theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 22 September 2024
As the name of a music genre, new jack swing was coined in an issue of the Village Voice dated 18 October 1987. Writer Barry Michael Cooper was profiling producer, songwriter and...
Nick Hasted
Sunday, 22 September 2024
Robert Crumb puts America’s racist, misogynist Id on paper with self-implicating obsession. Terry Zwigoff’s 1995 documentary on the underground cartoonist and his even further out...
Robert Beale
Saturday, 21 September 2024
“Mozart, made in Manchester”, the project to perform and record an edition of the piano concertos plus all the opera overtures, seemed a distant destination and an unlikely...
Helen Hawkins
Saturday, 21 September 2024
Why do production companies think the world needs yet another reconstituted TV drama involving famous people in infamous situations? Newspapers and non fiction books already do a...
Hugh Barnes
Saturday, 21 September 2024
The trial of the left-wing intellectual Pierre Goldman, who was charged in April 1970 with four armed robberies, one of which led to the death of two pharmacists, was known as “...
Guy Oddy
Saturday, 21 September 2024
Life can be unfair, and Katy Perry can’t be alone in finding herself having to take the rough with the smooth. Still, anyone would have thought that with the excessive pearl...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 20 September 2024
“Let the train take the strain”, as the old advertising slogan urged us. The train in this six-part drama has to soak up a...
Justine Elias
Friday, 20 September 2024
Orla Barry laughed when she was advised to take up sheep farming, and not just because she had no experience. “Orla with the...
Markie Robson-Scott
Friday, 20 September 2024
If you like a body-horror movie to retain a semblance of logic in its plot line, then The Substance – grotesque, gory and...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 20 September 2024
Sometimes a gig suddenly and completely elevates. Such is the case tonight when Moby, on his first UK tour in 12 years,...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Friday, 20 September 2024
“Are you a serial killer?” asks a woman sitting in a pick up truck with a man she just met at a bar. The neon sign from the...
Saskia Baron
Friday, 20 September 2024
It’s a bold move to give a UK cinema release to this fierce courtroom drama about a French left-wing intellectual who was...
Veronica Lee
Friday, 20 September 2024
You have to admire the ambition of a show called Every Single Thing in My Whole Entire Life, the latest from Zoë Coombs Marr...
Gary Naylor
Friday, 20 September 2024
Iconic is a word the meaning of which is moving from the religious world into popular culture – win a reality TV show...
Rachel Halliburton
Friday, 20 September 2024
The high level of entries for this year’s Leeds Piano Competition – 366, almost twice the number who entered in 2018 – is...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 20 September 2024
Miranda Lambert is one of those country stars who’s massive in the States but no-one’s heard of this side of the Atlantic....
Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 19 September 2024
British theatre has a proud heritage of science plays. From 1990s classics such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1993) and Michael...
Jenny Gilbert
Thursday, 19 September 2024
You need to be fairly long in the tooth to feel nostalgia for the heyday of London City Ballet. The group was set up in 1978...
Joe Muggs
Thursday, 19 September 2024
There’s been a lot of early 90s rave aesthetics in popular culture lately, but an awful lot of it has been at the level of...
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disc of the day
Blu-ray: Crumb
Terry Zwigoff's landmark, cracked family portrait of misanthropic comix genius R Crumb
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
tv
A Very Royal Scandal, Prime Video review - a fairly sound reimagining, but to what end?
The acting is first-rate, but it has no satisfying dramatic goal
The Perfect Couple, Netflix review - an inconvenient death ruins lavish Nantucket wedding
Liev Schreiber steals the show in adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand's novel
film
Blu-ray: Crumb
Terry Zwigoff's landmark, cracked family portrait of misanthropic comix genius R Crumb
The law's sick voyeurism - director Cédric Kahn on 'The Goldman Case'
Kahn's drama about the 1976 trial of Pierre Goldman mirrors conflicts in modern France
Notes from Sheepland review - her farm is her canvas
A documentary captures the double life of artist Orla Barry
new music
Music Reissues Weekly: New Jill Swing
First-ever collection documenting new jack swing’s female counterpart
Moby, O2 review - ebullient night of rave'n'rock'n'Johnny Cash
The millennial electronic star returns with his first European tour in over a decade
classical
Bavouzet, Nemecz, McLachlan, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - finish line of a remarkable marathon
Triumphant conclusion for ‘Mozart, made in Manchester’ piano concertos series
theartsdesk Q&A: young pianist Ignas Maknickas on appearing at the Roman River Festival and beyond
A rising talent who first performed with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra aged 9
Donohoe, Roscoe, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - two great pianists celebrate 50 years
The special chemistry of two-piano duet, with virtuosity, humour and depth
opera
Prom 68, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Garsington Opera review - eerie beauty sometimes faintly glittering
Strong cast and top orchestra project as best they can in a fine company's first Proms visit
La traviata, Royal Opera review - a charismatic soprano in a serviceable revival
Richard Eyre's classic production looks great but lacks fizz
Prom 52, Carmen, Glyndebourne Festival review - fine-tuning a masterpiece
No loss of vivid focus as the Albert Hall becomes Bar Lillas Pastia
theatre
The Truth About Harry Beck, London Transport Museum Cubic Theatre review - mapping the life of the London Underground map's creator
An English eccentric quietly re-invents our view of the capital
The Lightest Element, Hampstead Theatre review - engrossing, but fragmentary
Slender new play about political and gender prejudice in 1950s American science
The Band Back Together, Arcola Theatre review - three is a dangerous number
The second album is still tough, even if you never recorded the first
dance
Resurgence, London City Ballet, Sadler’s Wells review - the phoenix rises yet again
A new 14-strong company reviving a much-loved name is taking ballet to smaller theatres
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, ZooNation, Linbury Theatre review - a joyous celebration of differentness
Kate Prince's hip hop take on Lewis Carroll is energetic, charming and moving by turns
Ballet Nights #006, Cadogan Hall review - a mixed bag of excellence
Gala enterprise, 12 months on, will be a stayer if it keeps up this level of excitement
comedy
Zoë Coombs Marr, Soho Theatre review - stock checks and spreadsheets
Australian comic's autobiographical show
Adam Sandler, Netflix Special - songs, silliness and deconstructing stand-up
The comic and director Josh Sadie have fun with the form
Blu-ray: Laurel and Hardy - The Silent Years
Always watchable, occasionally hysterical collection of silent shorts
Books
Ellen McWilliams: Resting Places - On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution review - finding art in the inarticulable
A violent history finds a home in this impressionistic blend of literary criticism and memoir
Claire Messud: This Strange Eventful History review - home is where the heart was
A brutally honest and epic narrative follows a family doomed to wander the earth
Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop - The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year review - setting the record straight
Busting myths in this sensitive appraisal of a jazz legend
visual arts
Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, National Gallery review - passions translated into paint
Turmoil made manifest
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent, Whitechapel Gallery review - photomontages sizzling with rage
Fifty years of political protest by a master craftsman
Dominique White: Deadweight, Whitechapel Gallery review - sculptures that seem freighted with history
Dunked in the sea to give them a patina of age, sculptures that feel timeless
latest comments
Thank you for the comment and for your evident...
I rarely give a show 10 out of 10, but "The truth...
Absolutely, thanks for spotting that. Duly...
" ...and it falls to Jude Law to dig out the...
Very fine review of a very fine concert. Could...
"wants to avoid a prophecy from which even the...
I think this is a very perceptive review. I...
Agreed - an unrelentingly dreary experience- I...