Booker Prize shortlisted Turkish writer Elif Shafak has a new novel: The Island Of Missing Trees. Set in Cyprus it follows lovers who risk everything in a divided island. And one of the narrators is a fig tree. Shafak explains about melding passionate ecological and political information and messages. Jonathon Heyward makes his Proms debut this week conducting the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. He tells Samira why he loves working with youth orchestras, isn't so keen on being labelle...
Aug 03, 2021•28 min
Yesterday the audience was on its feet – more than once - to applaud the cast, the band and the design of Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre in London. On Front Row today Samira Ahmed talks to Kathleen Marshall, the director and choreographer about the appeal of the show today, and to Sutton Foster, the American star making her UK debut as Reno Sweeney, who gets to sing some of Cole Porter’s greatest songs including I Get a Kick Out of You which she has recorded especially for Front Row. Co-w...
Aug 02, 2021•28 min
Ben Okri's new play Changing Destiny is an adaptation of one of the world's oldest known stories, the ancient Egyptian Tale of Sinuhe. Tonight marks not only its opening night at London's Young Vic theatre, but the first time the venue has opened its doors since last year. Artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah, who directs the play, talks to Tom live from the Young Vic just a few minutes before the curtain goes up. This evening, Sir James MacMillan has a new piece being premiered at the First Night...
Jul 30, 2021•41 min
Geeta Pendse visits the new Museum of Making in Derby - an £18 million redevelopment that celebrates the city's 300-year industrial heritage. Jamie Thrasivoulou, Derby County Football Club's Poet-In-Residence, shares what it's like to perform a poem to a stadium of roaring football fans. The writer Mahsuda Snaith discusses her flash fiction written in response to Kedleston Hall as part of the National Trust's Colonial Countryside project. BBC Derby's Martin Williams learns how to create a Map of...
Jul 29, 2021•28 min
Tokyo: Art & Photography at The Ashmolean in Oxford is a celebration of the city currently hosting the Olympics. The exhibition’s curator Lena Fritsch discusses the show which spans the arts of the Edo period (1603-1868) when the country was officially closed to the outside world, to today, and considers the sprawling metropolis’s appetite for the new and innovative. Comedy series Ted Lasso revolves around the eponymous American football coach who, fish-out-of-water, comes to London to coach...
Jul 28, 2021•28 min
As a 3.5 metre tall puppet called Little Amal begins an 8,000km journey from Turkey to Manchester to highlight the difficulties faced by refugee children, Samira talks to theatre director and producer David Lan live from Gaziantep on the Turkish-Syrian border about ambitious artistic project The Walk. The longlist for the 2021 Booker Prize has been announced and we discuss the 13 chosen novels with Sameer Rahim from Prospect Magazine and Claire Armitstead from The Guardian. Are these the right t...
Jul 27, 2021•28 min
Five years after Prince's death, the musician's music director of over 20 years, Morris Hayes, discusses Prince's posthumous new album Welcome 2 America. Recorded in 2010 and archived in the singer's legendary vault of unreleased material, it is released this week. Freya McClements, Northern Correspondent with The Irish Times, joins John to discuss the decision from the Northern Ireland Executive to reopen the nation's theatres and concert halls. Ben Sharrock's new film Limbo follows a group of ...
Jul 26, 2021•28 min
Playwright April De Angelis joins Tom to talk about her new musical Gin Craze! Described as 'a booze soaked love ballad from the women of Gin Lane.' The Tokyo Olympics 2020 Opening Ceremony took place earlier today, a year later than planned, in the wake of a number of controversies, not least the sacking of the Artistic Director the day before the event. For our Friday Review, Japan specialists Sakiko Nishihara and Christopher Harding give their views on the background to the ceremony and the e...
Jul 23, 2021•41 min
Susannah Clapp, theatre critic of The Observer reviews the new age-blind production of Hamlet starring Ian McKellen, which officially opened up at the Theatre Royal Windsor last night, 50 years since the 82-year-old actor first played the part. The Mercury Prize nominees were announced today. Laura Snapes gives us her thoughts on the list, what it tells us about music over the past year, and makes her prediction for who will win. The historian and screenwriter Alex von Tunzelmann has turned her ...
Jul 22, 2021•28 min
American musician Jon Batiste has many strings to his bow – he’s an activist, recording artist, band leader for a daily TV late night chat show, a singer, pianist and an Oscar-winning film composer. Batiste discusses his new album, We Are, as well as his Broadway musical about Jean-Michel Basquiat, and An American Symphony being performed at Carnegie Hall next year. Art critic Louisa Buck assesses this year's Art Fund Museum of the Year 2021 shortlist which was announced today. Despite being clo...
