Some of our major theatres are wrapped in pink today as part of the #missinglivetheatre campaign. Designer Tom Piper talks about the project. Novelist Sara Collins and actor Daniel York Loh make up our Friday Review panel. They’ve watched the newly released recording of the smash hit musical Hamilton, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which allows viewers to replicate the theatrical experience at home. Also on the agenda, Michaela Coel’s BBC One drama I May Destroy you, which continues to make wave...
Jul 03, 2020•41 min
The new Australian TV thriller series The Secrets She Keeps. Felicity Ward reviews the BBC One drama about two women due to give birth on the same day, but whose pregnancies are not quite what they seem. Former culture minister Ed Vaizey considers the government's approach to the current challenges facing the performing arts. Director and writer Fyzal Boulifa on his debut feature film, Lynn + Lucy – a tragic tale of two childhood friends and young mothers on an Essex housing estate, and the judg...
Jul 02, 2020•28 min
Werner Herzog has made over 70 films, from the ambitious feature film Fitzcarraldo to the documentary Grizzly Man. From Los Angeles he discusses his latest project, Family Romance LLC, a fictional film set in Tokyo about a real company that loans out actors to impersonate family members or imitation friends ‘to create illusions to make clients’ lives better’. The town of Watford is joining together to form a huge book club, reading Katharine McMahon’s novel The Hour of Separation, which is set i...
Jul 01, 2020•28 min
Are the arts facing an existential crisis in the UK? Sir Simon Rattle, conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, on the imminent threat to orchestras and other arts organisations unless the government provides signficant financial support. The state of UK Theatre is discussed by Royal Shakespeare Company Executive Director, Catherine Mallyon, Actors’ Touring Company Artistic Director Matthew Xia, and Indhu Rubasingham, Artistic Director of London's Kiln Theatre. Today the National Gallery anno...
Jun 30, 2020•43 min
Kevin Kwan, author of the Crazy Rich Asians novels, which was adapted into the hit film of 2018, talks about his new book Sex and Vanity, a satire set in the worlds of uber-rich New York and Capri, and is an homage to EM Forster’s A Room with a View. Annilese Miskimmon, the new Artistic Director of English National Opera, discusses her first project, ENO Drive & Live, a series of live opera performances that audiences can safely drive to and stay in their cars for the experience. As demonstr...
Jun 29, 2020•28 min
Michael Palin on staging a version of Beckett’s Waiting For Godot to raise money for The Royal Theatre Fund - and what else he’s been doing during lockdown. We round up the week's big arts stories. The Last of Us Part II is one of the most highly anticipated games for a generation. Part I was an unexpected hit, praised for bringing the storytelling qualities of films to gaming. Elle Osili-Wood and Aoife Wilson review Part II which has a lesbian love story at its heart. They discuss the BBC’s ann...
Jun 26, 2020•42 min
Redundancies at the Theatre Royal Plymouth - over 100 jobs have been announced at risk as income falls by over 90 per cent due to the pandemic. We hear about the devastating impact on staff and the region, the threat to the theatre’s existence, and the warning bell it sounds to the future of theatre across the country. Stuart Evers on his new novel, The Blind Light – a story of two families from across the class divide and across the decades, living in the shadow of nuclear fear and political ev...
Jun 25, 2020•28 min
The Holberg Prize is awarded annually to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in the arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology. This year the 6 million Norwegian kroner prize (approximately £500,000) has been awarded to the British-Canadian art historian Professor Griselda Pollock who the judges described as “the foremost feminist art historian working in the world today”. In the month when she would have travelled to Norway to receive the prize, she joins Fro...
Jun 24, 2020•29 min
The arts world is facing a “cultural catastrophe” with the impact of Covid-19 leading to the loss of an annual revenue of £74 billion according to one report along with warnings of 400,000 jobs lost. But does this terrible crisis also provide an opportunity to rethink the arts world? Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern, Amanda Parker, Editor of Arts Professional and Director of Inc Arts, David Jubb, theatre producer and former Director of Battersea Arts Centre, and Music Writer Alexandra Cou...
Jun 23, 2020•28 min
Alan Bennett's Talking Heads have been remade for television decades after the original series. Alongside two brand new monologues, ten episodes have been re-created with actors including Jodie Comer, Sarah Lancashire and Lucian Msamati. Theatre critic Sam Marlowe reviews these socially distanced dramas, and actor Lisa Dwan joins her to discuss the art of the monologue. The pandemic has changed all of our lives, but could there be a way to change society for the better as we re-build after coron...
