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Tom Birchenough
Thursday, 23 May 2024
There’s a fierce, dark energy to the Globe’s new Richard III that I don’t recall at that venue for a fair while. The drilled cast dances seemed more frenzied, and there are more...
Bernard Hughes
Thursday, 23 May 2024
Like his baggy white suit, pitched somewhere between Liberace and Colonel Sanders, Pavel Kolesnikov’s playing was spotless at the Wigmore Hall last night. It comprised two very...
Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 23 May 2024
It’s often said that contemporary American playwrights are too polite, too afraid of giving offence. But this accusation can’t be levelled at Stephen Adly Guirgis, whose dramas –...
Thomas H Green
Thursday, 23 May 2024
Isobel Campbell has maintained a consistent career on the fringes of popular music for three decades. She's made a home in the area where indie, folk, rock and BBC 6Music merge....
Nick Hasted
Wednesday, 22 May 2024
Anita Pallenberg was a vital presence in the Stones’ most vital years. Her bright eyes and hungry mouth betrayed a ferocious appetite for pleasure and adventure, taking her from a...
Helen Hawkins
Wednesday, 22 May 2024
From New York’s Public Theater, the venue that nurtured Hamilton, comes another estimable pocket musical, Passing Strange. It was first staged in 2008, to Tony-nominated acclaim,...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 22 May 2024
He’s not the kind of actor who has paparazzi following him around Beverly Hills or staking out his yacht in St Barts, but...
Kieron Tyler
Wednesday, 22 May 2024
The final track of Samana’s third album is titled “The Preselis,” after the west Welsh mountain range – the place...
Caspar Gomez
Tuesday, 21 May 2024
If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of...
Veronica Lee
Tuesday, 21 May 2024
The most striking thing about the 1976 documentary (restored and re-released by the BFI) is just how polite Billy Connolly...
Adam Sweeting
Monday, 20 May 2024
The previous incarnation of Ian Rankin’s Scottish detective on ITV starred, in their contrasting styles, John Hannah and Ken...
Boyd Tonkin
Monday, 20 May 2024
Better (much better, indeed) late than never. The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique should have given their cycle of...
Rachel Halliburton
Monday, 20 May 2024
Five years after it first clattered onto the Glyndebourne stage, André Barbe and Renaud Doucet’s visually exuberant Die...
Robert Beale
Monday, 20 May 2024
It’s probably a bit early to be getting misty-eyed about the approaching end of Sir Mark Elder’s time as music director of...
Veronica Lee
Monday, 20 May 2024
Clinton Baptiste – clairvoyant, medium and psychic – first appeared briefly as a character in Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights on...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 19 May 2024
Original pressings of Love And Poetry sell for up to £2,800. Copies of the August 1969 debut album by Andwellas Dream can...
Robert Beale
Saturday, 18 May 2024
There’s a sense of cheerful abandon about Manchester Camerata’s Mozart concerts with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-...
Guy Oddy
Saturday, 18 May 2024
Always looking dapper and always sounding cool, Barry Adamson is a man who nevertheless seems to be perpetually of another...
David Nice
Friday, 17 May 2024
It’s what you dream of in opera but don’t often get: singers feeling free and liberated to give their best after weeks of...
