Welcome to One Stop Arts

One Stop Arts is the new guide to London's glorious and eclectic arts scene. Look forward to what's coming up with our simple and comprehensive search facility, or look back at what's been happening with our team of passionate, perceptive and knowledgeable reviewers.
Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist
Studies of the foetus in the womb, c.1510-13  © The Royal Collection, 2011, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
The Art of Concealment

It's not easy to write a good play about the life of a playwright; as with Hollywood biopics, you risk comparison to the work of your subject just as the actor risks being judged inferior to Liz Taylor, James Dean or whichever star they portray. But Giles Cole's biographical show about Sir Terence Rattigan stands up very well to the scrutiny of aficionados and newcomers alike. At the Riverside Studios.

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Babel
Babel © Steve Tanner
Ballo della regina / La Sylphide

Ballo della Regina is a Balanchine ballet with music from Verdi's Don Carlos. It's a joyful ballet which moves a tremendous pace and is paired with Bournonville's La Sylphide, the drama about the love of a mortal for a magical sylph. 

Royal Opera House, 21-May - 15-Jun
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Wastelands to Wonderlands
Liz Mathews/Virginia Woolf, Thames to Dunkirk, London, 2009 © Liz Mathews
La Bohème at ROH

After years of opera going, is it really still possible for me to be moved to tears by a tenor’s wail at the sight of a consumptive heroine dying tunefully in her bed at the end of the last act? I didn’t think so, but on the basis of last night’s Covent Garden performance of La Bohème, the answer would appear to be yes.

Royal Opera House, until 23-Jun
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Latest reviews
Mansfield ParkThe Cherry OrchardPhilharmonia / Gatti: MahlerCavalli: Master of LightJanine Jansen: Wigmore HallTitus AndronicusGergiev, LSO: StravinskyToujours et Pres de Moi
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Minghella's Butterfly at ENO
Gwyn Hughes Jones as Pinkerton and Mary Plazas as Butterfly
Spira Mirabilis: Beethoven 5

The extraordinary new orchestra Spira mirabilis, drawing together Europe's finest individual young players, returns to Southbank Centre following their spectacular London debut last season. The orchestra, who chooses to perform without a conductor, perform Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Southbank Centre: QEH, 25-May
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Zoe Leonard: Observation Point
Arkwright Road 2012, Camera obscura installation. © Zoe Leonard, Courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain and Galleria Raffaella Cortese
Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale

Imagine, if you will, a one man stage show, with one of the nation’s foremost and best loved actors playing all the parts in a somewhat Faustian fairy tale, with a crack team of musicians playing incidental music by one of the last century’s great composers. You might think that this would comfortably sell out a fair sized London theatre.

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X Marks the Spot
Image credits:
Farkus Molnar Design for a single-family house, 1922 Tempera over pencil on paper © Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. Photograph: Markus Hawlik
Member of the Black Panthers marching from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, Central London © Photograph by Neil Kenlock - 1970
Jerusalem Quartet © Felix Broede
Joseph Calleja, Kirsty Young and National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain © BBC/Andrew Hayes-Watkins
Hans-Peter Feldmann Installation view, Hans-Peter Feldmann Serpentine Gallery © Jerry Hardman-Jones
Studies of the foetus in the womb, c.1510-13 © The Royal Collection, 2011, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Babel © Steve Tanner
Liz Mathews/Virginia Woolf, Thames to Dunkirk, London, 2009 © Liz Mathews
Arkwright Road 2012, Camera obscura installation. © Zoe Leonard, Courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain and Galleria Raffaella Cortese