Jun 22, 2020•29 min
Rebel Wilson discusses her new TV series Last One Laughing, where ten comedians are locked in room and if they laugh they get kicked out. The last one standing wins a big cash prize. The death was announced today of the actor Sir Ian Holm. Theatre critic Michael Billington pays tribute. Bob Dylan has just released a new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. For our Friday Review, music journalist Laura Barton and commentator Michael Carlson give their verdict on whether this is vintage Dylan. And they di...
Jun 19, 2020•42 min
We mark the passing of Dame Vera Lynn, the Forces' Sweetheart, whose songs helped raise morale in World War Two. After Dame Vera's death, aged 103, was announced today, composer and author Neil Brand explores her unique musical gifts. Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe's critically acclaimed work brings a new approach to the classical guitar by experimenting with instruments and repertoire. His new album Bach: Pour La Luth Ò Cembal, featuring works written for the lute but played on guitar, is number...
Jun 18, 2020•28 min
Judd Apatow - famous for film comedies like Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and Trainwreck - on his new film The King Of Staten Island, which he co-wrote with Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson. Pete plays a young man trying to get his life together after the death of his fire-fighter father. Today the damage to UK theatre caused by the Coronavirus has really begun to show: major producer Cameron Mackintosh has announced redundancy consultations for staff on blockbuster shows, including ...
Jun 17, 2020•29 min
In 1923, African American author Jean Toomer published the novel Cane. It wasn’t a best seller at the time but is now held as a modernist classic and a central work of The Harlem Renaissance. A new radio adaptation is to be broadcast on Radio 4. We speak to playwright Janice Okoh and score composer, soul singer Carleen Anderson. Today is Bloomsday, when Dubliners celebrate James Joyce’s Ulysses, the novel about Irish newspaper advertising salesman Leopold Bloom wandering round the city. As Irela...
Jun 16, 2020•28 min
Tracey Emin discusses the creative burst she has experienced during lockdown, resulting in a series of new paintings created for an online exhibition called I Thrive on Solitude, the first time White Cube gallery has mounted an online exhibition. Alison Brackenbury is Front Row's new Lockdown Poet in Residence. She's written a series of poems inspired by the museums throughout the country which have been shut for months. From Taunton to Edinburgh, Alison opens up these museums in her imagination...
Jun 15, 2020•28 min
The Salisbury Poisonings, a new BBC One three-part drama, focuses on the 2018 Novichok poisonings, the public health response, and the heroism of the community. Writer Declan Lawn describes how his years as an investigative reporter for Panorama primed him to create this drama based on real events, and the resonance of the story with the government's response to the pandemic. Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, Front Row’s Lockdown Artist in Residence, has been entertaining us each week with a ...
Jun 12, 2020•41 min
It’s as the clever but put-upon Will Mackenzie in The Inbetweeners or the elder son Adam in Friday Night Dinner that Simon Bird has come to public attention but now the star of these successful sitcoms has stepped behind the cameras to direct his first feature film. Simon joins Front Row to discuss Days of the Bagnold Summer. The death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minnesota Police has led to worldwide protests and calls for the end of systemic racism. What part can white artists and write...
Jun 11, 2020•35 min
Robert Lindsay on his first acting job fifty years ago at the Nortcott Theatre in Devon, in a play which has contemporary resonance: Don Taylor's historical drama The Roses of Eyam, about the village that voluntarily put itself into lockdown during the Great Plague that swept Britain in the mid 17th Century. Director General Tony Hall discusses the BBC’s renewed commitment to the arts with its Culture in Quarantine initiative, and the serious situation currently facing the arts in the this count...
Jun 10, 2020•28 min
Spike Lee’s new film Da 5 Bloods follows four African-American Vietnam veterans who served together in battle, who return to the country and reunite to locate their fallen squad leader. The writer and director discusses the Netflix film and how resonant many of its issues are particularly now, in the week of its release. Dr Daisy Fancourt is leading the UK’s biggest study looking at the impact the coronavirus crisis has had on our mental health. In recent weeks the team has been looking at the e...
Jun 09, 2020•28 min
Michaela Coel, the double-BAFTA winning actor/writer/director of the TV series Chewing Gum, discusses her new show I May Destroy You, a 12-parter telling a story about one young woman’s date rape and her attempt to piece together what happened to her. Yesterday in Bristol the statue of Edward Colston, who made his fortune from slavery, was noosed, pulled from its plinth, dragged and rolled through the streets of Bristol and dumped in the harbour. We hear a personal account from local artist and ...
