Reviews
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support
Friday, 14 November 2025
We are bowled over!
The Producers, Garrick Theatre review - Ve haf vays of making you laugh
Wednesday, 17 September 2025
Unexpectedly, there’s a sly reference to James Joyce’s Ulysses interpolated into Act One (in case we hadn’t caught the not so sly one, naming a leading character Leopold Bloom). While that’s a nice callback from brash commercial Hollywood to the high art salons of Paris, it also links the works. If Ulysses is the book whose legend persists despite so few people having read it, is The Producers its cinematic equivalent?
Appl, Levickis, Wigmore Hall review - fun to the...
Wednesday, 17 September 2025
Concerts at the Wigmore Hall offer many types of pleasure, but not often an evening so straightforwardly fun as Monday night’s recital by baritone...
Lammermuir Festival 2025, Part 2 review - from...
Tuesday, 16 September 2025
My colleague Boyd Tonkin visited the Lammermuir Festival for the first time this year. His eyes and ears have been opened to its treasures, but some...
Frances Wilson: Electric Spark - The Enigma of...
Tuesday, 16 September 2025
How do you tell the story of a person’s mind? In the preface to Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, published this year by Bloomsbury,...
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Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review - comedy rock band fails to revive past glories
Belated satirical sequel runs out of gas |
Tosca, Welsh National Opera review - a great company reduced to brilliance
The old warhorse made special by the basics |
Not Your Superwoman, Bush Theatre review - powerful tribute to the plight and perseverance of Black women
Golda Rosheuvel and Letitia Wright excel in a super new play |
Music Reissues Weekly: Robyn - Robyn 20th-Anniversary Edition
Landmark Swedish pop album hits shops one more time |
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review - an attemptedly elegiac final chapter haunted by its past
Noel Coward is a welcome visitor to the insular world of the hit series |
BBC Proms: Ehnes, Sinfonia of London, Wilson review - aspects of love
Sensuous Ravel, and bittersweet Bernstein, on an amorous evening |
Presteigne Festival 2025 review - new music is centre stage in the Welsh Marches
Music by 30 living composers, with Eleanor Alberga topping the bill |
Islands review - sunshine noir serves an ace
Sam Riley is the holiday resort tennis pro in over his head |
A Single Man, Linbury Theatre review - an anatomy of melancholy, with breaks in the clouds
Ed Watson and Jonathan Goddard are extraordinary in Jonathan Watkins' dance theatre adaptation of Isherwood's novel |
Cow | Deer, Royal Court review - paradox-rich account of non-human life
Experimental work about nature led by Katie Mitchell is both extraordinary and banal |
Lammermuir Festival 2025 review - music with soul from the heart of East Lothian
Baroque splendour, and chamber-ensemble drama, amid history-haunted lands |
Album: Yasmine Hamdan - I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر
Paris-based Lebanese electronica stylist reacts to current-day world affairs |
BBC Proms: Steinbacher, RPO, Petrenko / Sternath, BBCSO, Oramo review - double-bill mixed bag
Young pianist shines in Grieg but Bliss’s portentous cantata disappoints |
Honey Don’t! review - film noir in the bright sun
A Coen brother with a blood-simple gumshoe caper |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 92: Marianne Faithful, Crayola Lectern, UK Subs, Black Lips, Stax, Dennis Bovell and more
The biggest, best record reviews in the known universe |
Blondshell, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow review - woozy rock with an air of nonchalance
The singer's set dripped with cool, if not always individuality |
Ganavya, Barbican review - low-key spirituality
Communion and intimacy with diminishing returns |
Music Reissues Weekly: Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Years at 45 RPM
Triple-album 50th-anniversary celebration of the mould-breaking British independent label |
I Fought the Law, ITVX review - how an 800-year-old law was challenged and changed
Sheridan Smith's raw performance dominates ITV's new docudrama about injustice |
theartsdesk at the Lahti Sibelius Festival - early epics by the Finnish master in context
Finnish heroes meet their Austro-German counterparts in breathtaking interpretations |
Deaf Republic, Royal Court review - beautiful images, shame about the words
Staging of Ukrainian-American Ilya Kaminsky’s anti-war poems is too meta-theatrical |
Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares, Underbelly Boulevard Soho review - Tony winner makes charming, cheeky London debut
Broadway's acclaimed Cinderella, Louise, and Amalia reaches Soho for a welcome one-night stand |
Waley-Cohen, Manchester Camerata, Pether, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester review - premiere of no ordinary violin concerto
Images of maternal care inspired by Hepworth and played in a gallery setting |
The Courageous review - Ophélia Kolb excels as a single mother on the edge
Jasmin Gordon's directorial debut features strong performances but leaves too much unexplained |
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