theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Katie Colombus
Tuesday, 05 July 2022
By day three of any festival things are usually winding down. But there was a sense that Love Supreme have saved the best for last this year with a strong offering of funk and...
David Nice
Tuesday, 05 July 2022
Last year’s relatively slimline East Neuk Festival felt like a feast in time of plague. This July everything was back to full strength in numerous venues, with the most remarkable...
India Lewis
Tuesday, 05 July 2022
A sequel is always a hard thing to write, especially if the book that precedes it is a bestseller, adapted for television and read by more than a million people. Yet Jessie Burton...
Thomas H Green
Tuesday, 05 July 2022
The third album from Stockholm rowdies Viagra Boys doesn’t muck about with what they do, but it’s more persistently punkin’ than their last. There’s more than a snifter of Iggy...
Adam Sweeting
Monday, 04 July 2022
At the beginning of this film, Mick Jagger says: “What most documentaries do is repeat the same thing over and over… all the mythology is repeated until it becomes true.” He’s...
Stephen Walsh
Monday, 04 July 2022
Reviewing the Grange Festival production of Tamerlano the other day, I noted the difficulty Handel poses the modern director with his byzantine plots and often ludicrous love...
Helen Hawkins
Monday, 04 July 2022
Where should Leila live — Ilford or Kent? It doesn’t sound like an earth-shattering decision for a 15-year-old to make, but...
Kieron Tyler
Monday, 04 July 2022
The last minute of Found Light’s third track “Seaside Haiku” is defined by the repetition of a single phrase: “give but don’...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 03 July 2022
Oghneya opens with the extraordinary “Matar Al Sabah.” Jazzy, with an overt Brazilian feel it gently swings and swoons....
Rachel Halliburton
Saturday, 02 July 2022
Pinocchio is one of our most irreverent metamorphosis stories, and in this visually ingenious blend of film and stage...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 02 July 2022
Beethoven, Berg, Bartók: Violin Concertos Frank Peter Zimmermann Berliner Philharmoniker/Daniel Harding, Kirill...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 01 July 2022
As the world lurches ever deeper into multiple manifestations of chaos, writer-director Peter Kosminsky’s new drama about...
Gary Naylor
Friday, 01 July 2022
We’re in New York City, in an upscale loft apartment, with that absence of stuff that speaks of a power to acquire anything...
India Lewis
Friday, 01 July 2022
The title of Katya Adaui’s debut collection in English is taken from one of the 12 short stories it contains: an allusion to...
Veronica Lee
Friday, 01 July 2022
Joe Lycett’s career was on an upward trajectory when he took on hosting duties on The Great British Sewing Bee, and the...
Guy Oddy
Friday, 01 July 2022
In a week when all kinds of people were going bonkers over an octogenarian playing songs from over 50 years ago to tens of...
Barney Harsent
Friday, 01 July 2022
“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” That’s the rule, right? Unless, of course, what happens is that you form a pop-rock...
Caspar Gomez
Thursday, 30 June 2022
Last days of June 2022, I sit in my writing hut. My liver is radioactive jelly, my nose reinforced concrete, my leg muscles...
Markie Robson-Scott
Thursday, 30 June 2022
Nitram, Australian director Justin Kurzel’s deeply disturbing film about the man responsible for the Port Arthur massacre in...
disc of the day
Album: Viagra Boys - Cave World
Swedish retro-futurist punks fire out another tasty set of tough, goofy stompers
tv
Mick Jagger: My Life as a Rolling Stone review, BBC Two - the rock'n'roll enigma gives little away as the band reaches 60
Impressive archive footage but no new insights
The Undeclared War, Channel 4 review - how would the UK cope with a devastating cyber-attack?
Peter Kosminsky's drama probes the secret world of GCHQ's techno-spooks
Man vs Bee, Netflix review - or should it be Bee vs Bean?
