Front Row

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 the Moon which tours 7m exact replicas of the moon that are suspended high above visitors and can currently be seen at the Natural History Museum and Ely Cathedral. Critic Hannah McGill also considers how the moon is represented in film and literature more broadly.Restoration Comedies are often staged, Restoration Tragedies, more rarely. But director Prasanna Puwanarajah has chosen for his debut with the RSC Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved. It’s a somewhat operatic play, with speeches like arias and originally running at over four hours. Puwanarajah has taken a scalpel to it and his staging is influenced by comic bo

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 succeeded in getting places at Ivy League colleges by keeping their heads down and studying hard. But when they find that less dedicated students at their school have also been successful college applicants, the girls begin to question whether they have sacrificed too much for their academic futures. Beanie discusses the friendship at the heart of Booksmart and why she thinks it’s such a breakthrough movie.US indie rock band Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig discusses their latest album Father of the Bride, ahead of their forthcoming Glastonbury gig.Presenter Shahidha Bari Producer Jerome Weatherald

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 guitarist to Bruce Springsteen and a member of the E Street Band. As he releases Summer of Sorcery, the new album by his all-star band the Disciples of Soul, Little Steven discusses his own music, performing with The Boss, and his unexpected acting role The Sopranos.The Tiger Who Came To Tea author Judith Kerr has died at the age of 95. Michael Rosen pays tribute and we hear John's recent interview with Judith at her home. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser

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.BAFTA have analysed nearly 130,000 non-news programmes between September 2017 and September 2018, and found out that climate change featured fewer times than cats, cakes and picnics. But how much is it the responsibility of the arts to enact social change through its programming? Aaron Matthews, the head of industry sustainability at BAFTA and David Butcher of The Radio Times discuss.Anna, a new immersive play by Ella Hickson, is a thriller set in 1968 East Berlin, a place where what you said in public and what you might admit in private needed to be rather different. The audience for this production have to wear headsets

Stephen Poliakoff talks about his new BBC Two drama Summer of Rockets. The story of Russian immigrant and inventor Samuel Petrukhin's attempts to induct his family into English high society against the backdrop of the Cold War, stars Toby Stephens, Keeley Hawes and Timothy Spall and is Poliakoff's most autobiographical work yet.The first time Selina Thompson used her adult passport it was to get on a cargo ship from Belgium to Ghana. She was 25 and beginning a journey that retraced the route of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle. The resulting piece, salt., won plaudits at the Edinburgh Festival and is now at the Royal Court Theatre. She talks about the impact of the piece and why she’s now handed the piece over to actor Rochelle Rose. More news from the Cannes Film Festival, including the premieres of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, and Asif Kapadia's documentary Diego Maradona. With film critic Jason Solomons. Presenter : Kirsty Lang Producer : D

Rocketman is the new Elton John film musical that charts the singer’s life from his upbringing in Pinner, meeting his long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin, making it big and then struggling with addictions. We speak to the director Dexter Fletcher - who also worked on Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody - about making the film which stars Taron Egerton and was executive-produced by Sir Elton and his husband David Furnish Saltwater is a new novel by Jessica Andrews, a published poet who also runs a literary magazine for under-represented writers. Based on her own life, Saltwater follows the character of Lucy who moves from her working-class family home in Sunderland to university in London and warehouse parties. But her new life is not what she expected. Artists taking risks – and artists putting themselves at risk – is the focus of a forum happening at Tate Modern this weekend. Áine O’Brien of campaigning group Counterpoint Arts and Syrian playwright Abdullah Alkafri discuss the threats to artistic freedom and e

News from the Cannes Film Festival, including the premieres of Elton John biopic Rocketman and Ken Loach's Sorry We Missed You. With film critic Jason Solomons. David Chipperfield pays tribute to fellow architect I.M Pei, famous for his iconic designs such as the Louvre pyramid, who has died aged 102. Scottish crime writer Denise Mina on Conviction, her latest novel whose narrator is obsessed with listening to true crime podcasts. Welsh artist Sean Edwards has an exhibition at the Venice Biennale in which his elderly mother performs a monologue each day, broadcasting live from her flat in Cardiff into a Venice Church. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser

