festivals
Albums of the Year 2019: The Chemical Brothers - No GeographyWednesday, 18 December 2019
It was hard avoid bleak in 2019. Then the election hit and everything went off a cliff. Watching the world turn to a shit-bowl of ignorance and greed, the raging nihilism of the year’s key film, Joker, suddenly seemed appealing. The 2020s will be... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Tsinandali Festival: young Caucasians join hands and instrumentsTuesday, 15 October 2019
Two hours' drive from Tbilisi over a beautiful mountain pass, lushly wooded on the descent, the Tsinandali Estate has been central to Georgia's wine-growing district of Kakheti since poet-prince Prince Alexander Chavchavadze produced the first... Read more... |
LFF 2019: The King review - head conquers heart in Shakespeare adaptationSaturday, 05 October 2019
A labour of love for its co-writer, producer and star Joel Edgerton, The King (showing at London Film Festival) is derived from Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V plays, but isn’t slavishly bound to them. If it were, Edgerton would have lost a... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Hamburg: Reeperbahn Festival 2019 reviewSunday, 22 September 2019
Hatari’s 10th placing in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest hasn’t done them any harm. Neither did ruffling the feathers of the European Broadcasting Union and host nation Israel with their stance on Palestine. Based on their performance in Hamburg... Read more... |
BBC Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park review – Pet Shop Boys, Westlife and Status Quo deliver the hitsMonday, 16 September 2019
You might think that being first on the bill with a half-hour slot at 1.15pm would be an affront to a band who’d had a 12-times platinum album and ruled the 90s airwaves, but if they are offended Simply Red aren’t showing it. A weatherbeaten Mick... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Southrepps Music Festival - world-class young musicians return to North NorfolkMonday, 02 September 2019
When you've found some of the best young musicians in the world, and they've found that they love working in the peaceful surroundings of a magical spot in North Norfolk, you don't let go. Tenor Ben Johnson and pianist Tom Primrose focused for a... Read more... |
Foragers of the Foreshore - London's mudlarks on showSunday, 01 September 2019
Over the weekend, exhibitions and installations have started to bubble-up on the riverside walkway in London. Still-life photography of mudlark finds and a "scented history" of Barking Creek outside the National Theatre. Artwork from a dozen... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 review: How Not to DrownFriday, 16 August 2019
Urgent, fast-paced, seemingly never pausing for breath, How Not to Drown is a real-life boy’s own adventure, an appeal for compassion towards refugees, and an interrogation of nationality and identity. That’s quite a mix for a show of 100 minutes.... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 review: Arabella Weir - Does My Mum Loom Big In This?Thursday, 15 August 2019
If nothing else, Arabella Weir quips, she can thank her mother for providing the material for her first Fringe show. For Does My Mum Loom Big In This? (see what she did there) is the Fast Show and Two Doors Down actor/comedian’s reflections on... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2019 - super-orchestra, top clarinettists, transcendent stringsWednesday, 14 August 2019
Little has changed about Pärnu, with its concentric rings of eight-mile sandy beach and dunes, wooded gardens and wooden old town, in the five years I've been going there. It came as a bit of a shock to find that voters in the region favoured the... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2019 review: Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial SalvationWednesday, 14 August 2019
It’s the end of the world as we know it. At least according to Miles, scientist turned messiah, who lost his son in an accident at a frozen lake, and who experienced visions of an impending apocalypse in his subsequent coma.He’s established a colony... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2019 review: RootsTuesday, 13 August 2019
A fat cat who gobbles up everything in sight. A king who tests his wife’s fidelity with increasingly horrific trials. A man whose flatmate is Poverty. It’s hard to ignore the scathing contemporary resonances in theatre company 1927’s sly, witty new... Read more... |
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