Front Row

The Mash Report’s Rachel Parris discusses why her private life rather than politics has inspired her new stand up show, All Change Please. As the Greater Manchester Combined Authority announces increased funding for arts venues across its ten boroughs, we talk to Mayor of Greater Manchester and former Culture Secretary Andy Burnham about the effect Local Government funding cuts have had on council...

Playwright and writer Hassan Abdulrazzak discusses his latest play The Special Relationship, a dark satire about the deportation of ex-prisoners from the US, which is based on interviews with real ex-prisoners. Tim Robey reviews Onward, the new Pixar/Disney animation about two teenage elves who go in search of their father, set in a realm of mythical creatures who live as humans do, with houses an...

Hilary Mantel's novel The Mirror and The Light is published tomorrow. In the Front Row readers' panel, three of our listeners - Deborah Stuart, Sasha Simic, and Laura Helen Back - gather to discuss the first two novels in the Cromwell trilogy, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, and to express their hopes and fears for the final instalment. Shay D, a UK hip hop artist, is curating a national tour o...

Koby Adom on directing Malorie Blackman's best-selling young adult novel Noughts + Crosses for BBC1, creating an alternative world where Europe has been colonised by Africa, the ruling class are black and the white population are slaves. As Korean film Parasite dominates the box office, have theatre, film and TV audiences become more accepting of subtitles? Declan Donnellan, artistic director of t...

Director Francis Annan discusses his film Escape from Pretoria. Daniel Radcliffe and Ian Hart star in the true story of the imprisonment of white anti-apartheid campaigners in the 1970s and their incredible escape from South Africa’s maximum-security Pretoria prison. Did you know that amateur dramatics is the third most popular pastime in the UK after fishing and football? Michael Coveney has been...

Elisabeth Moss talks about her new film The Invisible Man, a 21st century reboot of the HG Wells story. Told from the victim’s point of view, Elisabeth plays Cecilia who fears for her safety after escaping an abusive relationship. But when she discovers her ex has killed himself, she fears something far worse: that he’s not dead and has found a way to make himself invisible. Booker winning novelis...

French director Céline Sciamma on her BAFTA and Golden Globe nominated film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, about an 18th Century artist who falls in love with the woman she is painting. Critics have hailed it as a manifesto for the female gaze. André J. Thomas, composer and conductor of gospel music and spirituals, discusses the African-American musical tradition and his forthcoming event, Symphonic...

Ballerina Viviana Durante discusses her evening of dance celebrating Isadora Duncan, whose radical barefoot dancing shocked and enthralled European audiences in the early 1900s, before she was killed in a freak accident when her scarf got caught in the wheels of a car. Life is beginning to imitate art for a British film crew in northern Italy. Director Nicholas Hulbert discusses the challenges the...

Authors Zadie Smith and Francine Prose join Front Row to consider how authors read, as the shortlist for the Rathbones Folio Prize, largely chosen by authors, is announced. Is it with the same eyes as any other reader or are they more aware of the scaffolding as well as the building? How do they judge writing, and how does what they read inform their own work? British Surrealism at Dulwich Picture...

Film director Todd Haynes talks to Samira about his latest film Dark Waters. Starring Tim Robbins, it's a tale of environmental catastrophe, corporate greed and an attempt to harness the power of the law to seek redress. Are libararies good for our health? Bradford City Council thinks so and are diverting a tranche of their wellbeing budget to ensure libraries can stay open for the benefit of loca...

Laurie Sansom, the new Artistic Director of Northern Broadsides on his vision for the theatre company and what British theatre can learn from a small drama company operating across the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. Yesterday in Colorado, President Trump expressed his dismay at the success of the film Parasite at this year's Oscars. Instead he would have preferred the revival of films suc...

Stephen Schwartz, composer and lyricist of Wicked and Godspell, on his spectacular new stage musical about Moses, The Prince of Egypt, based on the 1998 DreamWorks animation and featuring his hit song When You Believe. Leading costume designer and three-time Oscar winner Sandy Powell joins us in the studio. Not content with merely garnering BAFTA and Oscar nominations for her work this year on Mar...

George Mackay, star of BAFTA winning film 1917, talks about his latest, The True History of the Kelly Gang, inspired by Peter Carey's novel about Australia's most infamous outlaw, Ned Kelly. Iranian artist Shirin Neshat discusses her new exhibition Land of Dreams, which explores the experience of minorities in Trump’s America, and the fractious relationship between Iran and the US through photogra...