Rowan Atkinson's new comic character is no Blackadder
film
Nitram review - chilling drama based on the Port Arthur gunman
Caleb Landry Jones in an extraordinary performance as a man-child without empathy
Moon, 66 Questions review - captivating daughter-father drama
An outstanding debut by the Greek New Wave director Jacqueline Lentzou
We (Nous) review - a low-key look at life in the suburbs of Paris
Nothing much happens in Alice Diop's documentary portrait of the periphery
new music
Love Supreme Festival, Sunday review - a heady mixture of jazz forms in a glorious setting
Eclectic jazz on the Sussex Downs
Album: Viagra Boys - Cave World
Swedish retro-futurist punks fire out another tasty set of tough, goofy stompers
classical
theartsdesk at the East Neuk Festival 2022 - on Cloud Nine for five days of the greatest music-making
Five supreme pianists, two top string quartets and so much more on the Fife coast
Classical CDs: Nightingales, seasons and practical jokes
A pair of luxury orchestra own-label releases, plus French piano music and a contemporary composer grappling with time and space
George Fu, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - high intellect and visceral shocks
Chopin the modernist, Rzewski the electric in totally satisfying recital
opera
Alcina, Glyndebourne review - Handel on the strand
High quality singing and playing on a dubiously coloured stage
Così fan tutte, Royal Opera review - vibrant youth and vocal beauty
Lithe cast and conducting unfazed by over-egged production, at least until the bitter end
theartsdesk in Zurich - forging a brilliant new Ring
Gianandrea Noseda, Andreas Homoki and top cast dazzle in an unforgettable 'Rheingold'
theatre
Favour, Bush Theatre review - Ambreen Razia's punchy new tug-of-love drama
A brilliant balance of raucous comedy and immense pathos
The Making of Pinocchio, LIFT 2022, Battersea Arts Centre review - witty, ingenious exploration of gender transition
How physical transition is etched into the story of our world
The White Card, Soho Theatre review - expelling the audience from its comfort zone
Art and race intersect to provocative effect
dance
The Rite of Spring, Pina Bausch/École des Sables, Sadler's Wells review - explosive and disturbing
At last, the pan-African production of Bausch's landmark choreography arrives on the London stage
The Car Man, Royal Albert Hall review - grand scale drama and decadence
An explosive restaging of the original dance drama
Like Water for Chocolate, Royal Ballet review - confusing and ill-conceived
Christopher Wheeldon's usual flair deserts him in his latest three-act story ballet
comedy
Joe Lycett, Eventim Apollo review - prankster goes long-form
Former Sewing Bee host tells a complicated tale
Ricky Gervais, SuperNature, Netflix review - a provocateur at work
An equal opportunities offender delivers a masterclass in meta comedy
Andy Zaltzman, Soho Theatre review - satire on the hoof
Setting the world to rights, one joke at a time
Books
Jessie Burton: The House of Fortune review - a muted, sensitive sequel
The ghosts gather as the miniaturist returns in Burton’s latest instalment
Katya Adaui: Here Be Icebergs review - odd relations
Beguiling stories of families, familiars, guns and red hair
Stanislav Aseyev: In Isolation - Dispatches from Occupied Donbas review - journeys through space and time in Ukraine
How the separatist republic became lost in its nostalgia for a largely imaginary past
visual arts
Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War review - a lovingly crafted documentary portrait
In love and war: one of England's great watercolourists reappraised
Vivian Maier: Anthology, MK Gallery review - what an amazing eye!
The brilliance of an amateur photographer who was almost lost to the world
Venice Biennale 2022 review - The Milk of Dreams Part 2: The Arsenale
This wildly ambitious mega-exhibition unravels in spectacular style
latest comments
Few have heard of Dalton until recently. She is...
Annie Fischer is a fantastic observer, critic,...
Tom Wlaschiha's performance in this series is a...
Great festival in many ways. But the one thing...
Fine singing and playing diminished by vulgarity...
Thanks for calling out the implausibility. By the...
Writing for the show was inconsistent throughout...
I think William Hurt was a fabulously talented...