fri 29/03/2024

theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews

Helen Hawkins
Friday, 29 March 2024
In a secret chamber somewhere, the producers of MJ the Musical may be keeping a portrait of the King of Pop that has acquired all his scars, physical and psychological.Few of...
Jack Barron
Friday, 29 March 2024
"[A]n unimaginably beautiful day": this was how Kikue Shiota described the morning of the 6th of August, 1945, in Hiroshima. The day was soon to change, unimaginably, as the city...
Demetrios Matheou
Friday, 29 March 2024
Like all great literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final, eccentric, playfully wondrous short story seems to have been written just for us – across two centuries and on the other side...
Boyd Tonkin
Friday, 29 March 2024
Waiting, and hoping, may prove just as intense an experience as the fulfilment of a wish – or of a fear. Bach knew that, and infused his Easter Week music with a sense of suspense...
Kieron Tyler
Friday, 29 March 2024
“Motif,” Love In Constant Spectacle’s fourth track, is the closest Jane Weaver has come in over a decade to the folk influences embraced on her 2007 and 2010 albums Cherlokalate...
Lydia Higman
Thursday, 28 March 2024
I first read Anne Gunter’s story about five years ago, when I was in my first year of university at Oxford, little knowing it would over time lead to our play Gunter [seen first...
Adam Sweeting
Thursday, 28 March 2024
The screenwriting debut of actor Andrew Buchan, Passenger ends up resembling a bunch of ingredients looking for a cake....
Markie Robson-Scott
Thursday, 28 March 2024
A young woman (Laure Calamy; Call my Agent!; Full Time; Her Way) is trying to pluck up the courage to call her father, who...
Gary Naylor
Thursday, 28 March 2024
In a too brightly tiled Gentlemen’s public convenience (Nitin Parmar’s beautifully realised set is as much a character as...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 28 March 2024
What a time to be alive it is for fans of late Eighties, early Nineties indie – the proverbial 6 Music Dads – with so...
Ed Vulliamy
Wednesday, 27 March 2024
“Death doesn’t scare me at all,” said my friend Christopher Hitchens during our last telephone conversation. “After all, it’...
Kieron Tyler
Wednesday, 27 March 2024
“The name of this group is Mayan Space Station.” In spite of the billing as The William Parker Trio, their bassist – coolly...
Paul Grellong
Wednesday, 27 March 2024
I’m writing this in the lobby of the Menier Chocolate Factory a couple of hours before the first preview. I was last here in...
Ellie Roberts
Wednesday, 27 March 2024
Sum 41 honour their 27-year career with Heaven :x: Hell, a 20-track double album, due to be their final, without a single...
Adam Sweeting
Tuesday, 26 March 2024
From Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and DB Weiss, in cahoots with Alexander Woo, 3 Body Problem is Netflix’s daring...
Nick Hasted
Tuesday, 26 March 2024
Faith and damnation frequently collide in Abel Ferrara’s films, drawing fiery performances from often starry casts. The New...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Monday, 25 March 2024
In Late Night With the Devil, light entertainment rubs shoulders with demonic forces on a talk show. It isn't quite the...
David Nice
Monday, 25 March 2024
Was it worth taking a risk on a more humbly presented St John Passion in Dublin after the best St Matthew I’m ever likely to...
Tim Cumming
Monday, 25 March 2024
The British folk artist and singer songwriter Olivia Chaney released her third solo album this week, as we break out into...
 

Q&A: DEE C LEE The vocalist discusses music, life, love, heartbreak and glorious Eighties times

NINEY THE OBSERVER PRESENTS LIGHTNING AND THUNDER! The start of the reggae polymath

★★★ FOAM, FINBOROUGH THEATRE Skinhead finds his feet (in a pair of DMs) then leads double life as street thug and gay cruiser

★★★★★ SCHUBERT PIANO SONATAS 4, PAUL LEWIS, WIGMORE HALL Explosive new insights in the pianist's latest interpretations of the last three masterpieces

★★★★ SUM 41 - HEAVEN :X: HELL A bittersweet goodbye album from the Pop Punk legends

★★ IMMACULATE Grisly convent horror is timely but flawed

★★★ GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE A modest, well-meant return

★★★ 3 BODY PROBLEM, NETFLIX Life, the universe and everything (and a bit more)

disc of the day

Album: Jane Weaver - Love In Constant Spectacle

The most welcoming album to date from Greater Manchester’s musical individualist

tv

Passenger, ITV review - who are they trying to kid?

Andrew Buchan's screenwriting debut leads us nowhere

3 Body Problem, Netflix review - life, the universe and everything (and a bit more)

Mind-blowing adaptation of Liu Cixin's novel from the makers of 'Game of Thrones'

Manhunt, Apple TV+ review - all the President's men

Tobias Menzies and Anthony Boyle go head to head in historical crime drama

film

The Origin of Evil review - Laure Calamy stars in gripping French psychodrama

Sébastien Marnier directs an excellent cast in a story of shifting identities

DVD/Blu-ray: Padre Pio

Shia LaBeouf stars in Abel Ferrara's latest grungy spiritual quest, earthed by landscape and politics

Late Night With the Devil review - indie-horror punches above its weight

Controversy over AI-generated images aside, this is a wholly original film

new music

Album: Jane Weaver - Love In Constant Spectacle

The most welcoming album to date from Greater Manchester’s musical individualist

Album: Ride - Interplay

Oxford indie kings not only on form, but breaking new ground

classical

Schubert Piano Sonatas 4, Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review - feverish and sometimes violent

Explosive new insights in the pianist's latest interpretations of the last three masterpieces

opera

La scala di seta, RNCM review - going heavy on the absinthe?

Rossini’s one-acter helps young performers find their talents to amuse

Death In Venice, Welsh National Opera review - breathtaking Britten

Sublime Olivia Fuchs production of a great operatic swansong

Salome, Irish National Opera review - imaginatively charted journey to the abyss

Sinéad Campbell Wallace's corrupted princess stuns in Bruno Ravella's production

theatre

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Marylebone Theatre review - from Russia with love
Greg Hicks shines as Dostoevsky’s defiantly optimistic dreamer
First Person: author-turned-actor Lydia Higman on a play that foregrounds a slice of forgotten history
'Gunter' co-creator and historian connects a 1604 witch hit to the world today

dance

WAKE, National Stadium, Dublin review - a rainbow river of dance, song, and so much else

THISISPOPBABY serves up a joyous tapestry of Ireland contemporary and traditional

Swan Lake, Royal Ballet review - grand, eloquent, superb

Liam Scarlett's fine refashioning returns for a third season, and looks better than ever

First Person: Ten Years On - Flamenco guitarist Paco Peña pays tribute to his friend, the late, great Paco de Lucía

On the 10th anniversary of his death, memories of the prodigious musician who broadened the reach of flamenco into jazz and beyond

Books

Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War: A Scenario review - on the inconceivable

Brimming with terrifying facts and figures, but struggling with an immeasurable subject

Tom Chatfield: Wise Animals review - on the changing world

A compelling account of how we use technology – and how it uses us

visual arts

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

Persistence and conviction in the works of the late English painter

Sargent and Fashion, Tate Britain review - portraiture as a performance

London’s elite posing dressed up to the nines

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