Front Row

Tuyen Do has acted at the Royal Court and the National Theatre and now sh'e written a play. Not only is it her first drama, it’s the first by British-Vietnamese writer to have a full professional production in the UK. Summer Rolls is a family saga that centres on Mai, whose parents have escaped war-torn Vietnam, but carry psychological wounds. They are anxious not just for their children to succee...

The 2019 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition has been won by the Ukrainian baritone Andrei Kymach. The week-long competition held every two years is one of the most significant competitions in the classical calendar and has helped make stars of many participants since its inception in 1983. We hear from this year's winner Andrei Kymach and from music critic Anna Picard. This week marks the...

Richard Curtis talks to John Wilson about The Beatles, the rom-com and time itself. He's written Yesterday, a musical fantasy comedy directed by Danny Boyle in which a musician, after an accident, finds himself in another world. Here he is the only person who remembers The Beatles, a fact he turns to his advantage. He takes the credit and becomes famous for writing and performing their songs. Hime...

Ben Platt has been acting or singing for most of his life, and after winning critical acclaim, and a Tony for the title role in Dear Evan Hansen, and also for playing the loveable, if quirky, Benji, in Pitch Perfect, he’s now shed his characters and written his debut album, very much from the heart. He tells Shahidha why he felt compelled to write an autobiographical album and why it was important...

Producer Mark Ronson releases his fifth studio album ‘Late Night Feelings’ which features female singers from an eclectic range of pop music including Miley Cyrus and Alicia Keys. A ‘breakup album’ consisting of songs charting the disintegration of a relationship, Mark talks about how collaboration works on such personal material. In the past weeks, both the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal...

The CILIP Carnegie Medal, and CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal are the most prestigious prizes for literature for children and young people. Both winners were announced today and are on tonight's Front Row. Elizabeth Acevedo’s Carnegie-winning novel tells the story of Xiomara, a Dominican-American girl growing up modern-day Harlem. Elizabeth explains why she chose to unfold the story of The Poet X in a...

Joseph O’Connor, whose book Star of the Sea was critically acclaimed and a global bestseller, talks about his latest novel Shadowplay. Taking the well-known presumption that Bram Stoker based the character of Dracula on the Shakespearean actor Henry Irving, Shadowplay is about the close collaboration and intense friendship between Stoker, Irving and his famous acting partner Ellen Terry. Portugues...

Tracy K. Smith has just completed her time as the Poet Laureate of the United States and published Eternity, her selected poems. For Front Row she reads poems reflecting the variety of her work: the story of a clandestine border crossing; a poem linking David Bowie with the cosmos; another that she did not write so much as discover, a letter to Abraham Lincoln from a mother appealing for the relea...

Rob Lowe, the Brat Pack Hollywood heart-throb who went on to star in hit American series such as The West Wing and Parks and Recreation, talks to Kirsty Lang about his surprising role as a Chief Constable in Boston, Lincolnshire in ITV’s darkly comic new series Wild Bill. Live in Moscow Maria Kornienko outlines the repression and harassment faced by artists making work publicly critical of Vladimi...

Bill Nighy on his latest film Sometimes Always Never, about a family torn apart and then reunited by a love of the board game Scrabble, written by Frank Cotterell Boyce and directed by Carl Hunter. The unreliable narrator is a much loved staple of fiction but it's now a key ingredient in videogame storytelling. Ragnar Tornquist, author of the mystery game Draugen, which features an unreliable narr...

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei has designed a flag to be flown across the UK from 24th June to mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He has also just screened his latest documentary The Rest, which focuses on the plight of individual refugees in 23 countries. John Wilson visits the artist in his Berlin studio to discuss art, activism and his current relationship wi...

Gwendoline Christie, famous for playing warrior Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones, discusses her new stage role as the fairy queen Titania in Nicholas Hytner’s immersive new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Works by Steve McQueen, Lubaina Himid and Yinka Shonibare feature in a new exhibition Get Up, Stand Up Now at Somerset House in London, which explores the impact of 50 years of Black...

