theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Theartsdesk
Wednesday, 01 October 2025
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
Tuesday, 20 May 2025
The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter. The Fifth Step, though, is a gentler beast...
Bernard Hughes
Tuesday, 20 May 2025
Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two established favourites from big names...
Veronica Lee
Tuesday, 20 May 2025
Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative talent – more than a decade ago, but he reached...
Caspar Gomez
Tuesday, 20 May 2025
Photographer Finetime and I have our first pints outside Dalton’s, a bar on Brighton seafront, at almost exactly midday. They are Beavertown Neck Oil IPA at 4.3%. The sun is out,...
David Nice
Monday, 19 May 2025
There’s a grail, but it doesn't glow in a mundane if perverted Christian ritual. Three of the main characters have young and old actor versions and the “wonder-working spear” is a...
Adam Sweeting
Monday, 19 May 2025
The appalling destruction of Pan Am’s flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was put under the spotlight in January this year in...
Jenny Gilbert
Monday, 19 May 2025
Ballet is hardly a stranger to Broadway. Until the late 1950s every other musical had its fantasy ballet sequence – think...
Kieron Tyler
Monday, 19 May 2025
“Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 18 May 2025
Quoted in an early music press article on his band Chapterhouse, singer-guitarist Stephen Patman said their ambition was “to...
Tim Cumming
Saturday, 17 May 2025
Songlines Encounters is your round-the-world ticket to great world music and performances, a chance to travel widely in...
Matt Wolf
Saturday, 17 May 2025
The water proves newly inviting in The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Rattigan's mournful 1952 play that some while ago established...
Matt Wolf
Saturday, 17 May 2025
It's one thing to be indebted to a playwright, as Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter have been at different times to Beckett, or...
James Saynor
Saturday, 17 May 2025
There’s nothing more healthy than dissing your own dad, and filmmaker Amalia Ulman says that her old man was “a Gen X...
Graham Rickson
Friday, 16 May 2025
Brahms: Lieder Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Gerold Huber (piano) (Sony)The concert I attended of Brahms Lieder in...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 16 May 2025
As every social space in Brighton once again transforms into a mire of self-important music biz sorts loudly bellowing about...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 16 May 2025
If you compiled a list of favourite TV series from the last couple of decades, you’d find that Zoë Telford has appeared in...
David Nice
Friday, 16 May 2025
It was a daring idea to mark Ravel’s 150th birthday year with a single concert packing in all his works for solo piano. Jean...
Graham Fuller
Friday, 16 May 2025
Good One is a generation-and-gender gap drama that mostly unfolds during a weekend hiking and camping trip in the Catskills...
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.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
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?
disc of the day
Album: Robert Forster - Strawberries
The former Go-Betweens linchpin celebrates life’s quirks and temptations
The future of Arts Journalism
You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!
We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d
And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.
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.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
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
The Bombing of Pan Am 103, BBC One review - new dramatisation of the horrific Lockerbie terror attack
Six-part series focuses on the families and friends of the victims
theartsdesk Q&A: Zoë Telford on playing a stressed-out psychiatrist in ITV's 'Malpractice'
She nearly became a dancer, but now she's one of TV's most familiar faces
The Trunk, Netflix review - stylish, noir-ish Korean drama wrapped around a beguiling love story
Unusual psychological study of a stranger paid to save a toxic marriage
film
Good One review - a life lesson in the wild with her dad and his pal
A wise-beyond-her-years teen discovers male limitations in a deft indie drama
E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea review - dull docu-fiction take on the designer-architect
Iconic Irish modernist Eileen Gray gets an artsy and overly reverential appraisal
new music
The Great Escape Festival 2025, Brighton review - a feast of music from across the world
Hitting Saturday shows by deBasement, Dog Race, Chloe Leigh, Oh Dirty Fingers & more
Album: Robert Forster - Strawberries
The former Go-Betweens linchpin celebrates life’s quirks and temptations
Music Reissues Weekly: Chapterhouse - White House Demos
What the shoegazers were up to before they were categorised as shoegazers
classical
Josefowicz, LSO, Mälkki, Barbican review - two old favourites and one new one
Julia Perry well worth her place alongside Stravinsky and Bartók
Classical CDs: Jelly Babies, porridge and kazoos
German art songs, French piano concertos and entertaining contemporary music
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Wigmore Hall review - too big a splash in complete Ravel
Panache but little inner serenity in a risky three-part marathon
opera
Parsifal, Glyndebourne review - the music flies up, the drama remains below
Incandescent singing and playing, but the production domesticates the numinous
Giulio Cesare, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican review - 10s across the board in perfect Handel
When you get total musicality from everyone involved, there’s nothing better
theatre
The Fifth Step, Soho Place review - wickedly funny two-hander about defeating alcoholism
David Ireland pits a sober AA sponsor against a livewire drinker, with engaging results
The Deep Blue Sea, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - Tamsin Greig honours Terence Rattigan
The 1952 classic lives to see another day in notably name-heavy revival
The Brightening Air, Old Vic review - Chekhov jostles Conor McPherson in writer-director's latest
The Irishman's first new play in over a decade is engaging but overstuffed
dance
Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works, Royal Ballet review - the impressive range and reach of Christopher Wheeldon's craft
The title says it: as dancemaker, as creative magnet, the man clearly works his socks off
The Forsythe Programme, English National Ballet review - brains, beauty and bravura
Once again the veteran choreographer and maverick William Forsythe raises ENB's game
comedy
Mr Swallow: Show Pony, Richmond Theatre review - magic tricks and mayhem
Nick Mohammed gives his creation's origin story
Books
Zsuzsanna Gahse: Mountainish review - seeking refuge
Notes on danger and dialogue in the shadow of the Swiss Alps
Patrick McGilligan: Woody Allen - A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham review - New York stories
Fair-minded Woody Allen biography covers all bases
visual arts
Do Ho Suh: Walk the House, Tate Modern review - memories are made of this
Home sweet home preserved as exquisite replicas
Ed Atkins, Tate Britain review - hiding behind computer generated doppelgängers
Emotions too raw to explore
latest comments
I'm not sure if you've read the review, because I...
This is another production which is created by a...
Just watched this. Unlike you I thought it was...
Excellent review, thank you! Such an important...
Pretty vile and unfair review - especially the...
And with their best song 'How Does It Feel?'. x
Thanks so much for this review of Shack at Union...
A heavier touch wouldn't have worked (though the...