theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Tom Birchenough
Friday, 14 November 2025
We are bowled over! We knew that theartsdesk.com had plenty of supporters out there – we’ve always had a loyal readership of arts lovers and professionals alike – but the...
David Nice
Friday, 19 September 2025
It was a hefty evening, as it needn't necessarily have been throughout, since Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony can conceal more darkness between the lines in a lighter take. In his...
Helen Hawkins
Friday, 19 September 2025
Hot on the heels of Goodnight, Oscar comes another fictional meeting of real entertainment giants in Los Angeles, this time over a decade earlier. Michael McKeever’s The Code is a...
Markie Robson-Scott
Friday, 19 September 2025
Some time in the not too distant future, there are only two films on offer: Duck Soup, and, if you order the DVD in advance, Zoolander. And you have to watch them in a museum....
Gary Naylor
Friday, 19 September 2025
If you ever wanted to know what a mash up of Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, stirred (and there’s a lot of stirring in this play) with a soupçon of Chekhov, Ibsen and...
Matt Wolf
Friday, 19 September 2025
Like the lighting that crackles now and again to indicate an abrupt change of scene or mood, Simon Stone's version of The Lady from the Sea is illuminated by the sense of...
How to be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons, Teaċ Daṁsa review - a riveting account of a life in dance
Jenny Gilbert
Friday, 19 September 2025
Anyone who has followed the trajectory of choreographer-director Michael Keegan-Dolan and his West Kerry-based company Teaċ...
James Saynor
Friday, 19 September 2025
Perhaps only in Japan might it be thought the height of delinquency for a bunch of schoolkids is to spend the night sneaking...
Aleks Sierz
Friday, 19 September 2025
OMG! I mean OMG doubled!! This is amazing! Or is it? Can Alice Birch’s Romans: A Novel at the Almeida Theatre really be...
Tom Carr
Friday, 19 September 2025
For the trio of Biffy Clyro, the years since their previous album, 2021’s The Myth Of The Happily After, have provided a...
James Saynor
Thursday, 18 September 2025
Somehow both rugged and smooth, embodying American values yet often turning up his collar against them, Robert Redford – who...
Kieron Tyler
Thursday, 18 September 2025
Hackney’s Round Chapel is an appropriate venue. Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul opens her set with “Dùsgadh/...
ALA NI
Thursday, 18 September 2025
I’ve never thought of myself as a political artist. I write about love. The tender bits, the messy bits, the heartbreak that...
Graham Fuller
Thursday, 18 September 2025
With their second album Altar, the Irish combo NewDad has moved from the love-embittered shoegaze of their 2023 debut Madra...
Demetrios Matheou
Wednesday, 17 September 2025
In the summer of 2005, Robert Redford, who died this week, attended the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, to...
Gary Naylor
Wednesday, 17 September 2025
Unexpectedly, there’s a sly reference to James Joyce’s Ulysses interpolated into Act One (in case we hadn’t caught the...
Bernard Hughes
Wednesday, 17 September 2025
Concerts at the Wigmore Hall offer many types of pleasure, but not often an evening so straightforwardly fun as Monday night...
Guy Oddy
Wednesday, 17 September 2025
Neil Hannon has been recording and touring as the Divine Comedy since 1989 and has tried a fair few flavours along the way,...
Simon Thompson
Tuesday, 16 September 2025
My colleague Boyd Tonkin visited the Lammermuir Festival for the first time this year. His eyes and ears have been opened to...
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disc of the day
Album: Biffy Clyro - Futique
Scottish alternative rock trio return with elegant, balanced 10th album
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tv
Blu-ray: The Sweeney - Series One
Influential and entertaining 1970s police drama, handsomely restored
I Fought the Law, ITVX review - how an 800-year-old law was challenged and changed
Sheridan Smith's raw performance dominates ITV's new docudrama about injustice
The Paper, Sky Max review - a spinoff of the US Office worth waiting 20 years for
Perfectly judged recycling of the original's key elements, with a star turn at its heart
film
Can I get a Witness? review - time to die before you get old
Ann Marie Fleming directs Sandra Oh in dystopian fantasy that fails to ignite
Happyend review - the kids are never alright
In this futuristic blackboard jungle everything is a bit too manicured
new music
Brìghde Chaimbeul, Round Chapel review - enchantment in East London
Inscrutable purveyor of experimental Celtic music summons creepiness and intensity
Album: NewDad - Altar
The hard-gigging trio yearns for old Ireland – and blasts music biz exploitation
First Person: Musician ALA.NI on how thoughts of empire and reparation influenced a song
She usually sings about affairs of the heart - 'TIEF' is different, explains the star
classical
Cho, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - finely-focused stormy weather
Chameleonic Seong-Jin Cho is a match for the fine-tuning of the LSO’s Chief Conductor
Appl, Levickis, Wigmore Hall review - fun to the fore in cabaret and show songs
A relaxed evening of light-hearted fare, with the accordion offering unusual colours
Lammermuir Festival 2025, Part 2 review - from the soaringly sublime to the zoologically ridiculous
Bigger than ever, and the quality remains astonishingly high
opera
Tosca, Welsh National Opera review - a great company reduced to brilliance
The old warhorse made special by the basics
BBC Proms: The Marriage of Figaro, Glyndebourne Festival review - merriment and menace
Strong Proms transfer for a robust and affecting show
BBC Proms: Suor Angelica, LSO, Pappano review - earthly passion, heavenly grief
A Sister to remember blesses Puccini's convent tragedy
theatre
The Code, Southwark Playhouse Elephant review - superbly cast, resonant play about the price of fame in Hollywood
Tracie Bennett is outstanding as a ribald, riotous Tallulah Bankhead
Reunion, Kiln Theatre review - a stormy night in every sense
Beautifully acted, but desperately grim drama
The Lady from the Sea, Bridge Theatre review - flashes of brilliance
Simon Stone refashions Ibsen in his own high-octane image
dance
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
How to be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons, Teaċ Daṁsa review - a riveting account of a life in dance
Michael Keegan-Dolan's unique hybrid of physical theatre and comic monologue
A Single Man, Linbury Theatre review - an anatomy of melancholy, with breaks in the clouds
Ed Watson and Jonathan Goddard are extraordinary in Jonathan Watkins' dance theatre adaptation of Isherwood's novel
comedy
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Cat Cohen / Lachlan Werner / KC Shornima
Defying a health scare; a surreal invention & a distinctive new voice
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Emmanuel Sonubi / Joz Norris
A second chance at life & a fantastical tale about artistic endeavour
Books
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Frances Wilson: Electric Spark - The Enigma of Muriel Spark review - the matter of fact
Frances Wilson employs her full artistic power to keep pace with Spark’s fantastic and fugitive life
Elizabeth Alker: Everything We Do is Music review - Prokofiev goes pop
A compelling journey into a surprising musical kinship
visual arts
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
Folkestone Triennial 2025 - landscape, seascape, art lovers' escape
Locally rooted festival brings home many but not all global concerns
Sir Brian Clarke (1953-2025) - a personal tribute
Remembering an artist with a gift for the transcendent
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