theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Marina Vaizey
Sunday, 25 June 2017
Reading the Rocks has a provocative subtitle, “How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life”, indicating the role of geology in paving the way to an understanding of the...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 25 June 2017
Considering Shelleyan Orphan, Melody Maker said “someone’s been smearing themselves in art…were they artists or did they just wallow in shit?” While the late Eighties’ British...
Mark Kidel
Sunday, 25 June 2017
As Wonder Woman hits screens worldwide, the publication of a book that explores the myth and reality of the Amazon seems timely. The latest of John Man’s works of popular history...
Barney Harsent
Sunday, 25 June 2017
Those coming to Lifetime of Love expecting something – anything – approaching Moses Archuleta’s day job in Deerhunter will find those expectations confounded. With his Moon...
Nick Hasted
Saturday, 24 June 2017
Isabelle Huppert isn’t just here for the nasty things in life. Her rape non-victim in Elle was one of the most iconoclastic performances even she’s given, enigmatic yet...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 24 June 2017
Falla: Nights in the Garden of Spain, Ravel: Piano Concertos Steven Osborne (piano), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ludovic Morlot (Hyperion)Steven Osborne's solo Ravel...
Peter Quinn
Saturday, 24 June 2017
Denys Baptiste's deep dive into the mid-1960s work of jazz icon, sax player and composer John Coltrane also...
Matt Wolf
Friday, 23 June 2017
As with life, so it is in art: in the same way that one can't predict the curve balls that get thrown our way, the American...
Saskia Baron
Friday, 23 June 2017
It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a movie as staggeringly awful as The Book of Henry. If it was just a touch more...
Aleks Sierz
Friday, 23 June 2017
Can the theatre be a courtroom? A good public place to debate morality and to arrive at profound decisions? You could answer...
Barney Harsent
Friday, 23 June 2017
Immigration…immigration… immigration… that’s what we need! Not the words of record-breaking, tap-dancing trumpeter Roy...
Graham Rickson
Friday, 23 June 2017
F Percy Smith was a maverick film-maker whose most important work was created in a house in suburban Southgate, North London...
Ismene Brown
Thursday, 22 June 2017
Recorded on disc, this cast would be extraordinary for much of the time — to look at, not so much. Royal Opera conductor...
Matt Wolf
Thursday, 22 June 2017
Do the makers of the essentially unnecessary Hampstead have a secret vendetta against north London and its citizenry?...
Marina Vaizey
Thursday, 22 June 2017
The marvellous National Gallery of Ireland, founded in the 1860s, has opened its doors to its brilliantly revamped, updated...
Thomas H Green
Thursday, 22 June 2017
Reviewed this month with the windows open, in weather hot enough to warp records, this month theartsdesk on Vinyl casts two...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 22 June 2017
Gossip – the trio fronted by Beth Ditto from 1999 until last year – always felt a bit overshadowed by their 2006...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 21 June 2017
Opera-lovers coming to St Martin's Lane may feel confused to be confronted by an unrecognisable Coliseum, which now has huge...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 21 June 2017
Hugh Laurie, in his new role of forensic neuropsychiatrist Eldon Chance, tells us that he works with those who are “...
Gavin Dixon
Wednesday, 21 June 2017
The Paris-based Ensemble InterContemporain brought a wide-ranging programme to the Wigmore Hall. They are known as new music...
disc of the day
CD: Moon Diagrams - Lifetime of Love
The Deerhunter drummer impresses with an assured and personal debut
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tv
Who Should We Let In? Ian Hislop on the First Great Immigration Row, review – how history repeats itself
The Private Eye editor's eye-opening examination of our attitudes to immigration, past and present
Chance, Universal review – Hugh Laurie is reborn as a film-noir shrink
Dr House finds a new home in San Francisco
film
Souvenir review – Huppert does deadpan like Buster Keaton
Isabelle Huppert gives her tragicomic all to a Eurovision comeback
The Book of Henry review - staggeringly awful
Dazzlingly inept movie starring Naomi Watts that doesn't know what genre it belongs in
DVD/Blu-ray: Minute Bodies - The Intimate World of F Percy Smith
Offbeat BFI celebration of a pioneering cinematic miniaturist
new music
Reissue CDs Weekly: Shelleyan Orphan
Box set dedicated to arty British duo pays tribute to their recently lost Caroline Crawley
CD: Moon Diagrams - Lifetime of Love
The Deerhunter drummer impresses with an assured and personal debut
classical
Classical CDs Weekly: Falla, Ravel, Antoine Tamestit, The American Brass Quintet
French and Spanish piano music, plus seductive viola sounds and phenomenal brass playing
Ensemble InterContemporain, Wigmore Hall
Eccentricity inspires colour, nuance and slapstick from young composer Matteo Franceschini
Classical CDs Weekly: Antheil, Debussy, Hosokawa, Schmidt
Symphonies from a self-styled 'bad boy', plus music from Austria, France and Japan
opera
Otello, Royal Opera review — Kaufmann makes a pretty Moor
New production of Verdi's tragedy is a trial to look at - and heaven to listen to
Pelléas et Mélisande, Garsington Opera review - brilliant but frustrating
Masterpiece of communication failure beautifully played and designed but impassively staged
Der Rosenkavalier, Welsh National Opera review - hard to imagine a stronger cast
Music conquers all in Strauss masterpiece, but the director gets some things right
theatre
Gloria, Hampstead Theatre review – pretty glorious
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's Off Broadway hit makes a vibrant crossing to London starring Colin Morgan
Terror, Lyric Hammersmith review – more gimmick than drama
Audience participation cannot save a trial that suffocates in abstraction
dance
Scottish Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - striking and memorable dance
Crystal Pite's 'Emergence' is a smart pick for the company
Sergei Vikharev, master ballet-reconstructor, 1962-2017
Sudden death at 55 of bold seeker after 'authentic' classical ballet
Ashton triple bill, Royal Ballet review – fond farewell to Zenaida Yanowsky
The prima ballerina bows out in 'Marguerite and Armand' as Akane Takada makes a lovely debut in 'The Dream'
comedy
Jeremy Hardy, Brighton Festival review - expert raconteur shows political bite
Radio 4 regular's conversational style masks a passionate pin-sharp topicality
Ricky Gervais, Touring review - chatty and relaxed riffing
Some very personal material among the edgy content
Ayesha Hazarika, Soho Theatre review - 'politics is her patch'
Former Labour adviser finds the funny in politics
gaming
Injustice 2 review - the even better sequel
A superhero soap opera with more twists and turns than a Netflix 12-parter
visual arts
National Gallery of Ireland review - bigger and better
Dublin celebrates the reopening of its refurbished art gallery with Vermeer
Fahrelnissa Zeid, Tate Modern review - rediscovering a forgotten genius
How a major 20th century painter was erased from history
A Handful of Dust, Whitechapel Gallery review - grime does pay
From macro to micro, the seduction of dust knows no bounds
latest comments
An excellent review of an underwhelming film.
I liked the inconsistency (generally I like...
I was up in Tier 2 and the sound was awful, so...
Nearly all the participants had loving,...
Ismene - Critics often review an event through a...
It was dire. Two lots of Russian 'baddies'...
Considering it's literally at the ends of the...
After wathing all 10 episodes of this mini-series...