The role of Norman, the longsuffering, waspish eponymous dresser in Ronald Harwood's 1980 play, might have been written for Julian Clary. It's about a touring theatre company bringing Shakespeare to the provinces during the Blitz. As all the young actors are away fighting it's a motley crew, led by Sir, a monstrous yet pathetic veteran actor. Sir's mind and his world are crumbling. Only Norman can cajole him onto the stage. Now Julian Clary is playing Norman, in a touring theatre company, during...
Sep 14, 2021•28 min
Liane Moriarty is the best-selling author of nine novels including, Big Little Lies, and Nine Perfect Strangers, both of which have been adapted for television. Her latest novel, Apples Never Fall, is a mystery wrapped up in a domestic drama which focuses on an Australian family shaped by their passion for tennis. Described as a pianist like no other, Igor Levit describes himself as a citizen and a European before a pianist. He has performed around the world, but when lockdown put a stop to that...
Sep 13, 2021•29 min
Front Row announces the shortlist for the £15,000, 16th BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University. Judge Fiona Mozley, author of Booker-shortlisted novel Elmet, joins us live to discuss the stories Australian tenor Stuart Skelton is a fan of a party. And what bigger party in classical music than the Last Night of the Proms?! Stuart will be taking centre stage and singing the traditional ‘Rule Britannia’ as well as a selection of opera arias. He tells John why he’s looking forward ...
Sep 10, 2021•41 min
Elijah Wood tells Tom Sutcliffe about his new film No Man of God. Elijah Wood plays criminal profiler Bill Hagmaier in a story based on interview transcripts. Hagmaier is sent by the FBI to visit the serial killer Ted Bundy on death row. A fascinating, troubling relationship develops which becomes all the more intense when the date of Bundy's execution is announced. It's just a week away; Bundy agrees to talk, and he has much to confess. As lockdown and the pandemic brought concerts to a standst...
Sep 09, 2021•28 min
The recent Netflix comedy drama, The Chair, centres on an English professor, played by Sandra Oh who has just been appointed the first female chair of the department and has big dreams about modernising it. Hanna Flint joins us to review We hear live from the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021, announced this evening: Susanna Clarke for her novel Piranesi. This year’s chair of judges is Bernardine Evaristo Immersive theatre group Punchdrunk are well known for their imaginative use of u...
Sep 08, 2021•28 min
Iranian-born artist, photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat talk to us about her latest work - a feature film entitled Land of Dreams which premiered at The Venice Film Festival last week -and her exhibition at Photo London of still images connected to New Mexico. The last of our Women’s Prize for Fiction-shortlisted authors, Yaa Gyasi, talks to Front Row ahead of the winner’s announcement tomorrow. Her novel Transcendent Kingdom considers big questions of science, belief and addiction in the ...
Sep 07, 2021•28 min
Guitarist Peter Green last performed with Fleetwood Mac, the band he help found, in 1970. Fellow founding-member Mick Fleetwood has honoured Green's legacy in an all-star concert that will be shown in cinemas, celebrating the band's early music. Mick Fleetwood talks to Samira about the early days of Fleetwood Mac, working with Peter, and dreams of a Fleetwood Mac reunion. Filmmaker Cathy Brady has already won international prizes for her short films. Now she’s made her debut feature film, Wildfi...
Sep 06, 2021•28 min
Irish author Sally Rooney’s third novel 'Beautiful World, Where Are You' has just been released amid a fanfare of publicity and speculation. It follows the runaway success of the TV adaptation of her Booker longlisted second novel, Normal People, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award. Essayist and critic Sinéad Gleeson and writer Zing Tsjeng, Executive Editor of Vice UK, join us to review. Film Critic Jason Solomons is Front Row’s correspondent at this year’s Venice International Film Fe...
Sep 03, 2021•41 min
When Quentin Tarantino’s debut novel, was published earlier this summer, he gave his only UK broadcast interview to Front Row. Now in a special edition of the programme, Kirsty Lang presents an extended version of that interview. For the subject of his new book, Tarantino turned to his last film, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which looked at the Hollywood of the late 1960s, through the relationship between an actor, who fears his career is in decline, and his best friend, his stunt double. The ...
Sep 02, 2021•28 min
Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus crime novels, has recently completed a book left unfinished by the father of the ‘tartan noir’ genre William McIlvanney who died in 2015. Ian explains how he pieced together the fragments and notes left by McIlvanney and wrote his own sections of The Dark Remains, a prequel to McIlvanney’s Laidlaw series. He also reveals that the experience of working on the novel may mean a new lease of life for Rebus. With summer music festivals linked to spikes in Cov...
