Front Row

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 s...

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 hi...

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 Sa...

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 -...

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 excitin...

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 hi...

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 su...

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...

Dolly Parton, one of the few global stars to have truly earned the title icon, talks to Samira Ahmed about departing from her Country sound to record an album of Rock songs. Rockstar sees her collaborate with some of the biggest names in music including Paul McCartney, Sting, Elton John and new generation of musicians such as Miley Cyrus and Lizzo. She discusses her long career and mentoring women...

Our critics Hanna Flint and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh watch Harrison Ford’s last outing as the title character in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, also starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Is it a crowd-pleasing exit? Presenter Tom Sutcliffe talks to Brandon Taylor about his new novel, The Late Americans. Taylor's debut, Real Life, was Booker Prize nominated and his collection of short fiction, Filthy A...

In 2019 Kimber Lee won the first International Award from the Bruntwood Prize, the UK’s biggest national competition for playwriting, with her work - Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play. As the play’s world premiere production prepares to open this year’s Manchester International Festival, Kimber joins Front Row to discuss how Groundhog Day helped her to take on a century of East Asian stereotypes. Fin...

Playwright and composer Michael R Jackson talks about his musical A Strange Loop, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The musical is based on his own experiences and follows a black man working as an usher at the musical The Lion King, who is himself writing a musical about a black male usher writing a musical. Michael R Jackson talks about why his reflective drama was such a hit in the United...

Wes Anderson, known for his quirky storylines and individual aesthetic, talks about his latest film Asteroid City. Set in 1955, at a science competition in the middle of the desert, it follows a cast of characters who are thrown into close contact when an alien appears. Wes Anderson discusses his fascination with America in the 1950s and working with his high profile cast, including Scarlett Johan...

Oscar-nominated Elliot Page, best known as star of comedy drama Juno, on coming out as gay and as a trans man, all in the glare of the Hollywood spotlight - and sharing this now in his new memoir, Pageboy. Marking Jewish history. With proposals for a Holocaust Memorial in London, and the closure of the Jewish Museum building, historian Sir Simon Schama, and Aviva Dautch, poet and Executive Directo...

Tom is joined by reviewers Boyd Hilton and Susannah Clapp who look at Dear England, a new play by James Graham at the National Theatre which examines the changes in England’s football since Gareth Southgate became manager. And the National Portrait Gallery reopens today having had the most extensive refurbishment since 1896, including a redisplay, a new entrance and public spaces. Violinist Rachel...

Front Row hears from the winner of this year’s Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing, which is awarded for a book for children or young people. Manon Steffan Ros has won for her novel The Blue Book of Nebo, the first time the prize has been awarded to a book in translation. Originally written in Welsh, it explores Welsh identity and culture. There are plans for eight new arenas across the UK, including...

The Beatles at Stowe School: Front Row made the news with the discovery of the earliest recording of a concert by The Beatles in this country, at Stowe School in April 1963. Today Samira brings news of a new home for that recording, one where anyone interested will be able to hear it. And, remarkably, another Beatles recording, made that day, has surfaced too. Plus Maggi Hambling discusses her new...

Front Row plays tribute to Oscar winning actor Glenda Jackson, who has died aged 87. Theatre critic Sarah Crompton remembers the power of her stage performances, and Aisling Walsh discusses directing her in her TV drama Elizabeth is Missing. Choreographer Wayne McGregor talks about his new ballet, Untitled 2023, which was inspired by the works of Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera. And Tom Sutcl...

Allan Little visits the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, which re-opened last year after a £68 million transformation and is now a finalist for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2023. He talks to Director Duncan Dornan and Caroline Currie, Learning and Access curator. Ahead of their performance at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney which gets underway on Friday we have a live performance from members of the...

Author and former data scientist, Cecilia Rabess joins Samira Ahmed to discuss her debut novel, Everything’s Fine, which explores the unlikely and complicated relationship between a liberal black woman working in the world of investment banking and her conservative white male colleague, during the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Following yesterday’s announcement that the Epstein T...

Surprising musicals: new musicals are packing in audiences - and some with quite unlikely subjects. Whilst the classic Broadway musical, like 42nd Street, Guys and Dolls, and Oklahoma!, remain as popular as ever, there’s now a musical based on Bake Off, and the plot of Operation Mincemeat is itself a plot - to hoodwink the Nazis with a corpse in disguise. Critic David Benedict, Natasha Hodgson, co...

Gaming isn’t just something you play, it is also a spectator sport! Comedian and streamer Ellie Gibson and journalist and gamer Marie Le Conte join us to discuss the cultural phenomenon of game streaming. Linton Stephens, bassoonist and presenter of Radio 3’s Classical Fix, and filmmaker and journalist Catherine Bray join Front Row to review Chevalier, the new film about the life of the French-Car...

The Liverpool Biennial, the UK’s largest contemporary visual arts festival, begins this weekend. Arts journalist Laura Robertson reviews, and the curator of the biennial, Khanyisile Mbongwa, discuss coming up with this year’s theme – uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost things – which reflects on Liverpool’s history as a slave port but also provides a sense of hope and joy. Nobel Prize-winning Italian...

Rufus Wainwright talks to Samira Ahmed about his new album Folkocracy, a collection of reimagined Folk songs. The album includes collaborations with artists including John Legend, Chaka Khan and his sister Martha Wainwright. Thomas Hardiman talks about his new film Medusa Deluxe, a gritty murder mystery set at a hairdressing competition. He explains where his unusual idea came from and why he uses...

Charles Byrne was an 18th-century “Irish giant” whose skeleton was stolen and put on display against his wishes. 240 years after his death, he is being remembered in a new electro acoustic opera rather than as a museum-piece curiosity. Dawn Kemp of the Hunterian Museum discusses removing the famous skeleton from their collection, and composer, musician, and robotic artist Sarah Angliss tells us ab...