First with arts reviews, news & interviews
Steve Earle, Royal Festival Hall
Thursday, 23 May 2013
Steve Earle is country music's great polymath - short story writer, playwright, novelist, activist, actor, oh yes, and singer and songwriter of some of the most acutely...
Rob Newman, Little Angel Theatre
Thursday, 23 May 2013
There's a quite a contrast between the 12,000-seat Wembley Arena in 1993 where, with the help of his erstwhile writing and performing partner David Baddiel, Rob Newman “invented”...
Disgraced, Bush Theatre
Thursday, 23 May 2013
There’s one big problem about being an Asian actor in America — you just don’t get the big parts. So the multitalented Ayad Akhtar put acting on hold, and turned to screen writing...
Something in the Air
Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Cinema sometimes seems to have left the Age of Aquarius behind. The filmmakers who came of age in the Sixties have long since said what they needed to, and nowadays the decade’s...
The Kite Runner, Theatre Royal Brighton
Wednesday, 22 May 2013
The absolute loyalty of a little boy to his under-deserving friend is what swells The Kite Runner’s heart and fuels its tragedy. So you can’t really blame Matthew Spangler’s stage...
The King of Marvin Gardens
Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Bob Rafelson’s 1972 The King of Marvin Gardens takes its title from the Atlantic City Monopoly property, connoting the New Jersey resort’s then imminent future as a board game for...
Relatively Speaking, Wyndham's Theatre
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
The pronouns have it in Alan Ayckbourn's career-defining comedy of spiralling misunderstandings, which has arrived on the...
Sylvie Guillem, 6000 Miles Away, Sadler's Wells Theatre
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
People go to see Sylvie Guillem the way they used to go to Isadora Duncan or Anna Pavlova, to see a living legend, a game-...
Limbo, Southbank Centre
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Circus is a broad church these days. It can be housed on the street, a grand proscenium stage and all points in between. For...
Lubomyr Melnyk, Village Underground
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Imagine the rising and falling piano cadences of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Then plug the gaps between each note with any...
Helen Chadwick, Richard Saltoun
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
It's 17 years since Helen Chadwick died without warning of heart failure at the tragically early age of 42 and nine years...
10 Questions for Artist Michael Landy
Monday, 20 May 2013
Much of Michael Landy’s work concerns destruction or decay. The British artist, who recently turned 50 and is part of the...
Case Histories, BBC One
Monday, 20 May 2013
He's back - and he's even moodier than before. Jackson Brodie, the private dick for whom the word “brooding” was invented,...
Falstaff, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Monday, 20 May 2013
In this revival of Richard Jones's 2009 production, the action has been very effectively shifted to post-war Windsor with...
The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, BBC Four
Monday, 20 May 2013
You can only marvel at the family intrigues that virtually closed down the legacy of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld in the...
Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Sunday, 19 May 2013
The Major-Domo promises fireworks during the Prologue of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Katharina Thoma, the...
theartsdesk in Warsaw: A New Jewish Museum
Sunday, 19 May 2013
The Ghetto Heroes Square in the Muranow district of Warsaw is a bleak place surrounded by drab apartment blocks. But at its...
Reissue CDs Weekly: Scott Walker
Sunday, 19 May 2013
Scott Walker: The Collection 1967-1970Few pop records possess a beauty taking them into the otherworldly, inexplicable realm...
disc of the day
CD: British Electric Foundation - Music of Quality and Distinction Vol 3: Dark
Resurrected after 22 years, does this covers project still work?
film
The King of Marvin Gardens
Melancholy meets irrational optimism in Bob Rafelson's New Hollywood classic
tv
The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, BBC Four
The welcome return of the legacy of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld
Rock ‘n’ Roll Britannia, BBC Four
The entertaining tale of the protracted birth of a British rock scene which took America on at its own game
new music
CD: British Electric Foundation - Music of Quality and Distinction Vol 3: Dark
Resurrected after 22 years, does this covers project still work?
CD: Stooshe - London with the Lights On
Mouthy London trio's debut is loaded with enjoyable bawdiness and attitude
Lubomyr Melnyk, Village Underground
The pioneer of continuous music astonishes while Bon Iver’s preferred artist Gregory Euclide paints live, on stage
six of the best
Six of the best: Theatre
Shakespeare, Peter Nichols and Mormons: a bit of everything in theartsdesk's tips
Radio Show
The Seckerson Tapes: Lucy Schaufer
A versatile American mezzo in London tells of her female-friendly debut album
classical
Classical CDs Weekly: Schumann, Sibelius, Maria Schneider
Child-centred pianism, rugged orchestral music and an enjoyable disc of contemporary songs
L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato, St John's Smith Square
A joyful and accomplished opening to this year's Lufthansa Baroque Festival
Classical CDs Weekly, Grainger, Mahler, Piazzolla
Rousing Antipodean choral music, a downbeat symphony and lots of tangos
opera
Falstaff, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Comedy is king in a Falstaff revival which is consistently enjoyable but could be a little less nice
Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Strauss's opera reluctantly enters the Battle of Britain courtesy of a young German director
La donna del lago, Royal Opera
Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez and Michael Spyres triumph over adversity
theatre
Disgraced, Bush Theatre
Pulitzer-Prize-winning drama examines cultural identity with insight and intelligence
The Kite Runner, Theatre Royal Brighton
A story-centric stage adaption of Khaled Hosseini's sentimental best-seller
visual arts
Helen Chadwick, Richard Saltoun
Her obsession with death and decay was leavened by a wicked sense of humour
10 Questions for Artist Michael Landy
On the eve of a new exhibition of his kinetic saints, the artist talks about death, destruction and turning 50
The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, BBC Four
The welcome return of the legacy of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld
dance
Sylvie Guillem, 6000 Miles Away, Sadler's Wells Theatre
Guillem weaves her game-changing magic in Forsythe and Ek
An Evening for Hospices of Hope, Sadler's Wells Theatre
Nine leading men answer the call to ballerina Alina Cojocaru's gala
10 Questions for Ballerina Alina Cojocaru
The Royal Ballet prima ballerina on what gives meaning to her brilliant career
comedy
Daniel Kitson, Theatre Royal, Brighton
Comedian who eschews the usual routes to fame proves to be both incisive and decidedly different
gaming
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
The game of 2012 gets a 1980s action make-over in this both dumb and smart expansion
latest comments
test number three
again a test to check things are working
Ep 2 seemed much more natural, didn't it? as if...
there was the Barbican show in - was it? - 1996...
I was drawn to this review, if only because of...