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10 Questions for Mark Gatiss, writer-director of 'A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone'Wednesday, 25 December 2024
There are no white-sheeted ghosts in this year’s A Ghost Story for Christmas. The BBC’s annual adaptations of MR James’s best-known stories have been a holiday favourite since the 1970s. Read more...
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theartsdesk Q&A: David Morrissey on (among other things) the return of 'Sherwood' and 'Daddy Issues'Wednesday, 28 August 2024
Without ever getting embroiled in tabloid mayhem, even if he has confessed that he’d like to have a go on Strictly, David Morrissey has patiently turned himself into a quiet superstar. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Lucie Shorthouse is flying high with 'We Are Lady Parts' and 'Rebus'Thursday, 27 June 2024
Lucie Shorthouse is enjoying some high-profile TV action with her roles in Channel 4’s We Are Lady Parts, about the adventures of an all-woman Muslim punk band, and in BBC One’s reincarnated Rebus. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Matthew Modine on 'Hard Miles', 40 years in showbusiness and safer cyclingSaturday, 01 June 2024
Maybe California-born Matthew Modine caught the movie bug courtesy of his father Mark, who used to manage drive-in theatres, but after bagging his first film role in John Sayles’s Baby It’s You (1983) he never looked back. Blessed with a gift of employability that must make many of his fellow-actors green with envy, Modine has been clocking up a stream of memorable performances for 40 years on both the small and big screens. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Eddie Marsan and the American Revolution, posh boys and East End gangstersWednesday, 22 May 2024
He’s not the kind of actor who has paparazzi following him around Beverly Hills or staking out his yacht in St Barts, but Eddie Marsan, born into a working class family in Stepney in 1968, has amassed a list of acting credits that your average superstar will never be able to match. Read more... |
Leslie Phillips: 'I can be recognised by my voice alone'Thursday, 10 November 2022
Leslie Phillips would have known for half a century that at his death, which was announced yesterday, the obituaries would lead with one thing only. However much serious work he did in the theatre and on screen, he is forever handcuffed to the skirt-chaser he gave us in sundry Carry Ons and Doctor films and London bus movies. Read more... |
'The first thing I do when I wake up is write.' Hilary Mantel, 1952-2022Friday, 23 September 2022
Hilary Mantel, who has died at the age of 70, was a maker of literary history. Wolf Hall, an action-packed 650-page brick of a book about the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell, won the Man Booker Prize in 2009. Three years later its successor, Bring Up the Bodies, became the first sequel ever to win the prize in its 44-year history. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: writer and comedian Tom DavisFriday, 13 August 2021
After leaving school at 14, Tom Davis spent 10 years working as a scaffolder on building sites, while always harbouring what he thought was the impossible dream of getting into comedy. Hailing from Sutton in south London, he had a go at standup and for a time found himself in drag, singing Disney songs. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Isabella Pappas on how 'Finding Alice' is a blueprint for bereavementMonday, 01 February 2021
Isabella Pappas was nominated for an Olivier Award seven years ago – before she’d even started secondary school. The 18-year-old now stars in ITV’s new comedy-drama about grief, Finding Alice, opposite Keeley Hawes, Joanna Lumley, and Nigel Havers. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: actor Polly Walker on 'Bridgerton' and the new breed of period dramaMonday, 25 January 2021
Polly Walker's character in Netflix's sumptuous new Regency romance, Bridgerton, could've easily been little more than a villainous Mrs Bennet. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
The Years, Harold Pinter Theatre review - a bravura, joyous...
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The brilliance of...
Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Fernandes, Gent, 229 review - a beguil...
It was the sonically adventurous, shiveringly atmospheric cello piece by Latvian composer Preteris Vasks that proved to be the first showstopper...
Phaedra + Minotaur, Royal Ballet and Opera, Linbury Theatre...
Greek myths are all over theatre stages at the moment, their fierce, vengeful stories offering unnerving parallels with events in our modern world...
Music Reissues Weekly: Beggars Arkive - The Lurkers’ 1978 Jo...
On its own, the second session The Lurkers recorded for the BBC’s John Peel show on 18 April 1978 is arguably a curio, a footnote. Four tracks of...
Manchester Collective, RNCM review - something special in ne...
When a piece of music is heard for the first time ever, there’s always the delicious hope that, just by being there, an audience might witness...
The Marriage of Figaro, Welsh National Opera review - no con...
Drained as they are at present of crucial funds, WNO are managing to...
Jacqueline Feldman: Precarious Lease review - living on the...
Taking on some of the contingent, nebulous quality of its subject, Jacqueline Feldman’s ...