Authors Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché are live in the studio to discuss their new queer sci-fi thriller Prophet. Theatre director Wils Wilson has invited the comedian Stewart Lee to rewrite the Porter’s scene in a new RSC production of Macbeth. Wils and Stewart join Samira Ahmed to discuss drawing on stand-up comedy, pantomime and the politics of today to refresh Shakespeare's comic relief. And we rediscover the American singer-songwriter Connie Converse, fifty years after she disappeared witho...
Aug 23, 2023•42 min
Author Louise Doughty talks to Samira Ahmed about her new novel, A Bird in Winter. A fast-paced thriller set in the world of espionage, it follows a woman on the run who must work out who is on her trail. This summer for the first time British Sign Language interpretations were streamed live for all acts on the Glastonbury Pyramid Stage. Samira speaks to professional BSL music performance interpreters Stephanie Raper - who has signed for Stormzy and Eminem - and @Fletch, who is deaf and has sign...
Aug 22, 2023•42 min
Musician Corinne Bailey Rae performs live in the studio and discusses the inspiration for her new album, Black Rainbows. Writer Peter Arnott on his new play about the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, Group Portrait In A Summer Landscape, opening at Pitlochry Festival Theatre on Friday. Plus short stories: critics Stephanie Merritt and Suzi Feay on two new collections - by Kate Atkinson and by US 'flash fiction' writer Diane Williams. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Emma Wallace...
Aug 21, 2023•43 min
A review of two of the big shows at this year’s Edinburgh Festival: Olivier award-winning writer Isobel McArthur has had great success with her genre-busting works Pride and Prejudice* (*Sort Of) and Kidnapped. Her latest play The Grand Old Opera House Hotel is a rom-com set in a haunted house filled with opera arias – it’s worlds apart from Funeral, a calm, interactive meditation on the nature of life and death by the Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed. Our reviewers give their verdicts on...
Aug 17, 2023•42 min
As the acclaimed 1976 Roman Empire drama series I Claudius returns to television screens, classicist Natalie Haynes and cultural critic Charlotte Higgins discuss the reasons for its success, whether its historical inaccuracies are any bar to its enjoyment, and if it stands the test of time. Plus conductor, curator, and composer Jules Buckley discusses his Stevie Wonder Prom celebrating 50 years of the ground-breaking album Innervisions. And why is it often so hard to buy tickets for big gigs, li...
Aug 16, 2023•43 min
Front Row is live from Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh for festival season, presented by Kate Molleson. Scotland’s own Grammy award-winning violinist Nicola Benedetti will be with us to share her vision for this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, as she makes her debut as Festival Director. Kate will also be joined on stage by the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Colson Whitehead to discuss Crook Manifesto, the latest instalment in his Harlem saga, set in 1970s New York. We’ll have music from th...
Aug 15, 2023•42 min
As the death toll from wildfires in Hawaii rises, The Beekeeper of Aleppo author Christy Lefteri explains how similar tragedies in Greece inspired her new novel The Book of Fire. Battersea Arts Centre’s Artistic Director and CEO Tarek Iskander, critic Andrzej Lukowski and theatre consultant Amanda Parker discuss what could be behind the current exodus of artistic directors from theatres across the UK. Curator Rachel Dedman and artist Aya Haider reflect on the roots of the striking needlework in ...
Aug 14, 2023•42 min
György Ligeti: on the 100th anniversary of his birth, we celebrate the Hungarian-Austrian composer and the 2023 Proms performances of his work - music which was famously used by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick in The Shining and A Space Odyssey. Pianist Danny Driver, and music critic, author and librettist Jessica Duchen join Tom to discuss. Plus we review La Cage Aux Folles - the musical story of a gay couple running a drag nightclub, and new Italian film L'immensita, starring Penelope Cruz - about a...
Aug 10, 2023•42 min
Mercury Prize winning and Oscar-nominated artist Anohni returns with a soulful new album, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, released under the moniker Anonhi and the Johnsons for the first time. The artist Michael Moebius is preparing to launch another legal battle to protect his intellectual property, after successfully suing 399 companies for infringing his copyright in a landmark lawsuit. To discuss why artists and designers need better protection, Nick Ahad is joined by US lawyer Jeff G...
Aug 09, 2023•42 min
On the 50th anniversary of the release of the martial arts film Enter The Dragon, actor and filmmaker Daniel York Loh and Bruce Lee’s biographer Matthew Polly discuss the star of the film, Bruce Lee, and his continuing influence across culture. As reality TV remains a staple of our television schedules, Carolyn Atkinson reports on the work that television production companies are now doing to support the mental wellbeing of the members of the public who become contestants on their shows. The aut...