Jul 22, 2021•28 min
Ivorian director Philippe Lacôte talks about his film Night of the Kings, set in a notorious Abidjan prison run by the inmates, in which he explores the West African tradition of the griot or storyteller. Every year the Best Film Oscar is hotly contested and often the source of much debate and consternation. We speak to two podcasters from “Best Pick” which is aimed squarely at movie lovers and has reviewed and assessed every Best Film winner from the very first in 1929 to the most recent -Paras...
Jul 20, 2021•29 min
Chart-topping New York post-punk group Blondie have more than 40 years of chart success under their belts and in 2019 they decided to travel to play some concerts in Havana Cuba. We speak with singer Debbie Harry about the warmth of the reception they received, about integrating local styles and musicians in their set and much more. A new EP is about to be released which shows the fruits of their labour. This Friday marks 10 years since Amy Winehouse died. In a new film 'Reclaiming Amy' to be sh...
Jul 19, 2021•28 min
Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is a Hollywood veteran and it was the ending of Hollywood’s golden age that was the subject of his last film – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He’s now returned to the story of that film for his debut novel. In his only UK broadcast interview, he explains why he wanted to create a novelisation of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s 25 years since Melvin Burgess wrote Junk, a story about heroin addiction. It was an early title in what’s become known as YA and showed the...
Jul 16, 2021•41 min
This summer Somerset House in London will be home to a new work by composer Anna Meredith, Bumps Per Minute, which has a distinctly fairground feel. It uses the random interactions of dodgem cars to create a new piece of music. And members of the public are invited to take part in the composition as dodgem drivers. Anna Meredith talks about what inspired her to create a work which mixes fun, frivolity and musical experimentation. The British Podcast Awards have been created to highlight the best...
Jul 15, 2021•29 min
A new documentary Witches Of The Orient' looks back at the last time that Tokyo acted as host. Volleyball made its debut in The 1964 Summer Olympics. And the success of the home team in women’s volleyball became one of the most watched domestic TV events ever. French film director Julien Faraut discovered this now-largely-forgotten event and was captivated by it. The historical biographer Lady Antonia Fraser reveals an unknown aspect of her writing life as four of her poems are set to music by S...
Jul 14, 2021•28 min
Uberto Pasolini made his name in the film industry as a producer with the international success of his film - The Full Monty. He’s continued to produce but in recent years he’s also turned his hand to writing and directing. As the third film that he’s helmed in this way, Nowhere Special, is released in cinemas, he talks to Samira about why he felt the true story of a father with a terminal illness looking for a new family for his four year old, was the foundation for a film he wanted to create h...
Jul 13, 2021•29 min
The mural of footballer Marcus Rashford which was defaced with racist graffiti after England lost the Euro 2020 final last night was part of Withington Walls, a community street art project in the suburbs of southern Manchester. Its head, Ed Wellard, discusses the art work, the British-based Vietnamese street artist Akse who created it, and the role art can play in the community. Late last week Front Row asked Ian McMillan, poet in residence at Barnsley FC, to write a poem in response to the Eur...
Jul 12, 2021•28 min
Film critic Jason Solomons brings a touch of glamour to tonight’s proceedings with his report from this year’s Cannes Film festival which opened this week. Tove Jansson was the Finnish creator of the Moomins, stories much loved by children (and adults) the world over. A new film, Tove, tells the story of her extraordinary life in post-war Helsinki, the ambivalence she felt towards the success of the Moomins, and how her ideas about freedom were challenged when she fell in love with theatre direc...
Jul 09, 2021•41 min
Laura Mvula’s first two albums were Mercury-Prize nominated, and now 5 years later she has returned with ‘Pink Noise’, an 80’s-inpsired-synth-inflected album full that’s perfect for dancing to. She explains the inspiration behind the music, and how this is the album she always wanted to make. Since he posted his first Room Next Door video in 2019, comedian Michael Spicer has had over 60m views. Spicer discusses the origin of the idea where he acts as an adviser feeding lines to a politician’s im...
Jul 08, 2021•28 min
British director Ola Ince discusses her new stage production of Romeo & Juliet, currently on at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Ince has given it a contemporary setting, but she doesn’t shy away from showing the play’s relevance to current societal struggles. The degree of harassment and bullying in the acting profession has been brought into the spotlight by #metoo and the recent Noel Clarke case. Radio 4's File on 4 reviewed the current situation and looked at measures being taken within th...
