Front Row

In July 2005 Anthony Walker an 18 year old black man was killed in a racist attack in Huyton, Merseyside. Jimmy McGovern’s new BBC drama Anthony - inspired by conversations with Gee Walker, Anthony's mother – is a 90 minute film looking at what his life might have been like had he lived. The story works backwards from him imagined at age 25 – married, a father and on his way to a successful career...

Oliver Stone has written or directed some of cinema's most powerful films - Midnight Express, Platoon, Scarface, Salvador, Natural Born Killers. Now he has written a memoir, Chasing the Light - How I fought my Way into Hollywood From the 1960s to Platoon. Making films, he tells Tom Sutcliffe, is his vocation, but getting them done...that's never come easily. Feeling betrayed by his parents' divorc...

An icon of 1960s feminism and freethinking, Nell Dunn – now in her 80s - author of Up The Junction, Poor Cow and Steaming talks to Tom Sutcliffe about The Muse, A Memoir of Love at First Sight about her friendship with a woman named Josie who inspired much of her work. Kelly O’Sullivan discusses her film Saint Frances which she has written and stars in as Bridget, a 34 year old whose life is trans...

Josephine Mackerras discusses her award winning first feature film, Alice, which she has directed, written and produced. Alice is living an enviable life in Paris with her handsome husband and young son. Then a card payment is refused, their bank account is empty and her husband disappears. He has spent their money using expensive escorts, which gives Alice an idea about how to save her home and h...

American actress Alfre Woodard on her powerful lead performance as a death row prison warden in Clemency, written and directed by Chinoye Chukwu, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The government has announced that live performance will be possible again in indoor venues from August. The London Symphony Orchestra has already experimented with socially distanced live perf...

Film director and writer Mike Hodges, of Get Carter fame, on his 1989 film Black Rainbow, starring Rosanna Arquette. Despite being critically acclaimed, it went straight to video, but has now been restored and re-released on DVD and streaming. Plus, the financial plight of freelance arts workers in the pandemic: the government has agreed a £1.57 billion rescue package for the arts, but how much wi...

How will community theatre companies help restore audience confidence to go back into theatres after the lockdown? And how do we measure how important they are in bringing people to watch live theatre? Alan Lane is director of Slung Low and Holly Lombardo leads the National Rural Touring Simon Stephenson gave up a career as a paediatric doctor to pursue a career in writing. His first novel Set My...

American country group The Chicks (formerly know as The Dixie Chicks), the biggest-selling U.S. female band of all time, talk about Gaslighter, their first album in fourteen years. Natalie Maines, lead vocalist, and Marti Maguire who plays the fiddle, reflect on the band’s outspoken political stances from the War in Iraq to Black Lives Matter and the effect these have had on their work. Actor Hamm...

Winona Ryder, John Turturro and Anthony Boyle star in a new Sky Atlantic drama The Plot Against America adapted by David Simon from Philip Roth’s alternate history which was first published in 2004. Jonathan Freedland reviews. Rachel De-Lahay brings her letter writing project to the Royal Court Theatre for a week-long online festival. My White Best Friend is Rachel's original letter to her white f...

The Kanneh-Masons are an extraordinarily musical family of seven siblings who spent lockdown together at their home in Nottingham and were filmed by BBC1's Imagine. Tonight we're joined by pianist Isata and cellist Sheku, who perform live from their home, and we also talk to their mother Kadie. Open air theatre performances with socially distanced audiences are allowed from tomorrow, and first out...

Today is the 25th anniversary of the publication of Northern Lights, the first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy that introduced Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon to the world. It’s been announced that a previously unseen short story by Philip Pullman about a teenage Lyra, Serpentine, will be published in October. He joins Front Row live to talk about its place in the series and what the novel...

Katori Hall is a playwright from Memphis, Tennessee, whose story of a Southern strip club and the women who work in it has been adapted for television as a series called P-Valley - an “unflinching and unapologetic look” at the lives of women working at a Mississippi club called The Pynk. Cinema after lockdown. The government’s recently announced £1.75bn rescue package for the arts is to be spread...