Sep 01, 2021•29 min
The murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the subsequent police investigations threw up a lot of questions about institutional racism and corruption within the force. Another enquiry which began in 2006 was led by DCI Clive Driscoll, who decided to go right back to basics and investigate the crime anew. In a new three-part drama on ITV, Steve Coogan plays Driscoll and Hugh Quarshie plays Stephen’s father, Neville. We speak with them both about the murder, the trial, the enquiry and what a drama...
Aug 31, 2021•28 min
Liz Carr's role in Silent Witness was a groundbreaking step in the depiction of disability in primetime TV drama. The actor, comedian and broadcaster, who has used a wheelchair since childhood, looks back at her early years, her law degree, and how that led her to life of activism for disability rights. Liz spent six years playing Clarissa Mullery in the BBC drama series, and she discusses the work she has been offered since she left, with latest projects being a major new Jack Thorne TV drama a...
Aug 30, 2021•28 min
Paula Hawkins’s novel The Girl on the Train sold 23 million copies and was made into a film starring Emily Blunt. Now she has written A Slow Fire Burning, a who-and-why-dunnit about damaged people trying to move on with their lives, set along the Regent’s Canal in London. She talks to Front Row about starting with character, creating suspense, and how she reflects on the success of The Girl on the Train. Alan Warner’s 1998 novel, The Sopranos, won the Saltire Society’s Scottish Book of the Year ...
Aug 27, 2021•41 min
Jason deCaires Taylor has been working in underwater art for 15 years. Today, he joins us to discuss his new museum Musan, built in the Mediterranean sea off the coast of Cyprus. The Answer Me This podcast began in 2007. Presenters Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann have been answering questions from listeners about anything and everything over the subsequent 400 episodes. And now they've decided to call it a day. We find out how podcasting has evolved over the years. Fred D'Aguiar's book Year of Plag...
Aug 26, 2021•28 min
Following the announcement of the death of the musician Charlie Watts, tonight’s Front Row is an archive edition featuring John Wilson in conversation with the band he was a member of - The Rolling Stones. The programme was recorded in 2012 to mark 50 years since the band’s first performance. In it, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood reflect on life in the Rolling Stones as they prepare to return to the stage.
Aug 25, 2021•28 min
Music journalist David Hepworth reflects on the life and drums of Rolling Stone Charlie Watts who has died aged 80. Natalya Romaniw is a soprano on her way to stardom. With numerous Madame Butterflies, Mimis and Tatyanas under her belt, Natalya was on the brink of international fame when the pandemic hit and took her momentum. Now she’s preparing to sing the eponymous Tosca in Puccini’s masterpiece, and she tells Tom how she’s preparing for one of opera’s most iconic roles and performing post-lo...
Aug 24, 2021•28 min
American conductor Kalena Bovell makes her Proms debut with the Chineke! Orchestra this week. She tells Samira about her path into conducting, and why it’s so exciting to be performing music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at the Royal Albert Hall. Following the death of singer Don Everly over the weekend, Bob Stanley joins us to reflect on the importance, sound and influence of the Everly Brothers. Award winning playwright and screen writer Jack Thorne has delivered this year’s McTaggart Lecture at ...
Aug 23, 2021•28 min
Michael Sarnoski is the director and co-writer of Pig, starring Nicolas Cage and a pig that is brilliant at finding truffles – until it’s stolen. Cage’s trip to the culinary hot spots of the big city to find his pig reveals more about his past and explores ideas of grief, redemption, and what to value in life. The director joins Front Row to talk about casting Cage – and casting the right pig. The singer-songwriter Moses Sumney has an extraordinary and distinctive voice and his songs challenge t...
Aug 20, 2021•41 min
At last, Cinderella has made it to the ball. After postponement, rearrangement, and postponement again because of, first the lockdown, then social distancing requirements, Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical, Cinderella, opened last night. Emerald Fennell takes a radical approach to the fairytale: in her version Prince Charming is missing, presumed dead; the beauty industry is satirised and the banality of surface allure exposed. Still, there is pazzazz aplenty: big numbers, big frocks and big hai...
Aug 19, 2021•28 min
This year's Edinburgh Festival is a smaller affair than normal but it's packed full of delicious cultural goodness. We speak with film director Isaac Julien about Lessons of The Hour- a 10-screen film about the former slave and emancipationist Frederick Douglass who visited Edinburgh many times. Just These Please is a four-piece comedy group who have had more than 6m views on YouTube for their sketches and whose Edinburgh Fringe show has sold out. Poet and playwright Hannah Lavery has many works...
