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...
Tim Cumming
Thursday, 06 November 2025
Opening acts don’t always enjoy a full house, but at at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of a UK tour in support of Suzanne Vega and her acclaimed new album Flying with Angels,...
Helen Hawkins
Thursday, 06 November 2025
What defines a life? Money and success? Happiness? Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams employs a narrator, much as Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven did, who fields big questions like...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 06 November 2025
It’s weird, right? We’ve somehow stumbled into a world where, for all we’re told that algorithms homogenise music, actually more people than ever are exposed to very, very odd and...
Nick Hasted
Wednesday, 05 November 2025
“Rebellion begins with a breath,” an opening aphorism declares in this first film recounting Palestine’s 1936-39 Arab Revolt, long historically supplanted by Israel’s seismic 1948...
David Nice
Wednesday, 05 November 2025
Janáček described his nature-versus-humanity fable The Cunning Little Vixen as “a merry thing with a sad end”. In which case, the even stranger Makropulos Case is a chattery...
Heather Neill
Wednesday, 05 November 2025
Perspectives on Shakespeare's tragedy have changed over the decades. As Nonso Anozie said when playing the title role for...
Katie Colombus
Wednesday, 05 November 2025
After cancelling his Birmingham gig an hour before curtain-up due to illness, the anticipatory hype around whether Benson...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 05 November 2025
Directed by Lynne Ramsay and based on the book by Ariana Harwicz, Die My Love is an unsettling dive into the disturbed...
Kieron Tyler
Wednesday, 05 November 2025
“Climb upon a bridge to far, go anywhere your heart desires.” The key phrase from the title track of Midlake’s sixth studio...
Gary Naylor
Tuesday, 04 November 2025
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s so very different about Belfast and Glasgow, both of which I have visited in the last...
Guy Oddy
Tuesday, 04 November 2025
During a false start to “Billy Don’t Fall”, on Sunday night at Birmingham’s iconic Town Hall, Sananda Maitreya took the...
Kerem Hasan
Tuesday, 04 November 2025
There is a scene in the second act of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking in which the man condemned to...
Helen Hawkins
Monday, 03 November 2025
This five-parter by Rebecca Miller is essential viewing for any Martin Scorsese fan – and for anybody who wants to...
David Nice
Monday, 03 November 2025
Emotional truth backed up by musical sophistication is what saves Puccini’s drama about a geisha deserted by an American...
Robert Beale
Monday, 03 November 2025
Am I dreaming? Did I really see a living composer of contemporary music given a prolonged standing ovation for conducting...
Thomas H Green
Monday, 03 November 2025
Three of last year’s finest singles were by Luvcat, a classy-but-naughty Eartha Kitt-style bad girl steeped in burlesque-...
David Nice
Sunday, 02 November 2025
A drawback of choosing relatively or very obscure operas, as they've been mostly doing in Wexford Festival since 1951, is...
David Nice
Sunday, 02 November 2025
The greatest procession of mass movements ever composed merits the best line-up of soloists, both vocal and instrumental, as...
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disc of the day
Kali Malone and Drew McDowell generate 'Magnetism' with intergenerational ambience
Young composer and esoteric veteran achieve alchemical reaction in endless reverberations
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Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
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tv
Mr Scorsese, Apple TV review - perfectly pitched documentary series with fascinating insights
Rebecca Miller musters a stellar roster of articulate talking heads for this thorough portrait
Down Cemetery Road, Apple TV review - wit, grit and a twisty plot, plus Emma Thompson on top form
Mick Herron's female private investigator gets a stellar adaptation
theartsdesk Q&A: director Stefano Sollima on the relevance of true crime story 'The Monster of Florence'
The director of hit TV series 'Gomorrah' examines another dark dimension of Italian culture
film
Train Dreams review - one man's odyssey into the American Century
Clint Bentley creates a mini history of cultural change through the life of a logger in Idaho
Palestine 36 review - memories of a nation
Director Annemarie Jacir draws timely lessons from a forgotten Arab revolt
Die My Love review - good lovin' gone bad
A magnetic Jennifer Lawrence dominates Lynne Ramsay's dark psychological drama
new music
Suzanne Vega and Katherine Priddy, Royal Albert Hall review - superlative songwriters
Two brilliant voices fill the Royal Albert Hall
Kali Malone and Drew McDowell generate 'Magnetism' with intergenerational ambience
Young composer and esoteric veteran achieve alchemical reaction in endless reverberations
Benson Boone, O2 London review - sequins, spectacle and cheeky charm
Two hours of backwards-somersaults and British accents in a confetti-drenched spectacle
classical
Hallé John Adams festival, Bridgewater Hall / RNCM, Manchester review - standing ovations for today's music
From 1980 to 2025 with the West Coast’s pied piper and his eager following
Bach's B minor Mass, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin - everything human and divine
Perfect ensemble runs the gamut of a supreme masterpiece
Kaploukhii, Greenwich Chamber Orchestra, Cutts, St James's Piccadilly review - promising young pianist
A robust and assertive Beethoven concerto suggests a player to follow
opera
The Makropulos Case, Royal Opera - pointless feminist complications
Katie Mitchell sucks the strangeness from Janáček’s clash of legalese and eternal life
First Person: Kerem Hasan on the transformative experience of conducting Jake Heggie's 'Dead Man Walking'
English National Opera's production of a 21st century milestone has been a tough journey
Madama Butterfly, Irish National Opera review - visual and vocal wings, earthbound soul
Celine Byrne sings gorgeously but doesn’t round out a great operatic character study
theatre
Othello, Theatre Royal, Haymarket review - a surprising mix of stateliness and ironic humour
David Harewood and Toby Jones at odds
Macbeth, RSC, Stratford review - Glaswegian gangs and ghoulies prove gripping
Sam Heughan's Macbeth cannot quite find a home in a mobster pub
The Line of Beauty, Almeida Theatre review - the 80s revisited in theatrically ravishing form
Alan Hollinghurst novel is cunningly filleted, very finely acted
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
Emma Doran, Leicester Square Theatre review - domestic life laid bare
Irish comic mixes sentiment and sauciness
Janine Harouni, Soho Theatre review - families and surviving them
US comic's slick show about relationships
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
Robin Holloway: Music's Odyssey review - lessons in composition
Broad and idiosyncratic survey of classical music is insightful but slightly indigestible
Thomas Pynchon - Shadow Ticket review - pulp diction
Thomas Pynchon's latest (and possibly last) book is fun - for a while
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
Photo Oxford 2025 review - photography all over the town
At last, a UK festival that takes photography seriously
Gilbert & George, 21st Century Pictures, Hayward Gallery review - brash, bright and not so beautiful
The couple's coloured photomontages shout louder than ever, causing sensory overload
latest comments
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