Rufus Wainwright joins us to talk about his new album, Unfollow The Rules, lockdown's threat to live music, and his online robe recitals. In the wake of the announcement of £1.57 billion investment in the arts, John Wilson speaks to Neil Mendoza, the government's Commissioner for Cultural Recovery and Renewal, about how far-reaching this rescue package can be. Tate Britain is giving ten artists £1...

Will the government’s £1.57 billion investment in the arts be enough save UK cultural organisations and freelancers? Samira discusses the arts rescue package with Shadow Culture Secretary Jo Stevens, Artistic Director of Leicester’s Curve Theatre, Nikolai Foster, and head of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, Deborah Annetts We speak to dancer and choreographer Wayne McGregor about his latest...

Some of our major theatres are wrapped in pink today as part of the #missinglivetheatre campaign. Designer Tom Piper talks about the project. Novelist Sara Collins and actor Daniel York Loh make up our Friday Review panel. They’ve watched the newly released recording of the smash hit musical Hamilton, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which allows viewers to replicate the theatrical experience at hom...

The new Australian TV thriller series The Secrets She Keeps. Felicity Ward reviews the BBC One drama about two women due to give birth on the same day, but whose pregnancies are not quite what they seem. Former culture minister Ed Vaizey considers the government's approach to the current challenges facing the performing arts. Director and writer Fyzal Boulifa on his debut feature film, Lynn + Lucy...

Werner Herzog has made over 70 films, from the ambitious feature film Fitzcarraldo to the documentary Grizzly Man. From Los Angeles he discusses his latest project, Family Romance LLC, a fictional film set in Tokyo about a real company that loans out actors to impersonate family members or imitation friends ‘to create illusions to make clients’ lives better’. The town of Watford is joining togethe...

Are the arts facing an existential crisis in the UK? Sir Simon Rattle, conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, on the imminent threat to orchestras and other arts organisations unless the government provides signficant financial support. The state of UK Theatre is discussed by Royal Shakespeare Company Executive Director, Catherine Mallyon, Actors’ Touring Company Artistic Director Matthew Xia...

Kevin Kwan, author of the Crazy Rich Asians novels, which was adapted into the hit film of 2018, talks about his new book Sex and Vanity, a satire set in the worlds of uber-rich New York and Capri, and is an homage to EM Forster’s A Room with a View. Annilese Miskimmon, the new Artistic Director of English National Opera, discusses her first project, ENO Drive & Live, a series of live opera pe...

Michael Palin on staging a version of Beckett’s Waiting For Godot to raise money for The Royal Theatre Fund - and what else he’s been doing during lockdown. We round up the week's big arts stories. The Last of Us Part II is one of the most highly anticipated games for a generation. Part I was an unexpected hit, praised for bringing the storytelling qualities of films to gaming. Elle Osili-Wood and...

Redundancies at the Theatre Royal Plymouth - over 100 jobs have been announced at risk as income falls by over 90 per cent due to the pandemic. We hear about the devastating impact on staff and the region, the threat to the theatre’s existence, and the warning bell it sounds to the future of theatre across the country. Stuart Evers on his new novel, The Blind Light – a story of two families from a...

The Holberg Prize is awarded annually to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in the arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology. This year the 6 million Norwegian kroner prize (approximately £500,000) has been awarded to the British-Canadian art historian Professor Griselda Pollock who the judges described as “the foremost feminist art historian working in the wo...

The arts world is facing a “cultural catastrophe” with the impact of Covid-19 leading to the loss of an annual revenue of £74 billion according to one report along with warnings of 400,000 jobs lost. But does this terrible crisis also provide an opportunity to rethink the arts world? Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern, Amanda Parker, Editor of Arts Professional and Director of Inc Arts, David...

Alan Bennett's Talking Heads have been remade for television decades after the original series. Alongside two brand new monologues, ten episodes have been re-created with actors including Jodie Comer, Sarah Lancashire and Lucian Msamati. Theatre critic Sam Marlowe reviews these socially distanced dramas, and actor Lisa Dwan joins her to discuss the art of the monologue. The pandemic has changed al...

Rebel Wilson discusses her new TV series Last One Laughing, where ten comedians are locked in room and if they laugh they get kicked out. The last one standing wins a big cash prize. The death was announced today of the actor Sir Ian Holm. Theatre critic Michael Billington pays tribute. Bob Dylan has just released a new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. For our Friday Review, music journalist Laura Bar...