ASH Smyth
Bio
ASH Smyth has written about music and the arts for The Oxford Times, The First Post, The Spectator, Music Teacher, Early Music Today, whatsonstage.com, Guernica, Stop Smiling, and the Sri Lankan Sunday Times. He is the co-author (with Richard Suart) of They'd None of 'Em Be Missed, a potted history of WS Gilbert's "Little List".
Articles By ASH Smyth
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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...
Hard Truths review - a bravura, hyperreal performance from M...
A colleague once told me that I shouldn’t take Mike Leigh’s films with contemporary settings as slices of everyday life. He was right: they’re...
Saturday Night review - a dizzying 90-minute trip to a landm...
“A countercultural sketch show full of unknowns, with no script, no structure.” The verdict of NBC’s head of talent about the embryonic...
Inside No 9: Stage Fright, Wyndham’s review - uneven fright-...
How excited Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton must have been to learn that the venue for their Inside No 9 stage show was...
Album: The Weeknd - Hurry Up Tomorrow
The Weeknd is a global megastar, one of the biggest music sensations of the age. Last year, his compilation, The Highlights, was the...
Brian and Maggie, Channel 4 review - Thatcherism's date...
The thesis underlying this two-part drama is that Brian Walden’s 1989 TV interview with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher marked the end of the...
Formal Sppeedwear, The Windmill review - Stoke-on-Trent trio...
As Stoke-on-Trent’s Formal Sppeedwear immerse themselves in what turns out to be their penultimate song, they become lost in the music. What they...
Northern Ballet: Three Short Ballets, Linbury Theatre review...
Leeds-based Northern Ballet has built a reputation as a source of fine dancers who are also impressive actors. Federico Bonelli, the...
By the Stream review - enigmatic Korean drama
“I lead a peaceful, idle life, running a bookstore in Gangneung. Honestly, no customers.” Chu Si-eon (Kwon Hae-hyo) is genial and self-deprecating...
Album: Cymande - Renascence
When you’ve achieved the truly sublime, trying to recapture it can be bittersweet. Cymande, for the mere three years they existed in the early...