The Arts Desk’s team of professional critics offer unrivalled review coverage, in-depth interviews and features on popular music, classical, art, theatre, comedy, opera, comedy and dance. Dedicated art form pages, readers’ comments, What’s On and our user-friendly theatre and film recommendations

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.

London theatre is the oldest and most famous theatreland in the world, with more than 100 theatres offering shows ranging from new plays in the subsidised venues such as the National Theatre and Royal Court to mass popular hits such as The Lion King in the West End and influential experimental crucibles like the Bush and Almeida theatres.

Apr 23, 2025 · Stelios review - Athenian rhapsody in blues Hugh Barnes Saturday, 26 April 2025 The English title of a new film about the legendary singer-guitarist Stelios Kazantzidis, who popularised rebetiko, which is often called “the Greek blues”, may beguile some cinemagoers into thinking they are about to watch a biopic of the Cypriot entrepreneur, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of EasyJet.

1 day ago · "Julie's story takes place everywhere", says the writer-director Leonardo Van Dijl, whose pyschologiical drama Julie Keeps Quiet has little to do with its sports milieu per se. "Uncovering systemic abuse often starts by listening to the silence and paying attention to the people who don't speak out."

Mar 26, 2025 · We’ve reached 1775, and thus last night saw a concert performance at Cadogan Hall of La finta giardiniera, written by already-accomplished late-teenager for the Munich court and, in fact, his last comic opera before The Marriage of Figaro.Figaro it is not. “The Pretend Garden Girl”, with its ludicrously contorted sequence of amorous reversals and even a scene when the maddened hero and ...

Playhouse Creatures, Orange Tree Theatre review - jokes, shiny costumes and quarrels, but little drama aleks Sierz Thursday, 27 March 2025 . Creatives – or creatures? In the 1660s, women – having been banned from working as actors in previously more puritanical decades – finally arrived on the stage in London theatres. Although they were sometimes scorned as …

Apr 14, 2025 · Amy Ng's take on two Chinese titans needs more dramatic ballast. Theatre review by Helen Hawkins The writer Amy Ng has made a sterling effort in digging up the true story behind her new play at the Kiln, Shanghai Dolls, but sadly has not yet found the best way to project this interesting material.

First Person: St John's College choral conductor Christopher Gray on recording 'Lament & Liberation' Christopher Gray Saturday, 19 April 2025 When I arrived at St John’s College, Cambridge, in April 2023, it was a daunting prospect to be taking over the reins of a choir with such a distinguished recording heritage: there have been more than 100 albums since the 1950s on some of the UK’s ...

Apr 1, 2025 · Joshua Oppenheimer made his name directing two disturbing documentaries, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), that dealt with the aftermath of the brutal anti-communist massacres in Indonesia in 1965-66. Those films addressed how people lie to themselves in order to live with guilt and trauma. Oppenheimer's first fiction film, The End, is a radical continuation of the same ...