44 stories by "Ismene Brown"
Hilary Mantel's two Thomas Cromwell novels have captured an enormous new readership for history with their crackling sense of place and immediacy of tension - the plays created on them, now …
In his later life Shakespeare, who never ducked ways to define a hero, offered the public a challenge: Coriolanus is a professional warrior, deaf to reason, patrician hater of people power. …
A young man eaten up by fears of inherited disease, a mother who hid the facts of her awful marriage from her son to spare him, but is rewarded with even worse pain: the emotional plotlines …
Here's an elegant thing to do before 8 o'clock dinner - stroll out for an hour's recital of a rollicking story-poem done in a hip underground venue with judiciously hip application of modern…
In among the deluge of New Year Honours poured over Olympians (headed by Sir Bradley Wiggins, Sir Ben Ainslie, Dame Sarah Storey and Companion of Honour Lord Coe), there is a modest sprinkli…
The word "people" of the title of Alan Bennett's new play is to be spat out, like a lemon pip. People, who invade your space, boss your values, make you be what they want. So does the beleag…
Henry Goodman, Imelda Staunton and Aidan McArdle won the big acting prizes while Akram Khan and Opera North carried off the dance and opera gongs at the annual Theatrical Management Associat…
Pity the A-level English student: for them the "rarely seen masterpieces" that creep onto the curriculum and into the theatres. Judging from the frequently giggling reaction of the audience …
To revive a long-defunct play is dicing with death for a touring theatre company - was the play ahead of its time, or was it not good enough in any time? W Somerset Maugham was a commercial …
Zaha Hadid, visionary architect of the London Olympics Aquatic Centre, becomes a Dame and three new knights of the arts are created in the Queen's Jubilee Birthday Honours announced this mor…
David Cameron could hardly wish for a more apt musical to pep up the people's spirits than Irving Berlin's Top Hat, with its wheedling entreaties about the advantages of being caught in the …
We've seen a few American film and TV actresses grace the West End stage with surprising potency, but no one surely will surpass Laurie Metcalf for profound emotional truth-telling in Eugene…
"The lady from the sea" is what a remote Norwegian fjord town calls the young second wife of its good doctor, an elusive woman who seems to walk in the footsteps of the ghost of her well-lov…
Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death is the misleading, joky title of a play about Shakespeare in his ignoble last years, unable to write further, isolated from his beloved London, and hemmed in…
When a young Charles Dickens visited New York in 1842 with his wife, he strolled down Broadway, happened upon an unusual dance and naturally checked out theatreland. As his bicentenary is ce…
The National Theatre's spring headlines are the return of Antony Sher in a new play about a Hollywood film director's past and a third work by the controversial physical theatre company DV8 …
London's Barbican Centre is 30 this year, and with a special Olympic-sized subsidy boost as the world's eyes turn to the British capital this summer, it aims to be be as lovely inside as it …
Port Talbot's staging of The Passion with Michael Sheen won the highest accolade at the Theatre Management Association Awards yesterday, which honour the best of work touring Britain beyond …
On 9 September theartsdesk, Britain's first professional arts journalism site, will be two years old. To celebrate we're holding a live debate with four leading performers during the Kings P…
