theartsdesk.com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Sarah Kent |
Spanning a hundred years, the Dulwich Picture Gallery's show of American photography is a twofold delight. Most of the great names are included, so practically every picture is a…
Thomas H. Green |
VINYL OF THE MONTHJohn R Miller The Great Unknowing (Rounder)
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John R Miller’s youth was spent in the Eastern Panhandle of…
Helen Hawkins |
There’s an incendiary one-woman monologue to be had from Christine Lahti’s 2018 book about the misogyny of her upbringing, but The Smile of Her feels rather like an early draft of…
Ibi Keita |
There is something quietly reassuring to me about hearing a record that knows exactly what it wants to be. Manchester born duo Overmono's latest release Pure Devotion isn't…
Boyd Tonkin |
Last night’s Prom saw two beloved favourites – Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony – prefaced by a fairly unknown quantity. This was Bernd Alois Zimmerman’…
Camp Bestival 2026, Lulworth Castle review - where the daytime magic still outshines everything else
Katie Colombus |
A few years ago, Camp Bestival felt like a charming, quietly eccentric affair, fairly small in the best sense, especially set beside the giants of the British festival calendar.…
Guy Oddy
It’s absolutely normal to expect the weird and the wonderful each time those prolific Australian psychedelicists, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard release a new album. Yet,…
Mark Kidel
There is a jovial intensity about the Jeremy Ledbetter Trio. As they launch vivaciously into the second set of their visit to a packed Ronnie Scott's, they clearly enjoy playing…
Sebastian Scotney
One completely joyous moment has eclipsed all my other impressions of this Glyndebourne Entführung revival. By the end of Act 1 of the opera, the character of Blonde has been…
Helen Hawkins
At every turn in Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man, references to other stories pop up. There are the murderous sexual shenanigans of The Postman Always Rings Twice, a squad of Italian…
Nick Hasted
Tom Holland is 30 now, and after a decade in the role his boyish Spider-Man muscularly comes of age in this fourth solo outing. A montage of street-level NYC crime-fighting sums…
Ellie Roberts
The staggering musical talent of Citizen has become more and more apparent with each album they have released, and Halcyon Blues continues the trend.This album would in fact…
Kieron Tyler
“She said her life was like a motorway… dull, grey, and long.” The lyrics of “Like a Motorway,” from Saint Etienne’s February 1994 album Tiger Bay see the titular highway…
Helen Hawkins
What can you do with lots of big sheets of white paper, three rolls of Sellotape and a couple of torches? These are items from the “props incident room”, as he would call it, of…
Gary Naylor
Attending the tale of Sweeney Todd was my introduction to musical theatre. I was in my early 20s and a friend of mine had invited me to the summer show at Guildford School of…
Adam Sweeting
Is this the near-future? The premise of Ann Droid is that in place of our over-stretched social services, before long we may find ourselves being helped out around the home by…
Graham Rickson
Saxophobia: Celebrating the Sax Craze of the 1920s Chad Smith (alto and C-melody saxophones), Sinfonia of London/John Wilson (Chandos)
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Kieron Tyler
The only break in the flow comes just before the last song, “Toppling.” There’s a need to tune the guitar, so what – until this point – is an uninterrupted, pell-mell rush through…
Guy Oddy
These days, Alfie Agnew is a Maths professor at California State University Fullerton. Back in the 1980s, however, he was singer and guitarist with US punks the Adolescents, as…
disc of the day
Garage, French House and feeling collide in latest release
tv
Diane Morgan and Sarah Kendall's comedy is full of heart and soul
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time...
film
Spider-Man matures in a sporadically moving return
Life is sweet and sour in a closely observed film about Luton youth
new music
The most epic regular record reviews in the galaxy
Garage, French House and feeling collide in latest release
Camp Bestival 2026, Lulworth Castle review - where the daytime magic still outshines everything else
A creative, inclusive, endlessly imaginative festival for families
classical
Fairies, and ogres, in old favourites, and a rediscovery
Czech piano trios, English choral music and an influential wind soloist celebrated
Natural scenes with birdsong fill a varied programme
opera
Architecture, balance and charm in the David McVicar production
Laurent Pelly's production proves you can have a great cast yet fail them as characters
A magnificent cast manages to master Gerald Barry's Wilde and act their crazy socks off
theatre
Christine Lahti expands her CV by writing and performing a painfully personal tale
Phelim McDermott, with his magic piano, pays tribute to his friend Philip Glass
Magnificent cast bring fresh energy to show approaching 50 years of age
dance
Matthew Bourne’s 2000 hit revs up again with impressive dancers and a witty score
Marianela Nuñez celebrates 28 years at the company
A test of stamina for the audience as well as the dancers
comedy
Comic looks back on his life and career
Comic revisits her alma mater to talk politics
books
David Thomson explores the dark side of cinema, but still offers a flicker of hope
Joyce lurks in the margins of his own biography in a detailed history of Irish politics
An enjoyable look at 'missingness' and how it affects the way we experience the world
visual arts
Great American photographers all in one place
Four artist's films and a computer game speculate on societal collapse
A wild imagination outlined in miniature
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