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...
Rachel Halliburton
Saturday, 18 October 2025
This powerful, austere collaboration between Les Arts Florissants and the Amala Dianor Company – presented as part of Dance Umbrella – excavated all the violence, grief and...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 18 October 2025
British Piano Concertos: Walton, Britten & Tippett Clare Hammond (piano), BBC Symphony Orchestra/George Vass (BIS Records)I really liked this programme of neglected...
Tom Carr
Saturday, 18 October 2025
Anxiety and self-doubt have been constant themes for Kevin Parker, the Australian musician who now finds himself among the highest echelons of modern music. With his project Tame...
Demetrios Matheou
Friday, 17 October 2025
The last few years have seen the much-needed positivity of the #MeToo movement followed by a raft of ethical confrontations, whether it’s differences over the feminist generation...
Robert Beale
Friday, 17 October 2025
Manchester Camerata have had a ten-year association with composer-conductor Jack Sheen. For this short programme, one of the free Walter Carroll Lunchtime Concert series at...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 17 October 2025
Is This Thing On? Bradley Cooper has previously directed A Star Is Born and Maestro, but they weren’t nearly as much...
Demetrios Matheou
Friday, 17 October 2025
Whether it’s the trenches of the First World War, or the halls and chambers of Vatican City, we’re becoming used to director...
Joe Muggs
Friday, 17 October 2025
A key part of Chrissie Hynde’s brilliance and longevity has always been her ability to keep multiple musical personas going...
Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 16 October 2025
Oh yes, I actually do remember Patty Hearst. She was the American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter...
Thomas H Green
Thursday, 16 October 2025
Before we get into it, reader, can you accept that The Last Dinner Party are a band born of privilege and high academic...
Johncarvill
Wednesday, 15 October 2025
Thomas Pynchon is having a moment. Paul Thomas Anderson’s second Pynchon adaptation, One Battle After Another (loosely based...
Helen Hawkins
Wednesday, 15 October 2025
Film festivals are a bran tub: what you find in them may be unexpected, and not always in a good way. Here are six I pulled...
Robert Beale
Wednesday, 15 October 2025
Dennis Russell Davies and his musicians from the Czech Republic’s second city began a UK tour last night with an...
Tim Cumming
Wednesday, 15 October 2025
A mix of tradition and Afrofuturism, acoustic and electronic, east and west fumigating in a cauldron of rhythms, chants,...
David Nice
Tuesday, 14 October 2025
Britten’s Albert Herring is one of the great 20th century comic operas; only Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Barry’s The...
Justine Elias
Tuesday, 14 October 2025
The enduring image of the 1984-1985 Miners' Strike is that of men standing arm in arm against police and of mass protests...
Graham Rickson
Tuesday, 14 October 2025
The best Ealing comedies are surely the three darkest: specifically Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers and The Man in...
David Nice
Monday, 13 October 2025
Forty years ago, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was born, and I heard Handel’s Solomon in concert for the first...
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'Deadbeat': Tame Impala's downbeat rave-inspired latest
Fifth album from Australian project grooves but falls flat
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tv
Murder Before Evensong, Acorn TV review - death comes to the picturesque village of Champton
The Rev Richard Coles's sleuthing cleric hits the screen
Black Rabbit, Netflix review - grime and punishment in New York City
Jude Law and Jason Bateman tread the thin line between love and hate
The Hack, ITV review - plodding anatomy of twin UK scandals
Jack Thorne's skill can't disguise the bagginess of his double-headed material
film
Ballad of a Small Player review - Colin Farrell's all in as a gambler down on his luck
Conclave director Edward Berger swaps the Vatican for Asia's sin city
Iron Ladies review - working-class heroines of the Miners' Strike
Documentary salutes the staunch women who fought Thatcher's pit closures
new music
'Deadbeat': Tame Impala's downbeat rave-inspired latest
Fifth album from Australian project grooves but falls flat
Heartbreak and soaring beauty on Chrissie Hynde & Pals' Duets Special
The great Pretender at her most romantic and on the form of her life
The Last Dinner Party's 'From the Pyre' is as enjoyable as it is over-the-top
Musically sophisticated five-piece ramp up the excesses but remain contagiously pop
classical
Gesualdo Passione, Les Arts Florissants, Amala Dior Company, Barbican review - inspired collaboration excavates the music's humanity
At times it was like watching an anarchic religious procession
Classical CDs: Camels, concrete and cabaret
An influential American composer's 90th birthday box, plus British piano concertos and a father-and-son duo
Cockerham, Manchester Camerata, Sheen, Martin Harris Centre, Manchester review - re-enacting the dawn of modernism
Two UK premieres added to three miniatures from a seminal event of January 1914
opera
Albert Herring, English National Opera review - a great comedy with depths fully realised
Britten’s delight was never made for the Coliseum, but it works on its first outing there
Carmen, English National Opera review - not quite dangerous
Hopes for Niamh O’Sullivan only partly fulfilled, though much good singing throughout
Giustino, Linbury Theatre review - a stylish account of a slight opera
Gods, mortals and monsters do battle in Handel's charming drama
theatre
Ragdoll, Jermyn Street Theatre review - compelling and emotionally truthful
Katherine Moar returns with a Patty Hearst-inspired follow up to her debut hit 'Farm Hall'
Troilus and Cressida, Globe Theatre review - a 'problem play' with added problems
Raucous and carnivalesque, but also ugly and incomprehensible
Clarkston, Trafalgar Theatre review - two lads on a road to nowhere
Netflix star, Joe Locke, is the selling point of a production that needs one
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
R:Evolution, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - a vibrant survey of ballet in four acts
ENB set the bar high with this mixed bill, but they meet its challenges thrillingly
Like Water for Chocolate, Royal Ballet review - splendid dancing and sets, but there's too much plot
Christopher Wheeldon's version looks great but is too muddling to connect with fully
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
Nick Helm, Touring review - brash comic shows his vulnerable side
Matters of the heart and heavy metal
Kerry Godliman, G-Live review - she's livid but delivers the laughs
Perimenopause provides rich seam of gags
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
Thomas Pynchon - Shadow Ticket review - Pulp Diction
Thomas Pynchon's latest (and possibly last) book is fun - for a while
Justin Lewis: Into the Groove review - fun and fact-filled trip through Eighties pop
Month by month journey through a decade gives insights into ordinary people’s lives
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
Lee Miller, Tate Britain review - an extraordinary career that remains an enigma
Fashion photographer, artist or war reporter; will the real Lee Miller please step forward?
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, Royal Academy review - a triumphant celebration of blackness
Room after room of glorious paintings
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