theartsdesk.com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Adam Sweeting |
This third and final instalment of Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland trilogy continues the author’s ingenious mystery-within-a-mystery formula and brings back the titular literary…
Gary Naylor |
The title is a portmanteau word, one that hardly stretches one’s sleuthing capacity to decipher, which proves, unlike much else in a very curious two hours, to be well-chosen for…
Guy Oddy |
Test Dept are pioneers of hardcore, ear-battering industrial music who first got together in the early 1980s. They may have originally called it quits in 1997, but for the last…
johncarvill |
Most of the Brit gangster movies released around the turn of the Millennium were pretty dire. Often influenced by Quentin Tarantino’s crass, style-instead-of-substance aesthetic,…
Joe Muggs |
Dance culture is constantly remixing its past, but it seems like we’re in a sudden burst of interesting twists on that. Just in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen British reggae…
Gary Naylor |
The first thing I saw on entering just about my favourite theatre was a mic on the end of a lead, centre stage. I’d come a long way, so I didn’t quite turn around and go home, but…
Robert Beale
Barkouf, the operetta that Offenbach wrote in 1860 immediately after Orpheus in the Underworld, was, you might say, dogged by misfortune at the time of its creation.Leading…
Sarah Kent
If your parents were eccentric enough to call you Esmerelda – a name they gleaned from a crossword puzzle – you’d most likely feel destined to become a wizard or a witch. Es…
Tim Cumming
I saw Sam Sweeney and Grace Smith perform back in August at the Sidmouth Folk Festival, in the function room of one of the bigger hotels overlooking the seafront. It was sold out…
Nick Hasted
“The knife in the eye is the cruellest blow,” Salman Rushdie considers, in this film of his book reckoning with the assault which almost killed him. The prolific and brilliant…
David Nice
"German sounds a thoroughly respectable language, and indeed, I believe is so, " pronounces Wilde's Lady Bracknell. She may, in Gerald Barry's operatic setting of The Importance…
Stuart Begley
Woodrow Wilson's attempts to forge a new international order based on principles of democracy, equal respect for sovereignty and an intergovernmental league with robust powers…
Adam Sweeting
In April 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, US President Franklin D Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102, effectively confiscating privately-held gold from American…
Gary Naylor
As we know now, but did not in 2013 when Bull was first staged, reality TV, like social media, kills people. You can argue the nuances of that statement but too many smoking guns…
Alice Brewer
Sebastian Faulks’ Farewell to Eden is a slow-moving, brackish affair; in many ways it is nothing new. Like many of his most famous, formally achieved works, the novel tries to…
Guy Oddy
Apparently, HAAi’s latest long player was originally meant to be a companion piece to her HUMANiSE album from last year. It clearly soon evolved into a completely stand-alone…
Aleks Sierz
Confession is a crazy critter. Isn’t it? I confess that the last time I saw a show at this venue was a year ago: it was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, a stage adaptation of a…
David Nice
Living the unison curve and its attendant shimmer with which Wagner outlines a religious mystery in the Prelude to Parsifal, Jakub Hrůša tells you immediately why the Royal Opera'…
Helen Hawkins
Noel Coward’s youthful writing surge produced dozens of plays, the perennially popular Hay Fever, premiered in 1925, among them. A century on, this classic rep piece is back yet…
disc of the day
tv
Last time around for Anthony Horowitz's bookish heroine Susan Ryeland?
Rival law firms go into battle in high-profile divorce case
Janus Metz's film leaves us little the wiser about the notorious killer
film
Amiable inside account of Rushdie's courageous recovery from his ruinous stabbing
Desperate convicts battle the law and the elements in the Oregon wilderness
new music
Harsh & fierce sounds of resistance at a serious volume
The UK DJ / producer / remixer on the challenges and joys of getting the keys to a vast vault
Deep English tunes and dances are brought back to life on this beautiful debut set from the new fiddle duo
classical
Ireland's leading orchestra gets a dose of Wilsonian Idealism
Fascinating programmes from a range of pianists, and an amazing masterclass
Lighting and dancers make a multi-media experience, but Steve Reich's music is the star
opera
An operetta once dogged by misfortune finds its happy ending at last
Stanislas de Barbeyrac's protagonist matches Jakub Hrůša's conducting for intensity
A double bill with varied outcomes
theatre
Two halves do not make a whole
Bold and pacy, but lost in its ambition
Oscar Wilde's seemingly freefall prison lament becomes a compelling study in insanity
dance
The Royal Ballet principal shows off his tap skills, his colleague a Paganini party piece
The Pandora myth makes an underwhelming vehicle for the dangers of AI
Matthew Bourne’s 2000 hit revs up again with impressive dancers and a witty score
comedy
Irish comic delivers a gag-heavy hour
books
Style fails to meet philosophical ambition in a novel that treads old ground
This revelatory biography is sympathetically told and endlessly entertaining
Clint Boon lovingly recalls those baggy, funky, sinsemilla-scented Madchester days
visual arts
An archive opened to view
A feel good show in which familiarity is leavened by surprises
The Festival may be over for another year, but there is plenty of art still to see
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