Aug 18, 2021•28 min
The Edinburgh Festival is a much more pared-down event this year because of Covid, but despite this there is still plenty on offer. Comedian Henning Wehn is filling the Edinburgh Corn Exchange and he'll be discussing the challenge of preparing for a festival with all live comedy events cancelled for so many months. Playwright Frances Poet discusses the world premiere of her unsettling play Still at the Traverse Theatre. Edinburgh-based writer Arusa Qureshi will being us her observations of how t...
Aug 17, 2021•28 min
Dr Ahmad Sarmast, founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music tells John Wilson of his fears and hopes for music-making as his country falls under the control of the Taliban. Some things can only be expressed in song. That’s the idea behind The Song Project at the Royal Court Theatre where five of our foremost female playwrights - E.V. Crowe, Sabrina Mahfouz, Somalia Nonyé Seaton, Stef Smith and Debris Stevenson - collaborate with composer Isobel Waller-Bridge, choreograp...
Aug 16, 2021•29 min
Last year, Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson was Front Row's artist-in-residence from Reykjavik. Finally this week, he's able to join John Wilson in the studio, where he talks playing at the Proms and how great it is to be back performing in front of live audiences. He shares stories from his new Mozart album (including a childhood tantrum against the child prodigy), and plays Mozart and Cimarosa live in the studio. A storm has blown up over poet Kate Clanchy’s recent reaction to a review on G...
Aug 13, 2021•41 min
In 1962 the USA and USSR engaged in one of the most terrifying acts of brinksmanship the world has seen. But few people know of the role played by an ordinary British businessman in bringing the Cuban Missile Crisis to an end. New film The Courier, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, tells the true story of Greville Wynne, recruited by MI6 to penetrate the Soviet nuclear programme. Director Dominic Cooke talks to Tom about creating this Cold War spy thriller. Deceit is a new four-part drama on Channe...
Aug 12, 2021•28 min
Russian composer Igor Stravinsky died 50 years ago this year. Yet his influence is still felt today, whether it's the pounding rhythms of The Rite of Spring or the musical borrowings of The Rake's Progress. Radio 3's Kate Molleson explains how Stravinsky changed the musical landscape, and just why we should be celebrating a composer born nearly 140 years ago. Aurora Orchestra are preparing for their appearance at this year's BBC Proms. And the preparations involve memorising The Firebird, to pla...
Aug 11, 2021•28 min
Paradise opens at the Olivier auditorium of the National Theatre tomorrow. It's a new version of a play that had its premiere, and was acclaimed, in 409BC - Philoctetes by Sophocles. Just before the final preview begins, writer Kae Tempest tells Kirsty Lang why this ancient story of a wounded soldier, in constant pain, abandoned on an island, grips them today. John Boyne’s new novel is a humorous and scathing takedown of the world of social media through the lens of a particularly grotesque fami...
Aug 10, 2021•29 min
Phil Wang joins us to discuss his stand up show, Philly Philly Wang Wang that he filmed at the London Palladium over the pandemic. Exploring race, romance, politics, and his mixed British-Malaysian heritage, he talks about his addiction to making people laugh, as well as explaining why he doesn't fear getting cancelled. Shape Open have created an online exhibition featuring the work of 24 disabled and nondisabled artists working across Europe and North America, and has disability as its theme, a...
Aug 09, 2021•28 min
Sir Tom Stoppard's Olivier Award-winning play Leopoldstadt closed because of Covid in March 2020. Tomorrow it returns to the same stage and the same cast will tell again the story a Jewish family, in Vienna in the first half of the 20 century. They fled the pogroms in the East and later suffered terribly under Nazi rule. The plot has parallels with Stoppard's own family - all four of Stoppard's grandparents perished in concentration camps. He talks about returning to the theatre, if he has revis...
Aug 06, 2021•41 min
Sarah, Duchess of York, talks to Nick Ahad about her debut Mills and Boon novel, Her Heart for a Compass, based on the life of her ancestor, Lady Margaret. She talks about the parallels between her own life and her heroine’s, including finding freedom in America. She discusses the impact of newspaper headlines on her mental health, her plans to make a feature film about Prince Albert's mother Louise, and what she makes of TV series The Crown. Composer Max Richter’s new album ‘Exiles’ is a combin...
Aug 05, 2021•28 min
On the anniversary of the Beirut port explosion, we talk to representatives from both The British Museum and The Archaeological Museum at the American University of Beirut, who are working together to restore eight ancient glass vessels which were severely damaged. We review Vivo, a new full length cartoon film on Netflix featuring compositions by and the voice of Lin-Manuel Miranda. Does it reach Hamiltonian levels of greatness or is it a less spectacular creation? The DCMS has announced that U...
Aug 04, 2021•28 min
