sat 24/05/2025

book reviews and features

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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Faust, Royal Opera review - pure theatre in this solid reviv...

“Satan come to me!” The Devil doesn’t so much appear in David McVicar’s Faust as reveal himself to have always been there. We discover...

Mrs. Warren's Profession, Garrick Theatre review - moth...

How do you make Bernard Shaw sear the stage anew? You can trim the text, as the director Dominic Cooke has, bringing this prolix writer's 1893...

Mongrel review - deeply empathetic filmmaking from Taiwan

There is a dark, spectral quality to this compassionate film about Southeast Asian migrant workers in rural Taiwan. At the centre...

Owen, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manche...

Manchester Camerata spent eight years performing and recording a complete edition of Mozart’s piano concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist...

Album: Morcheeba - Escape the Chaos

Morcheeba reach their 30th anniversary this year. The 1990s...

The Phoenician Scheme review - further adventures in the idi...

It’s not what he says, it’s the way he says it. Few filmmakers have bent the term “auteur” to their own ends more boldly than...

Album: Ammar 808 - Club Tounsi

Ammar 808 is the high octane vehicle for the Tunisian-born producer Sofyann Ben Youssef, now based in Denmark. His first album Maghreb United...

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review - can this...

Whether it is or isn’t the final Mission: Impossible film, there’s a distinct fin-de-siècle feel about this eighth instalment, and not...

Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality...

In the guided tour of Britain’s cathedral cities that is the primetime TV...

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