Aug 08, 2023•42 min
When you fall in love how do you know it’s for real, and not just the result of chemicals in your brain? Lucy Prebble’s play The Effect is back at the National Theatre - Tristan and Connie fall in love during a clinical trial for a new antidepressant and wonder if their passion is merely drug-fuelled. The Welsh band Adwaith play their online hit Fel I Fod (How To Be) – just before the Camarthen band appear at the National Eisteddfod. And could it be true that the art of criticism is dying? Theat...
Aug 07, 2023•42 min
The South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha talks to Front Row ahead of returning to the Proms this Saturday to sing Strauss’s Four Last Songs with the National Youth Orchestra. Critics Sharlene Teo and Max Liu review Joy Ride, the feature film debut of Adele Lim, who also wrote Crazy Rich Asians - and also Ann Patchett’s new novel Tom Lake, a story about how we tell the story of our lives – and how we fill the inevitable gaps. And the composer and conductor Carl Davis has died. His f...
Aug 03, 2023•42 min
A new Welsh version of the comedy hit Fleabag is about to premiere at the National Eisteddfod in Boduan. Branwen Davies’ adaptation of the one-woman show for Theatr Clywd has been given the thumb’s up by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who wrote and starred in the original version ten years ago at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was later turned into an award-winning BBC television series. Davies says she wanted to create a Welsh voice for Fleabag rather than do a word-for-word translation. Her Fleabag ...
Aug 02, 2023•42 min
As the Booker Prize longlist is announced, literary critic Alex Clark takes us through the contenders for the £50,000 literary award for fiction, to be announced on 26th November. In September, a treasure trove of personal items belonging to Freddie Mercury - from fine art to furniture and fashion - will be sold at auction. In the run up to the sales, the collection will go on display to the public at Sotheby’s New Bond Street Galleries. Ahead of the exhibition, Samira gets an exclusive tour of ...
Aug 01, 2023•42 min
Adjani Salmon is the writer of the award-winning web-series Dreaming Whilst Black, now on BBC Three. He tells Tom Sutcliffe about the reality and his fictional portrayal of the everyday struggles of being an aspiring filmmaker. Also on Front Row - the Aeneid, the epic poem written by Virgil more than 2000 years ago. As well as being one of the great works of classical literature, it's also one of the earliest examples of a work commissioned as political propaganda. Maria Dahvana Headley - the wr...
Jul 31, 2023•42 min
Cuban composer, cellist and singer Ana Carla Maza performs live in the Front Row studio, ahead of her appearance at WOMAD, and discusses the unusual combination of cello and vocals. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics Neil McCormick and Tara Joshi to review two of the week’s cultural highlights – the shortlist for this year’s Mercury Music Prize and a new documentary Reframed: Marilyn Monroe. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Corinna Jones
Jul 27, 2023•42 min
Kathryn Ferguson, director of the documentary feature Nothing Compares, pays tribute to Sinéad O'Connor whose death was announced today. The film explores the five years at the start of Sinéad O’Connor’s career. Before appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe many performers hone their acts in a series of previews round the country. How does road-testing the shows prepare them for the festival? To discuss, we're joined by experienced comedian Paul Sinha, by Ned Blackburn - producer of a student revue a...
Jul 26, 2023•42 min
Christian Blackshaw is a renowned classical pianist but has made only a handful of records preferring the concert platform. Ahead of his appearance at the Oxford Piano Festival on 29 July and as a prelude to that talks to Samira about his career and plays in the Front Row studio. What can the world of fine art learn from the tech start-ups of Silicon Valley? Samira speaks to entrepreneur and musician Joey Flores, the co-founder of Inversion Art, a company proposing a new training programme and b...
Jul 25, 2023•42 min
Elizabeth Fremantle talks about her novel ‘Disobedient’, which explores the story of the extraordinary C17th woman artist, Artemisia Gentileschi, and how the traumatic events of her seventeenth year influenced her visceral biblical paintings like ‘Judith Slaying Holofernes’. Ahead of his premiere at the Proms, French horn player Felix Klieser plays in the studio for Front Row and tells Samira Ahmed how, aged four, he surprised his family with his choice of instrument. Born without arms, he expla...
Jul 24, 2023•42 min
Sarah Phelps on BBC drama The Sixth Commandment, Blur's new album reviewed.