Al Pacino and Logan Lerman discuss their roles in the new TV drama series Hunters. 'Inspired by true events' it's about a group of individuals in New York in the 1970s who tracked down a number of high-ranking former Nazi officials to bring them to justice. Pass Over is a new play which concentrates on the lives of two African-American men who live in constant fear of violence, not least at the ha...

This week the Sistine Chapel is unveiling ten tapestries by Raphael, to mark the 500th anniversary of artist’s death and now, for the first time since the 16th century, visitors can see them as they were intended to be displayed. Anna Somers Cocks, founding editor of The Art Newspaper, reports on their significance. In light of controversial decisions by the Turner and Booker Prize judges to split...

Eleanor Catton, who in 2013 became the youngest writer to win the Booker Prize for her monumental novel The Luminaries, talks about her screenplay for the new film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, She tells Nikki Bedi why she thinks Emma is such a fascinatingly flawed heroine. After falling from favour in the last decade, the Rom-Com is on the rebound. It's Valentine's Day and Rachael Siggie look...

Comedian David Mitchell discusses his West End debut playing William Shakespeare in Ben Elton’s stage adaptation of the BBC TV sitcom, Upstart Crow. The play, which also stars Gemma Whelan and Mark Heap, explores the realities of life for the man behind the drama as he attempts to resurrect his career and save London theatre form the puritans. Leading soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn has, over the last...

Geeta Pendse presents Front Row from Leicester, home of the Leicester Comedy Festival, which is currently taking place in over ninety venues across the city. Comedians Eshaan Akbar and Ishi Khan talk about why Leicester is where they try out new material in Work in Progress shows. Geoff Rowe, who founded the festival 27 years ago, on what makes it unique. Last year the first UK Kids Comedy Festiva...

Leopoldstadt is the area of Vienna where poor Jews lived, and the title of Tom Stoppard’s new play. It’s about a family who come from there but, cultured, clever, successful and assimilated, no longer live there when the play begins. It follows their story from 1899 to 1955, from fin de siècle optimism to the aftermath of the Holocaust. Talking to John Wilson in the theatre, Sir Tom Stoppard speak...

Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard discusses his new play, Leopoldstadt, in an extended interview. Leopoldstadt is the area of Vienna where poor Jews lived, and the title of Tom Stoppard’s new play. It’s about a family who come from there but, cultured, clever, successful and assimilated, no longer live there when the play begins. It follows their story from 1899 to 1955, from fin de siècle optimism to t...

A new exhibition 'Art Deco By The Sea' has opened at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, looking at the impact of the movement on the architecture as well as painting and fashion at British seaside towns. The Art Deco movement flourished on Britain’s coast through the boom and bust of the 20s and 30s, bringing a sense of glamour and opportunity to the masses, in a wave of proudly British manufacture...

As she completes her quintet of Agatha Christie adaptations with The Pale Horse, screenwriter Sarah Phelps discusses why Christie’s supernatural murder mystery attracted her attention when she was looking for a fifth work by the Queen of Crime to turn into television drama. We Will Walk - Art and Resistance in the American South is an exhibition of sculptures, paintings and quilts made by African...

We look at the career of Kirk Douglas who has died at the age of 103. Not only was he a fine actor - and one of the last of the Hollywood Golden Age - he was also a fearless campaigner for social causes who tried to break through the restrictions imposed by the Hollywood system. American Dirt, a novel about a mother and son attempting to cross the Mexico/US border, has been the subject of fierce d...

In the finale of Front Row’s Risk season we’ll be debating the biggest creative risk takers as we reveal the Front Row Risk List – the 10 riskiest artworks of the 21st century. From putting your reputation on the line to putting yourself in physical danger - we look at the ways artists have used risk in their work., and ask is it always a good thing to risk offending people, and how does gender pl...

The Korean film Parasite is in the running for Best Picture, Director, and International Feature at the Oscars on Sunday. Critic Mark Eccleston reviews the tragicomedy, directed by Bong Joon Ho. It follows the collision of two Korean families from very different socio-economic backgrounds, and the unstoppable string of mishaps that lie in wait. As part of our Risk season, Front Row is asking artis...