theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
David Nice
Tuesday, 21 March 2023
Nearly 40 years old, Andrei Serban’s Royal Opera Turandot feels like a gilded relic (I felt like a relic myself on learning that my writer neighbour wasn’t born when I saw Gwyneth...
Kieron Tyler
Tuesday, 21 March 2023
“Learn to Burn” generates the loudest and most sustained applause. As it was originally the opening track of Robert Forster’s 2015 album Songs To Play, the response is unexpected...
Simon Thompson
Tuesday, 21 March 2023
Two women featured prominently in this programme; the one a composer and the other a conductor.To the composer first. Long before she hit New York big time, Anna Clyne was at...
Sebastian Scotney
Tuesday, 21 March 2023
The Beasts (As Bestas) is all of two hours and 17 minutes long, and yet to look away is never an option. Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen reels the viewer in masterfully as...
Markie Robson-Scott
Monday, 20 March 2023
Mr Williams (a wonderfully restrained, Oscar-nominated Bill Nighy) is taking time off work from his job in the Public Works department at County Hall in London. It’s the early...
David Nice
Monday, 20 March 2023
You don’t have to be Scandinavian to act out Strindberg’s fantastical extremes at the highest level, but I’ve not seen any British performers come close to what Norwegians are...
Matt Wolf
Monday, 20 March 2023
I'm proffering just a tad less than three cheers for Allelujah, the film version of Alan Bennett's 2018 Bridge Theatre play...
Aleks Sierz
Monday, 20 March 2023
Is it a good idea to work with your spouse? The Way Old Friends Do, a love letter to ABBA tribute bands – which...
Kieron Tyler
Monday, 20 March 2023
In European folklore, mélusine are woman from the waist up and fish or serpent below. The fabled character is first known in...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 19 March 2023
Sometime in early October 1963 John Lennon and Paul McCartney encountered The Rolling Stones and offered them one of their...
Graham Fuller
Sunday, 19 March 2023
The 17th century romantic tragedy Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), Ealing Studios' first Technicolor film, was conceived as...
Miranda Heggie
Saturday, 18 March 2023
On paper, the formula shouldn’t be that special. Really good music played by really good people is hardly a groundbreaking...
Marjorie Prime, Menier Chocolate Factory review - superbly acted chiller about a contemporary crisis
Helen Hawkins
Saturday, 18 March 2023
Artificial intelligence has become an even hotter topic since Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime was first staged in Los...
Aleks Sierz
Saturday, 18 March 2023
Some plays are instantly forgettable, others leave a tender fold in the memory. I well remember seeing Zinnie Harris’s...
Thomas H Green
Saturday, 18 March 2023
If popular music is dead and done and there’s nowhere left to go, rising duo 100 gecs, from St Louis, Missouri, are here to...
Nick Hasted
Friday, 17 March 2023
Neil Jordan’s take on Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is the first since Bob Rafelson’s Poodle Springs (1998), itself a...
Theartsdesk
Friday, 17 March 2023
Sent by a surely reluctant BBC PR, an ardent choral singer and supporter of new music, last Tuesday’s email had a title to...
Saskia Baron
Friday, 17 March 2023
There’s a huge amount to admire in Rye Lane, a new romcom set in south London. It’s the first feature directed by...
David Nice
Friday, 17 March 2023
This longest, wackiest and most riskily diverse of Third Symphonies became Esa-Pekka Salonen’s personal property during his...
disc of the day
DVD/Blu-ray: Living
Bill Nighy owns Oliver Hermanus' delicate Kurosawa remake scripted by Kazuo Ishiguro
tv
Endeavour: The Final Episode, ITV1 review - the final bow for Oxford's finest
The curtain falls on a milestone in TV detection
MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, Netflix review - a field day for conspiracy theorists
Will we ever know what really happened to the vanished Malaysian airliner?
