theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Sebastian Scotney
Friday, 15 January 2021
Cerys Matthews is a best-selling author, award winning DJ and multi-million selling musician, singer, reciter... and broadcaster, originally from Wales. Her wide-ranging Sunday...
Matt Wolf
Friday, 15 January 2021
Noel Coward's 1941 comedy was one of the theatrical casualties of the first lockdown last March in a Richard Eyre-directed West End revival that aimed to mine the pain beneath...
Robert Beale
Friday, 15 January 2021
Jonathan Bloxham makes his debut as conductor with the Hallé Orchestra in the third of the Hallé’s Winter Season concerts on film. It’s a poetry-connected programme in several...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 15 January 2021
When the concept album first properly took flight, in the late 1960s, before it became slave to the bloated artifice of prog-rock, it was an extension of the LSD-soaked times: “...
Tom Birchenough
Thursday, 14 January 2021
Veteran Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky has gone back to his beginnings for his latest film. The real-life events on which Dear Comrades! is based took place in June 1962,...
Graham Fuller
Thursday, 14 January 2021
The Night Porter depicts the consuming sadomasochistic love affair of an SS officer, Max (Dirk Bogarde), and the Catholic woman, Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), whom he both tortures...
Joseph Walsh
Wednesday, 13 January 2021
In 1964, Cassius Clay, NFL superstar Jim Nathaniel Brown, soul legend Sam Cooke and political firebrand Malcolm X gathered...
Tim Cumming
Wednesday, 13 January 2021
Back in 2013, the London-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist launched the first of a trilogy of albums...
David Nice
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Born in exigency at the end of the First World War and soon kiboshed by the Spanish flu, The Soldier’s Tale as originally...
Laura De Lisle
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
The blurb for Peter Pan: The Audio Adventure, Shaun McKenna’s new adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic, tells us, with a hint...
Daniel Baksi
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures is a collection of transcripts, recording weekly group lectures delivered by Mark...
Guy Oddy
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
theartsdesk eases into 2021 with a Disc of the Day title, Himalayan Dream Techno, that will be hard to beat over the next 12...
Lydia Bunt
Monday, 11 January 2021
You go out for a walk and leave your devices at home; your head feels a little bit clearer. But when you get back and plonk...
Veronica Lee
Monday, 11 January 2021
In a much-depleted and truncated pantomime season that withered on the vine, the National Theatre's debut production of Dick...
Kieron Tyler
Monday, 11 January 2021
The key tracks on Every Mover are “Play 'til Evening” and “Earthborne”. The first shimmeringly fuses anthemic, gospel-edged...
Adam Sweeting
Sunday, 10 January 2021
The discovery of a grotesque murder is the traditional way to begin a new series of Spiral, and this time around the cadaver...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 10 January 2021
Two of the four CDs in this set are of a live performance taped on 16 April 1964. The other pair of discs were recorded on 9...
Thomas H Green
Saturday, 09 January 2021
Their PR cannot put the band name in the header of promotional emails, as they’ll go straight to the spam bin, but Swedish...
Markie Robson-Scott
Friday, 08 January 2021
This is not a film to watch if you’re pregnant. One of the first scenes, a 24-minute continuous take of a home birth that...
disc of the day
Album: Skyway Man - The World Only Ends When You Die
Warm psychedelic Californian indie-gospel-country ruminations on the path to the beyond
tv
Spiral, Series 8, BBC Four review - dark days in the City of Light
Final series of the show that's more than just a 'policier'
Steve McQueen: The Lost Movie, Sky Documentaries review - the classic motor racing film that never was
How fate conspired against the car-crazy star's Formula One movie
The Great, Channel 4 review - Russian history gets a whirl in the fictional blender
Screenwriter Tony McNamara refuses to let the facts stand in his way
film
Dear Comrades! review - Andrei Konchalovsky exposes the Soviet past
The tragic June 1962 events in Novocherkassk are the backbone of retro drama
Blu-ray: The Night Porter
Liliana Cavani's transgressive drama was widely misunderstood on its original release
new music
10 Questions for Musician and Broadcaster Cerys Matthews
Thoughts on an album which places poets centre-stage
Gillam, Hallé, Bloxham, Hallé online review - music of poetry
Turbulence, calm, and long, slow melodies in a concert commemorating 2020
Album: Skyway Man - The World Only Ends When You Die
Warm psychedelic Californian indie-gospel-country ruminations on the path to the beyond
classical
Gillam, Hallé, Bloxham, Hallé online review - music of poetry
Turbulence, calm, and long, slow melodies in a concert commemorating 2020
The Soldier's Tale, Scottish Chamber Orchestra online review - top performers master a baggy mini-monster
Actor and violinist excel in this Stravinsky-Ramuz confection
András Schiff, Wigmore Hall review - Bach in isolation
Total focus on one composer brings balm for the spirit
opera
Best of 2020: Opera
With no touching from mid-March onwards, this art-form was hard hit - but ingenuity ruled
Royal Opera Christmas Concert online review – pajama party around the Nutcracker tree
Vivacious opera and cheesy carols under the lively baton of Mark Wigglesworth
Pagliacci, Opera Ensemble, Longborough review - stripped down but live
Finding the essence of a minor masterpiece
theatre
Peter Pan: The Audio Adventure review - the perfect bedtime story
Sharon D Clarke and Olivia Colman sparkle in delightful radio play in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital
Dick Whittington, National Theatre at Home review - colourful and amiable entertainment
Free stream of the NT's Covid-affected pantomime
Best of 2020: Theatre
Out of pandemic-driven chaos and confusion came moments of clarity - and "Blindness"
dance
The Nutcracker: an end-of-year obituary
It's been a rough ride for the seasonal cash cow. Here's how ballet companies coped
The Seven Deadly Sins, Opera North online review - viscerally thrilling
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's indictment of capitalism in a vibrant new production
comedy
Comedy podcasts round-up 2: from home and abroad
Lively chat, masterful spoofing and behind-the-scenes fun
Books
Mark Fisher: Postcapitalist Desire - The Final Lectures review - imagining the alternative
An eye-opening exploration of the relationship between capitalism and desire
Julia Bell: Radical Attention review - a clear rendering of our withering attention spans
Bell’s essay is timely and insightful, but how radical can small acts really be?
George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain review – Russian lessons in literature and life
A visionary engineer gets under the bonnet of great fiction
visual arts
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tate Britain review - enigmatic figures full of life
When is a painting not a portrait?
Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch, Royal Academy review - juxtapositions that confuse rather than clarify
Similar themes, different sensibilities
latest comments
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