTHBlood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)When death metal takes LSD it’s quite a thing. Whether...
Robert Beale
Tuesday, 03 December 2024
Kahchun Wong’s final concert of 2024 in the Hallé Manchester season was something of a surprise. At first sight, the sparkle...
Graham Rickson
Tuesday, 03 December 2024
That Juggernaut is as good as it is seems in hindsight to have been a happy accident. Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 in...
David Nice
Monday, 02 December 2024
How many Rigolettos have regular operagoers among you sat through where there wasn’t some major defect, in either the...
Sarah Kent
Monday, 02 December 2024
Last month a portrait of Alan Turing by AI robot AI-Da sold at Sotheby’s for $1.08 million – proof that, in some people’s...
Guy Oddy
Monday, 02 December 2024
Nothing and All at Once is the debut album from New Delhi electronica producer Jay Pei in his Panelia guise. Featuring a...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 01 December 2024
The return to shops of a consecutive sequence of five of John Cale's Seventies albums through different labels is...
Graham Fuller
Sunday, 01 December 2024
The universal fear of dying is the theme of Black Tuesday, a terse, bleak 1954 thriller that is belatedly being recognized...
Adam Sweeting
Saturday, 30 November 2024
“You either got faith or you got unbelief, and there ain’t no neutral ground,” as Bob Dylan sang, but Cardinal Lawrence (...
Rachel Halliburton
Saturday, 30 November 2024
If Harold Pinter’s work represents, as he slyly joked, the weasel under the cocktail cabinet, then Oscar Wilde’s...
Heather Neill
Saturday, 30 November 2024
It's all too easy to underplay the melancholy of Shakespeare's comedy of divided twins, misplaced – sometimes narcissistic...
Gary Naylor
Saturday, 30 November 2024
Percy Jackson is neither the missing one from Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael, nor an Australian Test...
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disc of the day
Album: Lauren Mayberry - Vicious Creature
The CHVRCHES singer goes solo with a sally into pop that doesn't quite hit the target
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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.
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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
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Tate Modern review - an exhaustive and exhausting show
Flashing lights, beeps and buzzes are diverting, but quickly pall
Senna, Netflix review - the life and legend of Brazil's greatest driver
You saw the movie, now watch the TV series
Landman, Paramount+ review - once upon a time in the West
Billy Bob Thornton stars in Taylor Sheridan's Texas oil drama
film
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl review - mordant seriocomedy about buried abuse
Rungano Nyoni writes and directs a vitriolic story about the Zambian middle class
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Tate Modern review - an exhaustive and exhausting show
Flashing lights, beeps and buzzes are diverting, but quickly pall
new music
Katy J Pearson, Saint Luke's and the Winged Ox, Glasgow review - warm-hearted songs to banish the cold
Despite being unwell the singer's voice was rich in character
Album: Lauren Mayberry - Vicious Creature
The CHVRCHES singer goes solo with a sally into pop that doesn't quite hit the target
classical
Bach Mendelssohn Festival, Part I, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra review - the flame that never died
Top-flight performers show how a musical legacy endured
Currie, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - sparkle and intrigue
Energy and excitement in MacMillan… and then a surprise
Rajakesar, Selaocoe, The Hermes Experiment, Wigmore Hall review - a joyful, fascinating laboratory of noise
Celebrating the avant-garde through different cultures
opera
Rigoletto, Irish National Opera / Murrihy, Collins, NCH Dublin review - greatness everywhere
Sheer perfection in Soraya Mafi’s Gilda and an Irish mezzo’s Berlioz
The Elixir of Love, English National Opera review - a tale of two halves
Flat first act, livelier second, singers not always helped by conductor and director
theatre
The Importance of Being Earnest, National Theatre review - no shortage of acid-tipped delight
Oscar Wilde speaks just as strongly to the 21st century as he did to his own
Twelfth Night, Orange Tree Theatre review - perfectly pitched sad and merry musical mayhem
Shakespeare's comedy of identity confusion benefits from a 1940s setting
The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, The Other Palace - all Greek to me
Myths and monsters make for a curiously bland and bloodless musical
dance
First Person: singer-songwriter Sam Amidon on working in Dingle with Teaċ Daṁsa on 'Nobodaddy'
Michael Keegan-Dolan’s mind-boggling total work of art arrives at Sadlers Wells this week
Akram Khan, GIGENIS, Sadler’s Wells review - now 50, Khan returns to his roots
The dancer-choreographer goes epic in a show that unites South Asian dance styles
comedy
Kemah Bob, Soho Theatre review - Thailand, massage and mental health
Texan's full-length debut is a personal story
Books
Jeff Young: Wild Twin review - a box of tricks
Fragments cohere in this dog-eared history of an itinerant life
Interview: rising star Chloe Savage on the Arctic, outer space, and igniting children's wonder for the unknown
Beautiful books take you to worlds that are intricately imagined and a feast for the eye
visual arts
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Tate Modern review - an exhaustive and exhausting show
Flashing lights, beeps and buzzes are diverting, but quickly pall
ARK: United States V by Laurie Anderson, Aviva Studios, Manchester review - a vessel for the thoughts and imaginings of a lifetime
Despite anticipating disaster, this mesmerising voyage is full of hope
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