thu 13/03/2025

Brighton Festival

Brighton Festival: Brighton – Symphony of a City, Brighton Dome

Brighton’s barely a city. It was awarded the title in 2004 without having to build a cathedral, or become bigger than a greatly swollen version of Brighthelmstone, the fishing village it once was, hemmed in from further growth by the South Downs and...

Read more...

Brighton Festival: Laurie Anderson's Concert for Dogs, Open Air Theatre

"Wouldn't it be great if you were playing a concert and you looked out and everyone is a dog?" Laurie Anderson mused, almost a decade ago, waiting backstage with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Anderson has realised her outlandish dream, creating a most unusual...

Read more...

Brighton Festival: Yanis Varoufakis, Brighton Dome

Maybe rock star economists are what we need. Former Greek finance minister Varoufakis’s bullish good looks, charisma and verbal fireworks failed to charm the Troika technocrats who finally banished him from government during last year’s infamous...

Read more...

Brighton Festival: Smoke and Mirrors, Corn Exchange

Smoke and Mirrors is a show based around circus skills. It’s by the Ricochet Project, a performing unit consisting of Berlin-based US performers Cohdi Harrell and Laura Stokes. However, those expecting a spectacle offering visual pizzazz and the...

Read more...

Brighton Festival: Digging for Shakespeare, Roedale Allotments

Of all the 400th anniversary tributes to Shakespeare, this ramble through an allotment just outside Brighton has to be one of the oddest, and most unexpectedly moving. Brighton Festival has a reputation for site-specific work, rediscovering secret...

Read more...

Brighton Festival: Tindersticks, Brighton Dome

Tindersticks certainly know how to instill a mood. Outside the Dome Concert Hall the start of the Brighton Festival is in full swing, with a proliferation of tents, parades and shiny happy tourists drinking in the sun. Inside, Stuart Staples is...

Read more...

Brighton Festival: Operation Black Antler, secret location

You’ve arrived at a party in a pub, tagging along with a guy you just met. You’re attempting to catch the barman’s eye, while scouting for a friendly face. The band declares that everyone must dance to the next one, and you wish you’d ordered a...

Read more...

Win a Luxury Weekend for Two at the 50th Brighton Festival!

Brighton Festival is a fantastic, exhilarating, leading annual celebration of the arts, with events taking place in venues both familiar and unusual across Brighton & Hove for three weeks every May. This year, the Festival celebrates 50 years of...

Read more...

10 Questions for Musician Beth Orton

Beth Orton (b 1970) is a singer-songwriter who first came to prominence via her collaborations with the Chemical Brothers, at the start of both their careers. She recorded an album with the producer William Orbit in 1993 but it was her 1995 album,...

Read more...

10 Questions for Comedian Alexei Sayle

Alexei Sayle (b 1952) first came to fame at the birth of alternative comedy, as MC at the Comedy Store in London at the dawn of the 1980s. He cemented his reputation via his recurring role in the anarchic student sitcom classic The Young Ones, as...

Read more...

10 Questions for Choreographer Charles Linehan

Charles Linehan is an acclaimed British choreographer, whose company has performed all over the world, from DanSpace New York to Brussels’ Kaai Theatre to the Venice Biennale. Born in Cyprus and raised in Kent, he studied at the Rambert School of...

Read more...

Brighton Festival: 1967 and All That

With the 50th Brighton Festival taking place this year, Festival CEO Andrew Comben meets theartsdesk for a chat about the original 1967 event, and its relationship with this year’s Festival. Comben has been the Brighton Festival's overall manager...

Read more...
Subscribe to Brighton Festival