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disc of the day
Album: Isobel Campbell - Bow to Love
The Scottish singer's latest is woozy, ultra laidback and sometimes delicious
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.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
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tv
theartsdesk Q&A: Eddie Marsan and the American Revolution, posh boys and East End gangsters
Versatile actor on playing John Adams opposite Michael Douglas in Apple TV+’s ‘Franklin'
Rebus, BBC One review - revival of Ian Rankin's Scottish 'tec hits the jackpot
Richard Rankin makes a compelling debut as the unorthodox Edinburgh cop
Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, Disney+ review - how the boy from Sayreville, NJ conquered the world
Four-part documentary series outstays its welcome
film
'I think of her as a proto-punk': documentarist Svetlana Zill on Anita Pallenberg
The co-director considers her revelatory account of the Stones' muse of mayhem
theartsdesk Q&A: Eddie Marsan and the American Revolution, posh boys and East End gangsters
Versatile actor on playing John Adams opposite Michael Douglas in Apple TV+’s ‘Franklin'
DVD/Blu-ray: Billy Connolly - Big Banana Feet
The comic caught on the cusp of his fame as he tours Ireland in 1975
new music
Album: Isobel Campbell - Bow to Love
The Scottish singer's latest is woozy, ultra laidback and sometimes delicious
The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - 12 hours on the musical frontline of Day Three
Checking out gigs by Being Dead, Kneecap, Pip Blom, Looking Glass Alice and more
classical
Kolesnikov, Wigmore Hall review - celestial navigation through a cabinet of wonders
Quirky but brilliant programme finds connections between unlikely bedfellows
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Sousa, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - Beethoven, younger than springtime
An exuberant cobweb-clearing symphony cycle
Hough, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - affection and adventure
Sir Stephen Hough’s piano concerto receives its European premiere
opera
Die Zauberflöte, Glyndebourne review - cornucopia of visual inventiveness eclipses everything else
An operatic feast for the eyes doesn't translate into conceptual satisfaction
Carmen, Glyndebourne review - total musical fusion
Production tells the story, mostly, but it’s the lead and the conductor who electrify
L'Olimpiade, Irish National Opera review - Vivaldi's long-distance run sustained by perfect teamwork
Sporting confusions and star-crossed lovers clarified by vivacious singing and playing
theatre
Richard III, Shakespeare's Globe review - Michelle Terry riffs with punk bravado
A female cast rips into toxic masculinity in a rebalanced treatment of villainy
Between Riverside and Crazy, Hampstead Theatre review - race, religion and rough justice
Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer-Prize winner finally makes it to London
Passing Strange, Young Vic review - exuberant pocket musical with a thoughtful core
Giles Terera excels leading a livewire cast in an irreverent look at Black identity
dance
The Winter's Tale, Royal Ballet review - what a story, and what a way to tell it!
A compelling case for ROH's ballet-friendly rebrand
All You Need Is Death review - a future folk horror classic
Irish folkies seek a cursed ancient song in Paul Duane's impressive fiction debut
MacMillan Celebrated, Royal Ballet review - out of mothballs, three vintage works to marvel at
Less-known pieces spanning the career of a great choreographer underline his greatness
comedy
DVD/Blu-ray: Billy Connolly - Big Banana Feet
The comic caught on the cusp of his fame as he tours Ireland in 1975
Clinton Baptiste, Touring review - spoof clairvoyant on great form
Character has life beyond 'Phoenix Nights'
Jack Docherty, Soho Theatre review - warm and witty childhood memoir
Former chat show host on his David Bowie obsession
Books
Extract: Pariah Genius by Iain Sinclair
A form-defying writer explores the troubled mindscape of a Soho photographer
Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review - a view from the boundaries
Enjoyable journey through the byways of how lines on maps have shaped the modern world
Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Earths review - a whole new world
Kaltenegger's traverses space in her thoughtful exploration of the search for life among the stars
visual arts
Brancusi, Pompidou Centre, Paris review - a sculptor's spiritual quest for form and essence
The Paris landmark signs off with a historic survey
Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, Tate Modern review - a missed opportunity
Wonderful paintings, but only half the story
Eye to Eye: Homage to Ernst Scheidegger, MASI Lugano review - era-defining artist portraits
One of Switzerland's greatest photographers celebrated with a major retrospective
latest comments
Enjoyable machvellian series well cast and like...
Season 8? Just horrible. I blame the writers...
Thank you David, this is very helpful. From where...
Michael Rebus lived in Fife , not Edinburgh.That...
Hello! I enjoyed the production although it...
Fantastic review, I ended up closing my eyes for...
Just returned from seeing this in Cambridge....
We saw Opening Night yesterday and felt...