Jul 20, 2023•42 min
Presenter Nick Ahad meets Christopher Nolan, director of the much anticipated Oppenheimer film. It tells the story of the American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer who, in 1943, assembled a group of scientists in Los Alamos to create the world’s first atomic bomb. Ahead of the National Eisteddfod, the annual festival of Welsh poetry and music, we learn about the poetic tradition of Cynghanedd from Dr Mererid Hopwood and Ceri Wyn Jones. And as nightclubs continue to close across Britain, we look a...
Jul 19, 2023•42 min
Aindrea Emelife and black women in art. Nigerian-British curator on her Somerset House exhibition Black Venus, addressing colonial history and the representation of black women in art as subject and artist, and her new curatorial role at the Edo Museum of West African Art, opening in Nigeria from 2024. Earlier this year a viral song purporting to feature Drake and The Weeknd was removed from streaming services when it emerged that vocals on the track were not the artists, but were generated by A...
Jul 18, 2023•42 min
This Friday sees the release of the much anticipated ‘Barbie’ starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Samira meets director, Greta Gerwig to discuss the making of the film and her myriad of influences. A tapestry commissioned by Henry VIII has come up for sale in Spain. Historian of early modern textiles Isabella Rosner tells Samira why ‘Saint Paul Directing the Burning of the Heathen Books’ is so significant. We also hear from the collector and philanthropist behind the Auckland Project, Jonat...
Jul 17, 2023•42 min
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One - the long awaited seventh film in the series - and the Royal Academy's new exhibition about architecture practice Herzog & de Meuron. Ryan Gilbey and Oliver Wainwright review. Plus Walter Murch. The renowned film editor and sound designer has won Oscars for his work with directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Anthony Minghella. On the occasion of his 80th birthday he leads Antonia Quirke through several key scenes from his films, including the God...
Jul 13, 2023•42 min
Front Row remembers the renowned Czech-born novelist, poet and essayist Milan Kundera who has died aged 94. Novelist Howard Jacobson and French journalist Agnès Poirier discuss the influence of his magical realist writing. Imagine a world where prison inmates fight to the death, for entertainment. That’s the premise of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the debut novel of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, who joins Samira live in the studio to discuss writing inspired by his dislike of the American justice system. T...
Jul 12, 2023•42 min
Sally Potter is best known as a filmmaker- from Orlando starring Tilda Swinton to The Roads Not Taken with Javier Bardem. But she's also a musician, collaborating on the scores for all of her films. Now Sally has released her first album as a singer-songwriter, Pink Bikini and joins Nick Ahad to reflect on this musical coming of age. This month the British Library celebrates its 50th anniversary - a half century of caring for the UK’s research collection. For Front Row, reporter JP Devlin hears ...
Jul 11, 2023•42 min
PJ Harvey talks to Samira Ahmed about her new album, I Inside the Old Year Dying. She explains how her poetry and lyrics were influenced by the Dorset dialect and how the film-maker Steve McQueen helped her to find new inspiration. Benjamin Grosvenor wowed audiences for the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year competition when he was just eleven years old and is now regarded as one of the most exciting pianists working today. As he prepares for this year’s Proms, he performs in the Front Row studio ...
Jul 10, 2023•42 min
Kwame Kwei-Armah discusses his play Beneatha's Place, which imagines a future for Beneatha Younger, a character from Lorraine Hansberry’s ground-breaking 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun. He talks to Samira Ahmed about the themes of race and politics in the play, which is set in 1950s Nigeria and the present day. Samira is joined by critics Leila Latif and Ekow Eshun to review some of the cultural highlights of the week: A World in Common, an exhibition of contemporary African photography at Tate M...
Jul 06, 2023•42 min
Yayoi Kusama: You, Me & The Balloons is the inaugural show in Aviva Studios, the new headquarters for the Manchester International Festival. In a variety of ways Kusama’s distinctive polka dots fill the new Warehouse space. Economics the Blockbuster – It’s Not Business As Usual at The Whitworth is a very different kind of visual art show which asks artists to re-imagine that most topical of subjects, the economy. Art critic Laura Robertson and novelist Okechukwu Nzelu review. In his illustri...
Jul 05, 2023•42 min
The Booker Prize-winning author Sir Ben Okri joins Antonia Quirke to reflect on his new collection Tiger Work, intended as a wake up call for a warming world. It blends fiction, essays and poetry inspired by environmental activism in the face of climate crisis. Film director Shamira Raphaela discusses her documentary Shabu, which follows an aspiring teenage musician from Rotterdam during a single summer. Antonia visits Leighton House in London, one of five finalists for this year's Art Fund Muse...
Jul 04, 2023•42 min
