Front Row

Composer Jeanine Tesori's Blue for the ENO; Baillie Gifford winner of winners for non-fiction shortlist - Margaret MacMillan; new ideas in architecture discussed Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Jerome Weatherald

Plans to finish Barcelona’s famous church, La Sagrada Família, have been causing controversy as they involve demolishing apartment blocks to make way for the new entrance. Journalist Guy Hedgecoe, who reports on Spain for the BBC, and the Twentieth Century Society’s director, Catherine Croft, discuss the issues raised as the completion of the emblematic building draws near. Singer Georgia Cecile t...

Percussionist Colin Currie performs live in the Front Row studio. He discusses his new interpretation of one of minimalist composer Steve Reich’s best known works, Music for 18 Musicians. 50 years on from the death of playwright Noel Coward, biographer Oliver Soden and theatre director Michael Longhurst look at his legacy and ask what he means to theatre audiences today, as a new production of Cow...

The RSC's production of Hamnet brings the bestselling, award-winning novel by Maggie O'Farrell to the stage. To review this reinterpretation of O'Farrell's imagined account of the short life of Shakespeare's son, which also foregrounds his wife Agnes, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by theatre critic Susannah Clapp and the novelist and screenwriter Louise Doughty. Michael Frayn is the author of almost 50...

Screenwriter Kevin Sampson on the complexities of his new true crime drama for ITV, The Hunt for Raoul Moat. Max Porter found huge success with his first book, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, acclaimed as a tender, funny and original story of loss. His latest, Shy, completes the trilogy about grief that began with that book. It tells the story of a teenage boy in the 90s, setting off in the midd...

A new exhibition of the Pre-Raphaelite Rossettis at Tate Britain in London explores the 'radicalism' of Dante Gabriel, Christina and Elizabeth (Siddal), and their 'revolutionary' approach to life, love and art in Victorian Britain. It emphasises Elizabeth as artist rather than muse, and charts the emergence of the Pre-Raphaelites through to Gabriel’s famous romanticised female portraits. However,...

Front Row marks the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's First Folio with former RSC Artistic Director Greg Doran, Guildhall Principal Librarian Peter Ross, and Shakespeare experts Emma Smith, Farah Karim-Cooper and Chris Laoutaris. Without the Folio we might not have had The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure and many others. Front Row considers the rich, complicated and sometimes par...

Ai Weiwei: Making Sense. We look at the new exhibition which opens at the Design Museum in London tomorrow. Plus we review the new Grease prequel Rise of the Pink Ladies, streaming on Paramount+ from tomorrow. Samira is joined by reviewers Nancy Durrant, Cultural Editor of the Evening Standard, and critic Karen Krizanovich. Plus 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement. Two very different new plays m...

For his latest project, the Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney has turned his attention to the original tennis wunderkind Boris Becker. He talks about the making of his documentary, Boom! Boom!: The World vs Boris Becker, and what it was like to follow the sports legend during the period which saw him land in jail. The BBC's Kathy Clugston looks at how artists are commemorating the 25th anniversa...

BAFTA-winning director Joe Pearlman talks about his new Netflix documentary on Scottish pop superstar Lewis Capaldi, which is out tomorrow. In Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now, Joe follows Lewis as he struggles with his mental health and writing his second album during the pandemic. Tartan, the textile of tradition and rebellion is celebrated at the Victoria & Albert Museum in Dundee, which...

Ria Zmitrowicz talks about her role in The Power, the TV adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel. She plays Roxy Monke, the daughter of a notorious crime boss whose aspirations to join the family business are realized when she gains a mysterious new power. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by author Michael Arditti and critic Alexandra Coughlan review the ENO’s new production of Korngold’s opera The Dead City...

Rain Dogs, billed as ‘a love story told from the gutter,’ is a new comedy drama series starring Daisy May Cooper. Shahidha Bari is joined in the studio by the writer and creator of the series, Cash Carraway. Ahead of the BAFTA Games Awards we discuss the state of play in the UK games industry with Chris Allnutt, gaming critic for the Financial Times and with games producer Charu Desodt, whose inte...

Singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant talks to Samira Ahmed about Keep Your Courage, her first album in nearly a decade. Libraries were awarded the smallest amount of money from the Cultural Investment Fund, which was announced last week. Front Row speaks to Nick Poole, Chief Executive of CILIP, the Library and Information Association. And Victoria Adukwei Bulley discusses winning the Rathbones Folio...

Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick’s book 'Nothing to Envy' has been short-listed for this year’s Baille Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Winner of Winners Award; North Korean defectors spoke about love, family life and the terrible cost of the 1990’s famine. Front Row examines the controversy surrounding Dungeons and Dragons, the world's most popular table-top role playing game and now a Hollyw...

Writer and director Steven Knight, whose work includes Peaky Blinders and SAS Rogue Heroes, discusses his new BBC adaptation of Great Expectations which stars Olivia Coleman as Miss Havisham. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics Ben Luke and Isabel Stevens to review some of the week’s cultural highlights including Spanish film The Beasts, the After Impressionism exhibition at the National Gallery an...

A Tall Order! Rochdale Art Gallery in the 1980s is the name of the show currently on at Touchstones Rochdale, which reflects on the gallery’s radical history supporting those who were, at the time, overlooked by the mainstream of the art world, some of whom have gone on to prestigious careers. Co-curators Derek Horton and Alice Correia join Front Row to discuss the show. We begin our interviews wi...

Are theatre audiences behaving badly? After recent complaints, we discuss expectations of audience etiquette. Tom is joined by: Dr Kirsty Sedgman, Lecturer in Theatre at University of Bristol, researcher of audiences, and author of The Reasonable Audience: Theatre Etiquette, Behaviour Policing, And The Live Performance Experience; Lyn Gardner, theatre critic and Associate Editor of The Stage; and...

Irish singer songwriter Lisa O’Neill talks to Samira Ahmed about her latest album, All Of This Is Chance, and performs live in the Front Row studio. The National Theatre of Norway have brought their production of Strindberg’s Dance of Death to the UK. Director Marit Moum Aune explains what led her to delve into the work of Strindberg, and acclaimed Norwegian actor Pia Tjelta reveals how she connec...

Richard Eyre on directing the screen version of Alan Bennett’s play Allelujah, starring Jennifer Saunders, set on the geriatric ward of a fictional Yorkshire hospital, the Bethlehem, and on raising questions about how society cares for its older population. We review the star-studded Apple TV+ climate change series Extrapolations, and a new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, Souls Grown De...

Filmmaker Hassan Nazar talks to Kate Molleson about his new film Winners, a love letter to the art of cinema. Set in Iran, it follows two children who find an Oscars statuette. Playwright Calum L MacLeòid on his new Western, Stornaway, Quebec, which is set in 1880s Canada and performed in Gaelic, Québécois, and English. And to mark Neurodiversity Celebration Week, Front Row discusses neurodiversit...

The conclusion of the Oscars marks the end of the film awards season, so Front Row took the opportunity to look at the progress made on representation in film and at awards. Tom is joined by the film critic Amon Warmann, Katherine Pieper of LA's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which looks at equalities at the Oscars, and Marcus Ryder of the Lenny Henry Centre For Media Diversity. Plus, with a host...

Author Percival Everett on his novel Dr No; Director Pravesh Kumar on his film Little English; the new Yeats Smartphones poetry trail in Bedford Award-winning US novelist Percival Everett on his surreal new book, Dr No – in which unlikely heroes and uber-wealthy super villains chase after a box containing absolutely nothing. Pravesh Kumar has been running a theatre company for over two decades and...

New Irish film, My Sailor, My Love, by Finnish director, Klaus Härö, and a new collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood, by Margaret Atwood. To review, Tom is joined by author Ashley Hickson-Lovence and academic Sarah Churchwell. Plus the Baillie Gifford prize – the six books shortlisted for the ‘winner of winners’ award. And Irish author Nicole Flattery on her debut novel Nothing Specia...

A reimagining of Caryl Churchill’s ground-breaking and celebrated play, Top Girls, opens this week at the Liverpool Everyman which sets the play – about female ambition and success across centuries and cultures - in Merseyside. Playwright Charlotte Keatley and theatre critic Susannah Clapp discuss the play’s themes and its continuing impact forty years after its premiere. Prince Harry’s book Spare...

Daniel Mays talks to Samira Ahmed about starring as Nathan Detroit in a new immersive production of the musical Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theatre in south London. Front Row investigates how accessible theatres and gig venues are, not just for audiences but for performers. Reporter Carolyn Atkinson talks to a comedian and a DJ who have struggled with access and asks how venues should be addressi...