The Great British Bake Off Musical, Noel Coward Theatre review - blue-chip cast lift daft confection
It's more adult panto than mature musical, with the sauce liberally ladled on
film
The Beasts review - a countryside idyll loses its charm
Galician locals showing French interlopers quite how unwelcome they are
DVD/Blu-ray: Living
Bill Nighy owns Oliver Hermanus' delicate Kurosawa remake scripted by Kazuo Ishiguro
Allelujah review - Alan Bennett put through the blender
2018 Bridge Theatre play is streamlined for the screen
new music
Robert Forster, Lafayette review - élan, spontaneity and thoughtfulness from the former Go-Between
Time spent in a continuum where the past and present are indivisible
Album: Cécile McLorin Salvant - Mélusine
Remarkable, uncategorisable seventh album from the US composer and singer
Music Reissues Weekly: Duffy Power - Innovations, Live at the BBC
Essential additions to the great British blues-jazz stylist's catalogue
classical
Osborne, RSNO, Chan, Usher Hall, Edinburgh - cinematic sweep and surging drama
Farewell to a much-loved Principal Guest Conductor in powerful Clyne and Tchaikovsky
Amidon, Clayton, SCO, Kuusisto, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - profuse and outstanding musicianship
The Finnish violinist and conductor steers an insightful and exciting trio of concerts
Axing the BBC Singers: four associated musicians on why it's so wrong
Dame Sarah Connolly leads musical voices on the latest cultural vandalism
opera
Turandot, Royal Opera review - spectacle and sound wow in this significant revival
Pappano marshals the glitter and a fine cast delivers the goods
La bella dormente nel bosco/L'enfant et les sortilèges, Royal College of Music review - pure theatrical magic
Fairytale operas by Respighi and Ravel come together to create enchantment and danger
Blaze of Glory!, Welsh National Opera review - sparkling entertainment up the valleys
A local tale told with precision, wit and affection
theatre
Dance of Death, National Theatre of Norway, Coronet Theatre review - straight for the jugular
White-heat Strindberg from Norwegian actors undeterred by technical hitches
The Way Old Friends Do, Park Theatre review - sweet, but flimsy
Mark Gatiss and Ian Hallard’s ABBA tribute is fun, but clunky
Marjorie Prime, Menier Chocolate Factory review - superbly acted chiller about a contemporary crisis
Pulitzer finalist asks how good an ally is modern technology
dance
'You want to cry from loving to do it so much' - Lynn Seymour 1939-2023
Remembering the unique ballerina who injected me with her poison
Turn It Out with Tiler Peck, Sadler's Wells review - America's ballet wonder-woman raises the barre
On her UK solo debut, New York City Ballet’s queen of speed gives audiences a wild ride
Woolf Works, Royal Ballet review - Wayne McGregor's modern classic impresses all over again
Alessandra Ferri returns as the moving focus of this powerful piece
comedy
Bridget Christie, The Haymarket, Basingstoke review - making the menopause funny
Turning 50 can be fun
Books
Margaret Atwood: Old Babes in the Wood review - bookending the short story
Semi-autobiographical tales of loss and love sit oddly among snails and aliens
Janet Malcolm: Still Pictures - On Photography and Memory review - a rare glimpse at a guarded personal history
Old photographs catalyse this evasive and poignant book of memoirs
Nicole Flattery: Nothing Special review - returning to the Factory
The social isolation of Andy Warhol’s typist
visual arts
The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance, National Gallery review - put in context, a much-loved picture reveals its complexity
An aged, would-be seductress is reunited with her reluctant partner
Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons, Hayward Gallery review - spooky installations by a master of detail
Nelson's worlds within worlds invite you to disappear down the rabbit hole
Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way, Turner Contemporary review - a feedback loop of musical union
The artist's award-winning Venice Biennale offering comes to Margate
latest comments
Seymour's silent scream of pain in The Invitation...
Thanks a lot for the crap review. You obviously...
Bravo to the makers of this film! ...during EO's...
You make some good points there. Certainly no-one...
A visibly frail George Takei wanders this tiny...
no one is getting hurt, he says, "laughter is...
What an awfully petulant review. "Go away Bono...
I can understand the pain expressed by all these...