thu 06/11/2025

Ismene Brown

Ismene Brown's picture
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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

The unexpurgated Clement Crisp - in memoriam

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

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

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Kali Malone and Drew McDowell generate 'Magnetism'...

It’s weird, right? We’ve somehow stumbled into a world where, for all we’re told that algorithms homogenise music, actually more people than ever...

The Makropulos Case, Royal Opera - pointless feminist compli...

Janáček described his nature-versus-humanity fable The Cunning Little Vixen as “a merry thing with a sad...

Othello, Theatre Royal, Haymarket review - a surprising mix...

Perspectives on Shakespeare's tragedy have changed over the decades....

Benson Boone, O2 London review - sequins, spectacle and chee...

After cancelling his Birmingham gig an hour before curtain-up due to illness, the anticipatory hype around whether...

Die My Love review - good lovin' gone bad

Directed by Lynne Ramsay and based on the book by Ariana Harwicz, Die My Love is an unsettling dive into the disturbed psyche of...

Midlake's 'A Bridge to Far' is a tour-de-forc...

“Climb upon a bridge to far, go anywhere your heart desires.” The key phrase from the title track of Midlake’s sixth studio album conveys the...

Macbeth, RSC, Stratford review - Glaswegian gangs and ghouli...

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s so very different about Belfast and Glasgow, both of which I have visited in the last few...

Sananda Maitreya, Town Hall, Birmingham review - 80s megasta...

During a false start to “Billy Don’t Fall”, on Sunday night at Birmingham’s iconic Town Hall, Sananda Maitreya took the opportunity to address the...

First Person: Kerem Hasan on the transformative experience o...

There is a scene in the second act of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking in which the man condemned to death, Joseph De...