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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...
Saskia Baron
Saturday, 22 March 2025
Brief History of a Family is a psychological thriller with a story familiar to anyone who has seen Ripley, Saltburn or Six Degrees of Separation. A clever young man with low...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 22 March 2025
Donizetti: Songs Vols. 3 & 4 Michael Spyres (tenor), Carlo Rizzi (piano) – Vol. 3, Marie-Nicole Lemieux (mezzo-soprano), Giulio Zappa (piano) – Vol. 4. (Opera Rara...
Thomas H Green
Saturday, 22 March 2025
Selena Gomez is the enormously successful Disney child star who grew up to be a Hollywood actor and global pop sensation. As notably, she’s the third most followed person on...
David Nice
Friday, 21 March 2025
Tamino in the operating theatre hallucinating serpents? Sarastro’s acolytes wheeling lit-up plasma packs? From the central part of the Overture onwards – just when we thought we'd...
Saskia Baron
Friday, 21 March 2025
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other is a documentary portrait of photographer Joel Meyerowitz, acclaimed for his pioneering use of colour in the 1960s when only black...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 21 March 2025
The power struggle between New York crime bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello is one of the foundational stories of the...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 21 March 2025
For fans of The Horrors, the headline here is that, 20 years into the career, for their sixth album, the band have lost two...
Nick Hasted
Thursday, 20 March 2025
François Ozon is France’s master of sly secrets, burying hard truths in often dazzling surfaces, from Swimming Pool’s erotic...
David Nice
Thursday, 20 March 2025
Imagine if Bach had set Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili’s allegory of Beauty breaking free from Pleasure with the guidance of...
Kieron Tyler
Thursday, 20 March 2025
The body language fascinates. Mercury Rev’s frontman Jonathan Donahue could be playing a theramin. The arm movements fit the...
Helen Hawkins
Thursday, 20 March 2025
Held up by the censors in India though screened at Cannes and nominated for an International Oscar, Sandhya Suri’s 2024 film...
Jenny Gilbert
Thursday, 20 March 2025
1965 was a year of change in Britain. It saw the abolition of the death penalty and the arrival of the Race Relations Act....
Mark Kidel
Thursday, 20 March 2025
Lizz Wright’s exquisite singing breaks all boundaries between soul, gospel and jazz. In so doing she channels many...
Guy Oddy
Thursday, 20 March 2025
Wardruna are something of a modern musical phenomenon. Part Scandinavian folk revival, part prog rock epic and part pagan...
Sebastian Scotney
Thursday, 20 March 2025
There was a telling remark in Wynton Marsalis’s recent interview with Katty Kay for the BBC show “Influential”. Talking...
Demetrios Matheou
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
With qualifying about to begin for the soccer World Cup, and England sporting a brand new manager, it’s fitting that James...
Saskia Baron
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
I so wanted to like Flow. I’d heard good things from usually reliable critic friends who’d seen it already and told me it...
Guy Oddy
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Going by the sounds of her new album, it wouldn’t unreasonable to assume that Greentea Peng enjoys sucking on a spliff every...
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disc of the day
Album: Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco - I Said I Love You First
An album by a pair of loved-up Hollywood celebs that is, whisper it, rather good
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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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tv
Adolescence, Netflix review - Stephen Graham battles the phantom menace of the internet
How antisocial networks lead to real-life tragedy
Drive to Survive, Season 7, Netflix review - speed, scandal and skulduggery in the pitlane
The F1 documentary series is back on the pace
A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, ITV1 review - powerful dramatisation of the 1955 case that shocked the public
Lucy Boynton excels as the last woman to be executed in Britain
film
Brief History of a Family review - glossy Chinese psychological thriller feels shallow
Immaculately crafted family drama aimed at international art house audiences
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other review - a portrait of photographer Joel Meyerowitz
Scenes from a seemingly picture-perfect marriage
The Alto Knights review - double dose of De Niro doesn't hit the spot
Barry Levinson's Mafia saga drifts gently into the sunset
new music
Album: Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco - I Said I Love You First
An album by a pair of loved-up Hollywood celebs that is, whisper it, rather good
Album: The Horrors - Night Life
A new line-up proves no hindrance to a band bringing electro-rock zip to the darkness
Mercury Rev, Islington Assembly Hall review - the august US psychedelic explorers cover all bases
Balance is maintained between the anticipated and the spontaneous
classical
Classical CDs: Shipping lines, sabre dances and sea lice
Neglected piano concertos, Italian art songs and new music for trombones
Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, St George’s Hanover Square review - Handel’s journey of a soul
Pleasure gets the best deal despite Beauty’s struggle to higher things
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Marsalis, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - sounds above substance
Phenomenal playing and conducting just about hold focus through an overlong symphony
opera
Die Zauberflöte, Royal Academy of Music review - first-rate youth makes for a moving experience
The production takes time to match Mozart's depths, but gets there halfway through
Mansfield Park, Guildhall School review - fun when frothy, chugging in romantic entanglements
Jonathan Dove’s strip-cartoon Jane Austen works well as a showcase for students
theatre
Dear England, National Theatre review - extra time for stirring soccer classic
James Graham adds a neat coda to his ode to decency in sport
Weather Girl, Soho Theatre review - the apocalypse as surreal black comedy
A Californian weather girl copes with fires inside and outside her head
Clueless: The Musical, Trafalgar Studios review - a perfectly manicured update
KT Tunstall's new score brings bite and momentum to a high octane evening
dance
Romeo and Juliet, Royal Ballet review - Shakespeare without the words, with music to die for
Kenneth MacMillan's first and best-loved masterpiece turns 60
Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - Crystal Pite’s cosmic triptych powers back
Total music theatre takes us from the hell of exile to separation at heaven’s gates
comedy
Harry Hill, Wilton's Music Hall review - madcap comic on terrific form
Utterly daft mix of new material and favourite old characters
Books
Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction review - survival instincts
A science writer looks to the stars for a way to dodge our impending doom
Jonathan Buckley: One Boat review - a shore thing
Buckley’s 13th novel is a powerful reflection on intimacy and grief
visual arts
Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage, Stonehenge Visitor Centre review - young photographers explore ancient resonances
The ancient monument opens its first exhibition of new photography
Hylozoic/Desires: Salt Cosmologies, Somerset House and The Hedge of Halomancy, Tate Britain review - the power of white powder
A strong message diluted by space and time
latest comments
I saw Nureyev and Fonteyn dance this wonderful...
This reworking of the original is soulless and...
A bit of a stretch. Could have been done in 2...
Thank you for this fantastic review. While I...
Stopped watching about half an hour in because...
An eagle-eyed reader, Katja von Schuttenbach,...
Disappointing portrayal of Mayne. He was not the...
Excellent review. I saw this production in York...