First with arts reviews, news & interviews
Lohengrin, Welsh National Opera, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Friday, 24 May 2013
What is one to make of Lohengrin, Wagner’s last “opera” (as opposed to music drama), in this day and age? Is it a medieval romance, like Weber’s Freischütz but with a deus ex...
The Tudors Season, BBC Two
Friday, 24 May 2013
Is the BBC taking dictation from the Gradgrindian brain of Michael Gove? According to the education secretary’s latest wacky diktat, what the nation’s children want is facts facts...
The Hangover Part III
Friday, 24 May 2013
You don't have to be a fan of The Hangover franchise to get most of the jokes in Part III, although it certainly helps. How else would you understand why the line “It all ends...
Metro: Last Light
Friday, 24 May 2013
Man is, of course, the worst monster of all in this bleak, post-apocalyptic first-person shooter based on the best-selling "Metro" novels of Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. In...
To Kill A Mockingbird, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
Thursday, 23 May 2013
Every May the townspeople of Monroeville, Alabama, the home of Harper Lee, perform Christopher Sergel’s theatrical adaptation of Lee’s acclaimed, much beloved novel, on the...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
tv
The Tudors Season, BBC Two
Mantel goes head to head with Starkey as Henry VIII executes everyone all over again for our pleasure
The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, BBC Four
The welcome return of the legacy of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld
new music
Steve Earle, Royal Festival Hall
Passion and politics as country's great polymath tours a powerful new album with a powerful new band
CD: British Electric Foundation - Music of Quality and Distinction Vol 3: Dark
Resurrected after 22 years, does this covers project still work?
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
Lohengrin, Welsh National Opera, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
WNO in their element in wide-stage Wagner marred by vocal problems
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
theatre
To Kill A Mockingbird, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
London ain't Alabama, but Harper Lee's attack on racial intolerance still resonates
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
Metro: Last Light
The dark, the mutants and the other survivors – fear rules this bleak first-person shooter
latest comments
This was the BEST interview I have ever read...
A very amusing column, but not really a review.
Well said Mr Rees! As you note, most 'history'...
This film sounds like it might be milking the F...
It sounded like a recorder on the radio!