theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Jasper Rees
Wednesday, 25 April 2018
A few years ago Abi Morgan was everywhere. For the cinema she scripted Shame, The Iron Lady, The Invisible Woman and Suffragette. On television she adapted Birdsong and created...
Matt Wolf
Wednesday, 25 April 2018
A one-time Martha and Maggie the Cat in the theatre, and a screen siren of the sort they don't make any more, might not be the first person you expect to see swaggering on to a...
Steve O'Rourke
Wednesday, 25 April 2018
The God of War games are legendary action adventure titles that specialise in the slaying of giant mythical beasts via intuitive brutal combat. The hugely popular series was...
Thomas H Green
Wednesday, 25 April 2018
Blossoms are the latest inheritors of the massive-in-Manchester mantle that has, so often in the past, translated into massive-almost-everywhere ubiquity. That their eponymous...
Adam Sweeting
Tuesday, 24 April 2018
Some critics complain that Westworld is too complicated for its own good, and you can see their point. Even on a basic level, it’s an exploration of the nature and potential of...
Sarah Kent
Tuesday, 24 April 2018
What a superb location for a performance! The flats on the north-east corner of Islington Green back onto a crummy atrium from which a staircase leads down to a vaulted, concrete...
Veronica Lee
Tuesday, 24 April 2018
Flo and Joan are sisters (Nicola and Rosie Dempsey: they have borrowed their stage names from their nan and her sister...
Owen Richards
Tuesday, 24 April 2018
Major Fakhir is a deminer, responsible for disarming hundreds of mines around Mosul every week. His American counterparts...
David Nice
Tuesday, 24 April 2018
The touch is not always light here. Swathes of clunking, cliché-ridden English dialogue threaten to make the star-crossed...
David Nice
Monday, 23 April 2018
Why would any conductor resist Mahler's last great symphonic adventure? By which I mean the vast finale of his Tenth...
Katherine Waters
Monday, 23 April 2018
The BBC excels at a very particular kind of drama, namely one where production values overawe dramatic content. Its version...
Veronica Lee
Monday, 23 April 2018
Ed Byrne is a worried parent. Thankfully his two young sons are hale and hearty, but he is concerned he may be bringing up a...
Miranda Heggie
Monday, 23 April 2018
Featuring two Russian composers, the two halves of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s programme could hardly have been...
Thomas H Green
Monday, 23 April 2018
There’s a regular problem with techno albums. The DJ-producers who make them are usually so deeply embedded in club techno...
Katherine Waters
Sunday, 22 April 2018
Back in the early Sixties Lucian Freud was living in Clarendon Crescent, a condemned row of houses in Paddington which were...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 22 April 2018
Playing Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom on 8 September 1974, the New York Dolls opened their first set of the evening with...
Gavin Dixon
Saturday, 21 April 2018
The Brahms violin sonatas make a perfect spring evening recital. The Second and Third were inspired by a summer retreat, but...
Tom Birchenough
Saturday, 21 April 2018
Conflict and comedy can be unpredictable bedfellows, and Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson’s 2014 play occasionally...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 21 April 2018
Hans Abrahamsen String Quartets No. 1-4 Arditti String Quartet (Winter & Winter)The opening section of Danish composer...
disc of the day
CD: Blossoms - Cool Like You
Second album from rising five-piece successfully hones their synth-pop credentials
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tv
The Split, BBC One, review - Abi Morgan’s densely packed divorce drama
Nicola Walker is the real deal in a hectic family law saga
Westworld, Series 2, Sky Atlantic review - big trouble in synthetic paradise
Apocalypse looms as androids go on the rampage
The Woman in White, BBC One review - camp Victoriana
Wilkie Collins's Gothic whodunnit gets a florid treatment for telly
film
The Deminer review - life on the edge in Iraq
One man risks literal life and limb in this fascinating war documentary
DVD/Blu-ray: The Touch
Bergman's typically individual take on a difficult affair has flashes of vintage brilliance
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society review - artery-furring whimsy
Lily James seeks postwar secrets in a Channel Islands weepie
new music
Reissue CDs Weekly: New York Dolls
'Personality Crisis' is a frequently wonderful collection of what New York’s finest did not originally release
classical
LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - incandescent swansongs by Mahler and Tippett
The London Symphony Orchestra's supreme soundsmith on top form
Wang, RSNO, Oundjian, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - percussion sets Shostakovich's 'Leningrad' ablaze
Music Director pairs two very different Russian works in his final season
Ibragimova, Tiberghien, Wigmore Hall review – light, bright and melodic Brahms
Sensitive but dynamic playing perfectly conveys the music’s carefree spirit
opera
DVD/Blu-ray: Bergman's The Magic Flute
Pretty start, heart of darkness: the greatest of all opera films now available to UK viewers
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Royal Opera review - bleak rigour and black comedy still cast a spell
Eva-Maria Westbroek returns on top form as Shostakovich's lethally bored housewife
Bernstein's MASS, RFH review - polymorphousness in excelsis
Vibrant diversity in this ever-topical 'theatre piece for singers, players and dancers'
theatre
Kathleen Turner: Finding My Voice, The Other Palace review - a familiar name in freshly exciting form
The screen and stage star invents herself anew, this time in song
Rasheeda Speaking, Trafalgar Studios review - unsettling comedy, thorny racism
Bravura performance from Tanya Moodie in sharp new American drama of racial discord
Bat Out of Hell, Dominion Theatre review - the Meat Loaf musical returns, batty as ever
The booming behemoth is right at home in We Will Rock You’s old digs
dance
Obsidian Tear / Marguerite and Armand / Elite Syncopations, Royal Opera House review - an evening of high-performance mismatch
Fine dancing, but these three ballets have nothing to say to each other
Voices of America, English National Ballet review - a punchy programme of contemporary ballet
Forsythe commission is a romping, swaggering joy of a piece
Classical CDs Weekly: Lūcija Garūta, Dag Wirén, Ruby Hughes
20th century discoveries from Latvia and Sweden, plus a tribute to Handel's favourite soprano
gaming
Metal Gear Survive review - staying alive shouldn't be such a slog
Bring out your wild side in this strange survivalist simulation
EA Sports UFC 3 review - the art of fighting has never looked so good
Why bob and weave when you can ground and pound?
visual arts
Taryn Simon: An Occupation of Loss, Islington Green review - divine lamentation
A journey to the underworld in song
Monet and Architecture, National Gallery review - a revelation in paint
The king of the blockbuster seen in a new light
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