sun 25/05/2025

Ismene Brown

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Bio
Dr Ismene Brown designed and launched the original version of The Arts Desk in 2009, and was the Site Coordinator and a board director for three years, as well as its dance editor. A musician trained at the Royal College of Music, she has been dance critic for the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator, and has also written for TAD on classical music, theatre, TV and film. Since then she has gained an MA at UCL and DPhil at Oxford University for work on the Soviet politician and arts minister Ekaterina Furtseva.

Articles By Ismene Brown

Filumena, Theatre Royal Windsor review - Mozartian marriage comedy with pasta sauce

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theartsdesk Q&A: Nina Ananiashvili, founder of the State Ballet of Georgia

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Accolade, Theatre Royal Windsor review - orgy-loving knight makes for topical pre-election drama

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The White Factory, Marylebone Theatre review - what price dignity in hell?

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Patriots, Noël Coward Theatre review - crash-bang brilliant Putin comedy does it again

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4000 Miles, Minerva Theatre, Chichester review - brilliant Atkins in a tender play

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The Vortex, Chichester Festival Theatre review - naturalism clogs up Coward's pipes

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Hunting legendary treasure with ballet's Indiana Jones - Pierre Lacotte 1932-2023

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'You want to cry from loving to do it so much' - Lynn Seymour 1939-2023

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Dogs of Europe, Belarus Free Theatre, Barbican Theatre review - doom art with doom reality

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The unexpurgated Clement Crisp - in memoriam

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Ava: The Secret Conversations, Riverside Studios, Hammersmith review - about Ava Gardner's effing

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Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker!, Sadler's Wells Theatre review - new candy, but the nuts are off

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The Seven Pomegranate Seeds, Rose Theatre, Kingston review - misogynist Euripides stands corrected

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The Cherry Orchard, Windsor Theatre Royal review - Tolstoy meets Mrs Two Soups

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The Mirror and the Light, Gielgud Theatre review - nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

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Mrs. Warren's Profession, Garrick Theatre review - moth...

How do you make Bernard Shaw sear the stage anew? You can trim the text, as the director Dominic Cooke has, bringing this prolix writer's 1893...

Mongrel review - deeply empathetic filmmaking from Taiwan

There is a dark, spectral quality to this compassionate film about Southeast Asian migrant workers in rural Taiwan. At the centre...

Owen, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manche...

Manchester Camerata spent eight years performing and recording a complete edition of Mozart’s piano concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist...

Album: Morcheeba - Escape the Chaos

Morcheeba reach their 30th anniversary this year. The 1990s...

The Phoenician Scheme review - further adventures in the idi...

It’s not what he says, it’s the way he says it. Few filmmakers have bent the term “auteur” to their own ends more boldly than...

Album: Ammar 808 - Club Tounsi

Ammar 808 is the high octane vehicle for the Tunisian-born producer Sofyann Ben Youssef, now based in Denmark. His first album Maghreb United...

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review - can this...

Whether it is or isn’t the final Mission: Impossible film, there’s a distinct fin-de-siècle feel about this eighth instalment, and not...

Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality...

In the guided tour of Britain’s cathedral cities that is the primetime TV...