Front Row

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-writer of Operation Mincemeat, and Matthew Iliffe, Assistant Director of Assassins, discuss what’s happening with the musical.Eric Whitacre is one of the world’s most popular living composers. He specialises in choral music and is a virtual choir pioneer, uniting thousands of singers all over the globe. He talks to Samira Ahmed about Home, his new album with acclaimed vocal ensemble Voces8.Plus, the Women’s Prize For Fiction. In the last of our interviews from authors on the shortlist, we speak to Laline Paull - whose novel Pod explores sealife in the Indian Ocean, with themes of war and migration under the shadow o

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-Caribbean musician Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. They’ll also give their verdicts on ITV comedy drama Significant Other about neighbours thrown together in adverse circumstances, starring Katherine Parkinson and Youssef Kerkour.And to mark the start of Pride month, the UK’s annual celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, Front Row hears from the French music star Christine and the Queens, who is curating this year’s Meltdown festival. He discusses Jean Genet’s 1943 novel Our Lady of the Flowers and its significance as a queer work of art.

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 playwright Dario Fo was famous for plays that careered between farce and current affairs. He wrote his most successful plays during Italy’s years of economic crisis in the 1970s, and there’s been an upsurge in productions of them in the UK this year. Playwrights Deborah McAndrew and Tom Basden discuss their respective adaptations of They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! and Accidental Death of an Anarchist.For Dave Johns, the lead role in Ken Loach’s multi-award winning film, I, Daniel Blake, marked his debut as a film actor. His performance as a man trapped and impoverished in the Catch-22 of the benefits system was admire

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 his films to explore obsession, whether with hairdressing or carpet sales. Before Covid, many theatre productions didn’t cast understudies at all but now plays are casting two for one role. The BBC’s Carolyn Atkinson investigates the rise of the understudy. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner

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 about her new opera, Giant, which celebrates Byrne on stage, and is opening the Aldeburgh Festival.The Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell’s last novel “Hamnet” is now playing on stage at the Globe Theatre and won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her latest “The Marriage Portrait” has made it onto the 2023 shortlist, and was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller. Both focus on the lives of women hidden in history behind men of influence. In the next of our series meeting the Women’s Prize finalists, we’ll be finding out what it is about these stories that inspire her, and how it feels to make the shortlist for a second time

Critics Katie Puckrik and Michael Carlson join Front Row to review the exhibition Punk: Rage and Revolution at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery and Soft Touch Arts.The American writer and director Tina Satter talks about her new film Reality, starring Sydney Sweeney. The script is based on the transcript of the FBI interrogation of the whistleblower Reality Winner, who leaked secret documents about Russian interference in the 2016 US election.And Katie Puckrik and Michael Carlson also review a new TV drama series about Watergate starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux, White House Plumbers. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Sarah Johnson

Writer/director Shane Meadows and actor Michael Socha on the new BBC TV adaptation of Benjamin Myers' novel, The Gallows Pole.The Mercury Music Prize-nominated minimal jazz trio GoGo Penguin play tracks from their new album, Everything Is Going To Be OK, live in the studio – and discuss how they alter their instruments to extend their range of sound.As the interests and concerns of the First Nations people rise up the cultural agenda in Australia exemplified by the plan for the National Aboriginal Art Gallery, Ce Benedict, based in Australia and a Senior Producer at ABC Radio National, reports on how that story is resonating in their homeland and in the UK.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Broadway legend Chita Rivera, who made her name playing Anita in the original stage production of West Side Story, talks to Samira Ahmed about the highlights of her seven decade career, ahead of the publication of her memoir.Arts consultant Amanda Parker, formerly editor of Arts Professional magazine and now of the Forward Institute, and theatre director Tom Morris, who until recently ran Bristol Old Vic, discuss new approaches to funding the arts.Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist: Priscilla Morris on her nominated debut novel Black ButterfliesPresenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

The Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948 from Jamaica. Front Row marks the artistic and cultural contribution of a generation of people from the Caribbean, now characterised as the Windrush Generation, who arrived then, soon before or in the years following. Samira talks to the Jamaican-born actor and director Anton Phillips about his career, including starring in the cult classic Space 1999 and directing James Baldwin's The Amen Corner in a landmark production on the London stage. Andrea Levy's highly acclaimed 2004 novel Small Island tells the story of four people caught up in the Caribbean migration story and has been adapted for radio, TV and stage. The playwright Patricia Cumper, poet and writer Hannah Lowe and novelist Louise Hare discuss the impact of the book on them and their own writing. The composer Shirley J Thompson OBE talks about how her Jamaican heritage shaped her music making and about composing for the Coronation. And Kevin LeGendre explains the impact of the arriv

The Jhalak Prize is an annual literary prize for British or British-Resident writers of colour, established in 2016. Previous winners include Reni Eddo-Lodge and Johny Pitts. Tom speaks to the winners of this year’s Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize, announced at the British Library this evening.This week Tate Britain revealed a complete rehang of its free collection displays - the first in ten years. There are over 800 works by over 350 artists, featuring much-loved favourites and recent discoveries, including 70 works which entered the collection in the past 5 years. The rehang intends to reflect revolutionary changes in art, culture and society, and present new work by some of Britain’s most exciting contemporary artists. Associate arts editor of The Times, Alice Jones, and TV and film critic Amon Warmann give their view.Plus The Little Mermaid. In their 100th year, Disney have reworked their 1989 Oscar winning animated musical classic into a live action version, starring Halle Baile

Patriots, Peter Morgan’s play set in Russia in 1991, traces the rise and fall of Boris Berezovsky, who helped Vladimir Putin take power. As Patriots transfers to the West End, Allan Little – who as the BBC’s Moscow correspondent met Berezovsky – talks to the director Rupert Goold and Will Keen, winner of an Olivier Award for his performance as Vladimir Putin. The V&A Photography Centre opens this week, the largest suite of galleries in the UK dedicated to a permanent photography collection. Allan is joined by curator Marta Weiss and AI deep fake photographer Jake Elwes.DJ Taylor won the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Biography for his first telling of George Orwell’s life. He reveals why, twenty years later, he’s returned to the subject with the publication of Orwell: The New Life. Presenter: Allan Little Producer: Timothy Prosser

Sparks, the American pop duo formed in 1960s Los Angeles, are back with their 26th album, The Girl is Crying in her Latte. Samira Ahmed meets brothers Ron and Russell Mael to discuss how Cate Blanchett came to be dancing in the music video for the title track and their extraordinary longevity.E. M. Forster’s 1908 novel A Room with a View is being dramatised for Radio 4, as is the novel The Ballad of Syd and Morgan, which imagines a meeting between Forster and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. Samira is joined by the producers Marcy Kahan and Roger James Elsgood to explore Forster's enduring appeal and transposing prose into audio drama.Nature writer Bob Gilbert's new book The Missing Musk: A Casebook of Mysteries from the Natural World sets out to discover why, all over the world, a popular fragrant flowering plant has lost its scent. Samira talks to the former urban nature columnist about how his book has invented a new literary genre, the detective nature mystery. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinn

Singer songwriter Arlo Parks talks about following her highly acclaimed first album with a new release, My Soft Machine, which includes a collaboration with American musician Phoebe Bridgers.Film director James Bluemel discusses his new documentary, Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, which reflects on the troubles using human stories. He’s joined by Craig Murray, curator of the Imperial War Museum’s new exhibition Living With The Troubles, which takes the same approach.The writer Martin Amis has died aged 73. To discuss how his novels defined an era and reflect on his literary criticism, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics John Self and Alex Clark. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut novel, Open Water, won the Costa First Novel award and critical acclaim. He joins Front Row to talk about his second, Small Worlds, the story of a young musician looking for his own space in the streets of Peckham, finding his way with love, family and his Ghanaian heritage. The exhibition China’s Hidden Century at the British Museum is billed as a world first, bringing together 300 artefacts from the Qing Dynasty’s ‘long 19th Century’- the final chapter of dynastic rule in China. Joining Tom Sutcliffe to review it are Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford and the film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh. Larushka and Rana have also been watching one of this week’s big film releases, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, starring Rachel McAdams and based on the classic young adult novel by Judy Blume, first published in 1970.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Corinna Jones