Oscar winner Julianne Moore talks about her starring role in Gloria Bell, Chilean director Sebastian Lelio's English-language remake of his celebrated 2013 film Gloria, about a divorcee looking for love on the dance floors of Los Angeles. The much anticipated return of two TV series: Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City and the second season of Big Little Lies, in which Meryl Streep joins Reese Wi...

Dulcet-toned comedian Matt Berry joins us to discuss two new projects: a BBC TV spin-off of the 2014 cult mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows in which Berry plays a jaded 700 year-old vampire, and his new role as Detective Inspector Rabbit, a hardened Victorian booze-hound, in Channel 4’s period comedy Year of the Rabbit. Men make a mess of the world with the First World War. Afterwards a femal...

Emma Thompson discusses her role as a TV chat show host in her new film Late Night and, as she embarks on her first stand-up show, talks about politics, performing , and how much things have changed for women in comedy. As the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019 is announced, we talk to her live from the ceremony. The books are: It’s The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker; My Sister, the...

Samira talks to Nigerian American performer, choreographer and writer Okwui Okpokwasili about the UK premiere of Bronx Gothic at London’s Young Vic. How does the piece delve into one woman’s attempt to shake loose memory in a performance at the intersection of dance, theatre and visual installation. Musical acts always used to be the headliners and sole draw for music festivals. Recently we have s...

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat Pray Love has sold fifteen million copies around the world and was made into a film with Julia Roberts. Her new novel is City of Girls, the story of a young woman discovering an exhilarating life in a theatre in New York in the summer of 1940. She talks about why she was unafraid of writing about a young woman’s sexual desire and about the dramatic and difficult even...

At the piano, composer Alan Menken discusses his music which led the rebirth of Disney animation with hits such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, which he’s reworked for the new live-action version currently top of the box office. Georgia's state governor has signed legislation banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected (except in reported cases of rape or incest)....

The long awaited adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s cult fantasy novel Good Omens arrives on Amazon on Friday. Samira talks to Michael Sheen and David Tennant who play a fussy Angel and a loose-living Demon forced into an unlikely alliance to stop Armageddon. Brìghde Chaimbeul is a young Gaelic speaking piper from the Isle of Skye and one of Scotland’s rising stars. Brìghde won the BB...

Lenny Henry discusses his latest role as Elmore in August Wilson’s play King Hedley II. King is a young black man, just out of prison, who dreams of starting a business and a family. Then the smooth-talking, crap-shooting hustler Elmore wanders in and changes the dynamic in the yard. Artistic director Nadia Fall tells Samira why she has brought this epic, set in Pittsburgh in the Reagan era, to th...

Kirsty is joined by drag queens Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme, two of the biggest stars of American TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race, who are on stage in London in Drag Becomes Her, a parody of Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn’s film, Death Becomes Her. As the 50th anniversary of the first man on the moon approaches we consider the moon’s place in culture. Artist Luke Jerram discusses his artwork Museum of...

Anish Kapoor’s latest exhibition features new sculptures in welded steel, granite and onyx, as well as a series of large-scale paintings which he rarely shows. The artist discusses his continuing fascination with depicting bodily fluids, and with his favourite colour, alizarin crimson. In the new film Booksmart, Beanie Feldstein plays one half of a pair of high school female friends who have succe...

Matthew Bourne's new dance work Romeo + Juliet has a young cast featuring dozens of teenage dancers who auditioned to join his professional company. John talks to choreographer Matthew Bourne, Paris Fitzpatrick and Cordelia Braithwaite who play Romeo and Juliet, and two young dancers from Leicester, Megan Ferguson and Alexander Love. Little Steven, or Stevie Van Zandt, is best known as the guitari...

Comedian Frank Skinner returns to the stand-up stage with his new tour Showbiz which he will be taking to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer where he first made his name, winning a Perrier Award in 1991. Now a radio and panel show host and co-writer of football anthem Three Lions with long time double act David Baddiel, he talks about the changing face of comedy and the thrill of improvisation. BAFT...