Jun 08, 2020•28 min
Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson continues his weekly live performances from the empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, as Front Row’s Lockdown Artist in Residence. Tonight Víkingur plays his own transcription of J.S Bach’s cantata Widerstehe doch der Sünde, BWV 54. David Greig talks about his new play Adventures With The Painted People - a first century romcom between a Pict and a Roman - which was to have opened Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s summer season, and has now been adapted for Radio ...
Jun 05, 2020•41 min
Director Andrew Patterson joins us to talk about new movie The Vast of Night, the story of a small New Mexico town disturbed by lights in the sky and unidentified radio signals which is a loving homage to the sci-fi TV of the 1950s. The low budget, high concept film, which is Patterson’s directorial debut, is available on Amazon Prime. Writers Timberlake Wertenbaker and Winsome Pinnock talk about how white and black writers engage with race, and the importance and responsibility of white writers...
Jun 04, 2020•28 min
Michael Sheen and David Tennant play themselves in Staged, a new BBC One series of six 15-minute Zoom dramas, in which they play two furloughed actors in lockdown. Comedian and writer Viv Groskop reviews. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, has released a new online portal to facilitate conversations about race and racism in America. Beverly Morgan-Welch, Director of External Affairs at the Museum, discusses the project, Talking About Race. The poets Al...
Jun 03, 2020•28 min
As public protests continue nationally and internationally, award-winning American artist Carrie Mae Weems - whose work explores race, identity, and power - joins Front Row to discuss the role of art in response to tragedies such as the death of George Floyd. Liz Lochhead, the former Makar, or National Poet of Scotland, performs a new poem written during the lockdown, called The Spaces Between. How will museums reflect the current crisis in the future? What will they have on display and in their...
Jun 02, 2020•29 min
Sitting In Limbo is a new BBC drama telling the story of one man’s entanglement with the Windrush scandal where legal migrants, some of whom had lived here for decades, were denied legal rights, threatened with deportation and some were wrongly deported. The drama tells the story of Anthony Bryan who came to the UK from Jamaica with his mother at the age of 8. Gaylene Gould reviews. Joanna Briscoe made her name with Mothers and Other Lovers and Sleep With Me which was adapted by Andrew Davies fo...
Jun 01, 2020•28 min
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind,” wrote Virginia Woolf in her 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own. On the eve of Radio 4’s adaptation of Woolf’s totemic study in the treatment of women across the generations we talk to Indira Varma who stars. The DJ Mr Switch, aka Anthony Culverwell, discusses Gabriel Prokofiev’s classical composition, Concerto for Turntables, released this week. Mr Switch performed it at the BBC...
May 29, 2020•41 min
Social distancing has become one of the key measures for controlling coronavirus, but implementing it is creating an existential threat to arts venues like theatres, museums, galleries, independent music venues and concert halls. With such vastly reduced capacity - as much as 90% - can venues ever make the finances stack up, and what is lost when the audience, and performers, must be so far apart? Despite the restrictions, some venues are starting to find ways of making it work. John Wilson goes...
May 28, 2020•28 min
Bestselling author John Grisham on his new novel Camino Winds, a sequel to Camino Island, in which a coterie of crime authors discover one of their colleagues has been murdered during a hurricane. There are currently over 300 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, including A Time To Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief and The Client. With museums and galleries in Europe announcing their preparations for re-opening on a limited scale, how do things look in the UK? Ros Kerslake, CEO of the ...
May 27, 2020•28 min
Tracee Ellis Ross is the daughter of Diana Ross and in 2017 became the first African-American woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Comedy since 1983, for her sitcom Black-ish. She tells us about her new film The High Note, in which she plays a pop superstar looking to reinvigorate her career. Pushkin Press has partnered with Walter Iuzzolino from Channel 4’s ‘Walter Presents’ on a collaboration of timeless novels with strong international appeal. Walter discusses the first title ...
May 26, 2020•28 min
AM Homes won the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013 for her novel May We Be Forgiven, beating off stellar competition from Hilary Mantel, Kate Atkinson, Barbara Kingsolver and Zadie Smith. Kirsty Lang has been finding AM's darkly comic novels and short stories perfect reading for the lockdown. Her writing penetrates contemporary America, with characters who are pulled apart by accidents, trauma, jealousy, chance encounters and who must examine their lives in order to start over again. The stories ar...
May 25, 2020•28 min