Chuck D on his watercolour art. He is regarded as one of hip-hop's greatest MCs with his powerful lyrical dexterity a key component in Public Enemy's international success, but what is less well known is that visual art was his first passion. It's a love that he has returned to in recent years and he joins Front Row to discuss the first collection of his watercolour and pen paintings.Plus author Jacqueline Crooks on her first novel, Fire Rush, which has been nominated for the Women’s Prize For Fiction. 16 years in the making, it draws on many of the author’s own experiences of loss, belonging and discrimination to create a music and memory-filled dramatic narrative.And artist Andy Holden on his exhibition Full of Days. Intrigued after discovering unknown amateur artist Hermione Burton’s body of work in a charity shop after her death, he turned it into her fantasy exhibition – along with his own new work inspired by her, including an animation with Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell. Full of Days: Hermione Burton

Samira Ahmed talks to Priya Khanchandani, the curator of The Offbeat Sari, an exhibition of contemporary saris at the Design Museum in London.The art critic Louisa Buck and the journalist James Marriott consider the vexed politics of museum labels.Mat Osman, bass player with the band Suede, joins Samira to discuss his new novel, The Ghost Theatre, which dramatises the lives of boy actors in 1601. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner

Brokeback Mountain on stage: musician and librettist Dan Gillespie Sells discusses writing the songs for a new stage production of Brokeback Mountain, adapted from Annie Proulx’s short story about the romance between two men working as sheep herders in 1960s Wyoming.Venice Architecture Biennale: the exhibition at the British Pavilion this year draws on traditions practised by different diaspora communities in the UK - such as Jamaicans playing dominoes and Cypriots cooking outside - and explores how they occupy space, so this can be included in planning the built environment. Two of the curators, Meneesha Kellay and Joseph Henry, discuss how architecture goes beyond buildings and economic structures. Plus art generates art in Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng’s new book The House of Doors, inspired in part by the life of William Somerset Maugham and the stories he wrote drawing on his travels in Malaysia.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

In 2021, June Givanni was presented with the British Independent Film Awards Special Jury Prize for what was described as “an extraordinary, selfless and lifelong contribution to documenting a pivotal period of film history” with her extensive archive focussed on African and African diaspora cinema. The archive is now the subject of a new exhibition - PerAnkh: The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive. June joins Front Row to discuss turning her personal passion into a public resource.Gwen John: the modern painter of interiors and solitary women, was once in the shadow of the men in her life - brother Augustus, Rodin, and Whistler. Critics Hettie Judah and Ben Luke review a new exhibition of her work at Pallant House Gallery, which considers her art and life, and her status as one of the most significant artists of the early 20th century. They also review Claire Kilroy’s novel Soldier Sailor: a searing portrait of new motherhood. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Eliane Glaser

Louise Kennedy's debut novel Trespasses has been shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction. Set in Belfast in 1975 at the height of the Troubles it traces the love affair between a young Catholic schoolteacher and an older man, a married Protestant barrister. Front Row will be talking to the authors on the shortlist in the weeks before the announcement of the prize on June 14th.Musician and beatboxer SK Shlomo has collaborated with Björk, performed with Damon Albarn, Ed Sheeran and Rudimental, became World Looping champion and artist in residence at London’s Soutbank centre and played Glastonbury. They discuss their new show, which explores coming back to performance after struggling with their mental health. And how might the patronage of King Charles III impact the arts? Art critics Jonathan Jones and Ruth Guilding discuss the history of Royal patronage and what his tastes may mean for culture in the coming years. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry Parker

Samira Ahmed speaks to John Cook, Professor of Media at Glasgow Caledonian University about his discovery of a previously unknown early version of the seminal screenplay The Singing Detective by Dennis Potter. Samira is also joined in the studio by Ken Trodd, who co-produced The Singing Detective for television. Music writer Cathi Unsworth discusses her new book, Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth, which explores the enduring influence of Goth counterculture. And the artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien reflects on his major retrospective, What Freedom is to Me, at Tate Britain. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner