fri 19/04/2024

theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews

Joe Muggs
Friday, 19 April 2024
As I sat down to write this review, the sun came out. It was a salutory reminder of the importance of context: where I’d previously thought “mmm, that’s pretty nice”, now it was...
Veronica Lee
Friday, 19 April 2024
If you don't like sweary comics – Jonathan Pie uses the c-word liberally – then this may not be the show for you. In fact if you're a Tory, ditto, because it is 70 minutes of...
Helen Hawkins
Friday, 19 April 2024
Richard Gadd won an Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016 with material about being sexually abused by a man, in a set called Monkey See, Monkey Do that he performed on a treadmill with...
David Nice
Friday, 19 April 2024
Virtuosity and a wildly beating heart are compatible in Richard Jones’s finely calibrated production of Renaissance woman Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal. It hits hard as a 1920s...
Sarah Kent
Friday, 19 April 2024
The first photograph was taken nearly 200 years ago in France by Joseph Niépce, and the first picture of a person was taken in Paris by Louis Daguerre in 1838 (main picture)....
Robert Beale
Friday, 19 April 2024
If ever more evidence were needed of Sir Mark Elder’s untiring zest for exploration and love of the thrill of live opera performance, it was this ground-breaking collaborative...
Justine Elias
Friday, 19 April 2024
Music, when the singer’s voice dies away, vibrates in the memory. In the hypnotic new Irish horror film All You Need Is...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 19 April 2024
Record Store Day is tomorrow! At theartsdesk on Vinyl we’ve been sent a selection of exclusive RSD goodies. Check out the...
Markie Robson-Scott
Thursday, 18 April 2024
Teenage Ulzii (Battsooj Uurtsaikh in an elegantly restrained performance) is looking after his little sister and brother in...
Helen Hawkins
Thursday, 18 April 2024
The Book of Clarence comes lumbered with the charge of being the new Life of Brian, an irreverent spoof of the life of...
Jon Turney
Thursday, 18 April 2024
Our home planet orbits the medium-size star we call the Sun. There are unfathomably many more stars out there. We accepted...
Tom Carr
Thursday, 18 April 2024
Thirty years, and over 75 million copies sold. It’s been a long journey from Nineties Seattle for Pearl Jam, the grunge...
David Nice
Wednesday, 17 April 2024
All three works in the second of this week’s Neville Marriner centenary concerts from the ensemble he founded vindicated...
Gary Naylor
Wednesday, 17 April 2024
One can often be made to feel old in the theatre. A hot take in a snappy 90 minutes (with video!) on the latest Gen Z...
Colin Alexander And Héloïse Werner
Wednesday, 17 April 2024
For tonight’s performance at Milton Court, the nuanced and delicate tones of strings, voices, harmonium and chamber organ...
Sarah Kent
Wednesday, 17 April 2024
Yinka Shonibare’s Serpentine Gallery exhibition opens with a piece of cloth twirling in the breeze; except that it’s a...
Kieron Tyler
Wednesday, 17 April 2024
Death Songbook is, says Charles Hazlewood, founder, artistic director and conductor of Paraorchestra, an album of “music...
Adam Sweeting
Tuesday, 16 April 2024
Ludicrous plotting and a tangled skein of coincidences hold no terrors for the makers of this frequently baffling French...
Aleks Sierz
Tuesday, 16 April 2024
I’ve never been one for school reunions, but even if I had kept in touch with former classmates I think that American...
 

★★★★ A CERTAIN RATIO - IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS Veteran Mancunians reassess

★★★ ELLIE GOULDING, RPCO, ROYAL ALBERT HALL A mellow evening of strings and song

★★★★ PLAYER KINGS, NOEL COWARD THEATRE Ian McKellen: a peerless theatrical knight

★★★ ACI BY THE RIVER, LONDON HANDEL FESTIVAL Myths for the #MeToo age

★★ SPENCER JONES: MAKING FRIENDS, SOHO THEATRE Quirky, personal and absurd

JOSEPH MIDDLETON Leeds Lieder Festival director on a beloved organisation back from the brink

★★★★ SHEKU KANNEH-MASON, PHILHARMONIA CHORUS, RPO, PETRENKO, RFH Atmospheric Elgar and Weinberg, but Rachmaninov's 'The Bells' takes the palm

disc of the day

Album: Jonny Drop • Andrew Ashong - The Puzzle Dust

Bottled sunshine from a Brit soul-jazz team-up

tv

Baby Reindeer, Netflix review - a misery memoir disturbingly presented

Richard Gadd's double traumas are a difficult watch but ultimately inspiring

Anthracite, Netflix review - murderous mysteries in the French Alps

Who can unravel the ghastly secrets of the town of Lévionna?

Ripley, Netflix review - Highsmith's horribly fascinating sociopath adrift in a sea of noir

Its black and white cinematography is striking, but eventually wearying

film

Fantastic Machine review - photography's story from one camera to 45 billion

Love it or hate it, the photographic image has ensnared us all

If Only I Could Hibernate review - kids in grinding poverty in Ulaanbaatar

Mongolian director Zoljargal Purevdash's compelling debut

The Book of Clarence review - larky jaunt through biblical epic territory

LaKeith Stanfield is impressively watchable as the Messiah's near-neighbour

new music

theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2024

Annual edition checking out records exclusively available on this year's Record Store Day

Album: Pearl Jam - Dark Matter

Enduring grunge icons return full of energy, arguably their most empowered yet

classical

Bell, Perahia, ASMF Chamber Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review - joy in teamwork

A great pianist re-emerges in Schumann, but Beamish and Mendelssohn take the palm

First Persons: composers Colin Alexander and Héloïse Werner on fantasy in guided improvisation

On five new works allowing an element of freedom in the performance

First Person: Leeds Lieder Festival director and pianist Joseph Middleton on a beloved organisation back from the brink

Arts Council funding restored after the blow of 2023, new paths are being forged

theatre

Machinal, The Old Vic review - note-perfect pity and terror
Sophie Treadwell's 1928 hard hitter gets full musical and choreographic treatment
An Actor Convalescing in Devon, Hampstead Theatre review - old school actor tells old school stories
Fact emerges skilfully repackaged as fiction in an affecting solo show by Richard Nelson
The Comeuppance, Almeida Theatre review - remembering high-school high jinks
Latest from American penman Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is less than the sum of its parts

dance

All You Need Is Death review - a future folk horror classic

Irish folkies seek a cursed ancient song in Paul Duane's impressive fiction debut

MacMillan Celebrated, Royal Ballet review - out of mothballs, three vintage works to marvel at

Less-known pieces spanning the career of a great choreographer underline his greatness

Carmen, English National Ballet review - lots of energy, even violence, but nothing new to say

Johan Inger's take on Carmen tries but fails to make a point about male violence

Books

Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Earths review - a whole new world

Kaltenegger's traverses space in her thoughtful exploration of the search for life among the stars

Heather McCalden: The Observable Universe review - reflections from a damaged life

An artist pens a genre-spanning work of tender inconclusiveness

Dorian Lynskey: Everything Must Go review - it's the end of the world as we know it

Authoritative account of how the apocalypse has always been just around the corner

visual arts

Fantastic Machine review - photography's story from one camera to 45 billion

Love it or hate it, the photographic image has ensnared us all

Yinka Shonibare: Suspended States, Serpentine Gallery review - pure delight

Weighty subject matter treated with the lightest of touch

Jane Harris: Ellipse, Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA, Bordeaux review - ovals to the fore

Persistence and conviction in the works of the late English painter

latest comments

Couldn't agree more. THIS is the one to see to...

I watched it yesterday and it made feel like "Oh...

I saw this today at The Curve, why any theatre...

Y'all be giving out 100's like hotcakes, do y'all...

Seen in Oxford 9th April.  I agree entirely...

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