The actor Stephen Graham originally made his mark as the racist skinhead Combo in Shane Meadows’s 2006 film This Is England. The actor and director have teamed up again for a new 4-part Channel 4 drama The Virtues, in which he plays a troubled alcoholic trying to get over the trauma of his childhood. The actor discusses making the show, as well as his recent role as undercover cop John Corbett in Line of Duty. The Unicorn is a theatre devoted to children. Its latest production is Dido, based on Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. Stig Abell investigates how you make a seventeenth-century opera fun for eleven-year-olds, talking to the director, conductor, a singer and two teachers. But what of the target audience? Two young lads tell him what they thought of it. Simon Armitage has been announced as the new Poet Laureate. As he begins his decade long post, he reveals his ambitions for the role and also discusses his new book of poems Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, which brings together his commissioned work

Television dramatist Sally Wainwright has written award-winning crime series such as Happy Valley, heart-warming love stories such as Last Tango in Halifax. The last time she turned her attention to the 19th century, it was to portray the Brontës in To Walk Invisible. Now she’s returned to the Victorian age, this time looking at the life of lesbian landowner Anne Lister. Historical novelist, Philippa Gregory reviews. The idea of the canon in contemporary and modern art is currently being fiercely debated in galleries and museums with many of these institutions now attempting to broaden the canon by including previously overlooked female artists and artists of colour, and challenging the idea of a universal canon by trying to reflect their localities in their collections. Caroline Douglas, Director of the Contemporary Art Society, and Helen Legg, Director of Tate Liverpool discuss the rebalancing of modern and contemporary art collections.In the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing, the name of one of

Mark Billingham, Val McDermid and Doug Johnstone are well-known for their detective stories, which they write alone. But they come together as members of the band Fun Lovin' Crime Writers. They perform live and talk to Stig Abell about their day jobs, the joys of collaborating as a popular beat combo and the connections between these. They stay on as cultural commentators to give their opinions of Robert De Niro's powerful new role - in an ad for bagels, the temporary ban on the export of the copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover that the judge annotated and brought with him to court when he presided at the famous obscenity trial in 1960, and, closer to home, the list of the 100 best crime novels published since 1945 - of which only 28 are by women. The impact Artificial Intelligence will have on our lives is the subject of the Barbican’s major new exhibition AI: More than Human, which also seeks to challenge our preconceptions. Tech expert Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino reviews.Medusa is an ancient myth

Keanu Reeves returns to cinemas in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, reprising his role as the super-assassin. He takes pride in performing most of the action scenes and discusses working with the director Chad Stahelski, himself a former stuntman. Paul Gambaccini remembers the singer-turned-movie-star Doris Day whose death at the age of 97 was announced today. Research recently published in the British Medical Journal reports that regular sexual activity between couples is on the decline. The authors cite 'diversionary stimuli' such as smartphones and Netflix as distractions that could be impeding intimacy. Culture writers Louis Wise and Karen Krizanovich explore whether art can function as an effective aphrodisiac. Presenter Shahidha Bari Producer Jerome Weatherald

On the night of 18th April, 2015 a 90-foot fishing boat packed with migrants sent out a distress signal. It collided with a vessel responding to that call and sank between Libya and the Italian island of Lampedusa. Between 770 and 1,100 people drowned. Now the wreck has been raised and installed at the Arsenale, the historical naval yards in Venice - as an art work. Tim Marlow, director of exhibitions at the Royal Academy, considers the controversy surrounding this, and discusses with John Wilson other works that have drawn his attention at the Biennale. Elizabeth Macneal’s debut novel The Doll Factory, the subject of a bidding war between publishers, is the story of a young woman who finds herself part of the circle around the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The author was also inspired by her fascination with the Victorian taste for collecting. She talks to Front Row about creating a character in charge of her own destiny, about the book’s success - and about her other career, being a potter. At the Venice

Mark Haddon is the author of the phenomenally successful The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. He talks about his first novel in seven years, The Porpoise, in which he takes on the epic tale of Pericles.At this year’s Venice Biennale, the contentious American artist, Jimmie Durham, will be given the prestigious Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement. Art critic Ariella Budick discusses the controversy surrounding the artist whose biography is subject to as much speculation as his art.New discoveries in the tomb of Saexa, an Anglo-Saxon prince, have led archaeologists to dub him the Tutankhamun of Essex. Among the artefacts buried with him are a copper flagon from Syria, beautiful blue glass beakers and a lyre, inlaid with garnets. Sophie Jackson of the Museum of London Archaeology considers what they reveal of the cultural life and taste of people living here in the 580s. Shakespeare’s Globe’s Artistic Director Michelle Terry discusses their new productions of Henry IV parts 1 & 2 and

