wed 21/05/2025

Bill Mayblin

Articles By Bill Mayblin

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

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

It followed some...

Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall r...

With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major...

Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film

Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points –...

The Fifth Step, Soho Place review - wickedly funny two-hande...

The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter....

Josefowicz, LSO, Mälkki, Barbican review - two old favourite...

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...

Mr Swallow: Show Pony, Richmond Theatre review - magic trick...

Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative...

The Great Escape Festival 2025, Brighton review - a feast of...

Photographer Finetime and I have our first pints outside Dalton’s, a bar on...

Parsifal, Glyndebourne review - the music flies up, the dram...

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...

The Bombing of Pan Am 103, BBC One review - new dramatisatio...

The appalling destruction of Pan Am’s flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was put under the spotlight in January this year in Sky Atlantic’s ...

Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works, Royal Ballet review - th...

Ballet is hardly a stranger to Broadway. Until the late 1950s every other musical had its fantasy ballet sequence – think Cyd Charisse in ...