Jul 07, 2021•29 min
With her new sound and light installation, Arcadia, Theatre and Opera director Deborah Warner has brought the feel of the field into The Factory – the new home for MIF. The Factory is still very much a building site open to the elements, but for one weekend only the festival is providing an opportunity for visitors, to see the new construction from the inside. And once inside the concrete shell, they will enter Arcadia, Deborah’s subversive and challenging artwork to Manchester’s spirit of progr...
Jul 06, 2021•29 min
The largest ever UK retrospective of the Portuguese-born artist Paula Rego opens at Tate Britain this week. Featuring over 100 works, many not seen before, the show spans Rego’s early work from the 1950s which responds to the socio-political context of Portugal at the time, to her more recent, richly-layered paintings. Critic Jacky Klein gives her response to the show. Black Widow is the long-awaited new Marvel movie starring Scarlett Johansson. Director Cate Shortland talks to Front Row about p...
Jul 05, 2021•28 min
Actor Giles Terera tells us about his new book Hamilton and Me: an Actor’s Journal, his inside account of preparing for, rehearsing and performing in the West End production of the smash hit musical, Hamilton, in which Terera played Hamilton’s rival and, ultimately, killer Aaron Burr. George Bridgetower was a mixed-race violin virtuoso, patronised by royalty, a pupil of Haydn and friend of Beethoven - who was so inspired by Bridgetower that he wrote one of his greatest pieces for him - the Sonat...
Jul 02, 2021•42 min
We speak with Bobby Gillespie, front man of Primal Scream who has released a new album, Utopian Ashes, comprised of duets with French singer Jehnny Beth from Savages. Themed around a disintegrating marriage, it’s a richly orchestrated album that doesn’t necessarily fit into fans’ expectations for either singer. After Public Health Scotland revealed yesterday that over 1,000 people who attended Euro 2020 matches went on to contract COVID 19, throwing the success of the Government’s Events Researc...
Jul 01, 2021•28 min
Composer and Arsenal fan Mark-Anthony Turnage will be setting a football game to music. Not just any game, but Arsenal’s title-winning 1989 final game of the season. He tells fellow fan John Wilson how he’ll be capturing the game in his piece Up for Grabs, which has its world premiere at the Barbican in London in November. As the V&A announce their plans for V&A East - two major new developments in the former London Olympic Park – which will open in 2024, its director Gus Casely-Hayford ...
Jun 30, 2021•28 min
Later in his career Dickens toured the country doing hugely popular dramatic readings of his works. For his last tour he added in the scene where Bill Sykes murders Nancy but had concerns about how harrowing the passage was. As an exhibition opens at the Charles Dickens Museum we speak to the curator about how the reading affected both the audience and the author himself. Technology has transformed the way we consume art and culture – from films to music to art, we use our tech in ways we couldn...
Jun 29, 2021•28 min
Simon Russell Beale was a choral scholar and the actor remains a serious musician who can play a Bach fugue. Now he is taking the role of Johann Sebastian in Nina Raine’s new play Bach and Sons and he talks to Samira Ahmed about his relationship with the composer. Does being able to play Bach help him to play Bach? French Exit stars Michelle Pfeiffer as a Manhattan heiress who has to downsize to Paris with her son and cat when her money runs out after her husband’s death. She was nominated for a...
Jun 28, 2021•28 min
It’s third time lucky for the National Theatre: it tried to re-open the Olivier, its largest auditorium, with The Death of England – Delroy in October. The first night was a triumph but, because of the lockdown, it was also the last night. Dick Whittington, the panto, was cancelled a fortnight before Christmas. But the Olivier sprang to life again this week with Under Milk Wood; Michael Sheen leading an almost entirely Welsh cast in Dylan Thomas’s much-loved play for voices - the voices of the t...
Jun 25, 2021•41 min
Ninety years since Dame Ninette de Valois founded what we know now as the Royal Ballet and 75 since her post war production of Sleeping Beauty, Tom Sutcliffe talks to Marianela Núñez, Principal Ballerina at the Royal Ballet about Sleeping Beauty's significance in the Royal Ballet's repertoire, the demands of playing such an iconic role and the challenges of rehearsing at home during lockdown. We explore The Design Museum in London’s exhibition, Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life, It's a retrosp...
Jun 24, 2021•28 min
We're speaking to all the authors shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021 and tonight it's the turn of Cherie Jones. Her novel, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, is set on and around the Barbados beaches of the 80s. Lala braids tourists’ hair in the idyllic setting but her home life is blighted by poverty, violence and lack of choices – and when she has a baby, a dangerous chain of events is set in motion. Cherie Jones talks about this debut novel that has been years in the w...
Jun 23, 2021•28 min