When Guy Chambers teamed up with Robbie Williams in 1997, they created one of the most successful songwriting partnerships in British pop history. Now Guy has released his debut solo album called Go Gentle into the Light, performing hits such as Angels and Millennium on the piano. Writer Nina Stibbe has been announced as the winner of the 2019 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction for her novel, Reasons to be Cheerful. She discusses the art of comic writing.Even a small amount of creativity can help you cope with modern life - so says new research by BBC Arts and University College London. The BBC Arts Great British Creativity Test surveyed almost 50,000 people to explore links between arts activities and wellbeing. Dr Daisy Fancourt, UCL Senior Research Fellow shares the key findings.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Edwina Pitman

Director Amma Asante on her new film Where Hands Touch, which follows Leyna, an Afro-German girl, living under the increasingly dangerous and racist Nazi regime during World War II. Asante discusses her approach, used in this film and in A United Kingdom and Belle, of shining a light on little known histories often involving black characters to tell us something about the world today. Years and Years is BBC One's new drama series created by Russell T Davies. Set in an imagined near future, it stars Emma Thompson as an outspoken celebrity turned political figure whose controversial opinions divide the nation. Katie Popperwell reviews. Aretha Franklin's legendary 1972 album Amazing Grace saw the singer returning to her soul routes after commercial success. The record went on to be the biggest seller of Franklin's 50 year career. Far less well known is the accompanying concert film directed by Sydney Pollack which captured the recording in raw detail, but was subsequently shelved. Forty-seven years later as the

Among the designs of the leading British-Ghanaian architect Sir David Adjaye OBE are the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, which opened in 2016 in a ceremony led by the then US President Barack Obama, and the planned UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre next to the Palace of Westminster in London.David Adjaye is in Venice ahead of the opening of his Ghana Pavilion for this year's Biennale, and in a rare interview the architect discusses the role of architecture and the importance of anthropology and ethnography in his designs.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald

The Malian singer Rokia Traoré is celebrated for her extraordinary voice, her collaborations with musicians and writers such as Damon Albarn and Toni Morrison, and her efforts to give opportunities to other artists in Mali. These qualities and interests are reflected in her choices as Guest Director of this year’s Brighton Festival. She talks about the work she and others will be performing.In Germany, the far-right party AfD - Alternative fur Deutschland – are using the nineteenth century painting Slave Market by Jean-Leon Gerome in their posters for the upcoming European elections. The French artist is seen as a leading proponent of Orientalism, and this work depicts a nude fair-skinned enslaved woman paraded for sale and examined by Middle Eastern or North African men. One has his fingers in her mouth, as if she were a horse whose teeth he is checking. BBC Correspondent Damien McGuiness and art critic Fisun Guner discuss the use of this provocative work in a political campaign.Granta, the literary magazi

The death of Andrea Levy earlier this year adds a poignancy to the National Theatre's staging of her prizewinning 2004 novel Small Island, the story of the Windrush generation and their reception in Britain. Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff reviews. Screenwriter Craig Mazin on his Sky/HBO drama series Chernobyl, about the nuclear plant disaster of 1986 and the people who sacrificed themselves to save Europe from even greater catastrophe. Carol Ann Duffy’s time as Poet Laureate ended this week but her successor has not yet been named. Tristram Fane Saunders on who is likely to be the next Poet Laureate and why is it taking so long to be announced.Barack and Michelle Obama, who last year launched a production company to make TV and films, have announced their first slate of programmes in partnership with Netflix, including a fashion drama and food programme. Boyd Hilton reports. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser

Ben Lewis talks about his book The Last Leonardo, about the world's most expensive work of art, the painting Salvator Mundi. Authenticated as a Leonardo in 2011, he examines its journey from Leonardo’s workshop in Milan through to the present day and explains why he has doubts about its authenticity.Art critic Waldemar Januszczak and editor of The Art Newspaper Alison Cole assess Leonardo's extraordinary art and legacy, from the Mona Lisa to The Last Supper.One of the UK’s foremost vocal ensembles I Fagiolini talk about and perform live from their new album, Leonardo - Shaping the Invisible, in which they have matched Leonardo da Vinci's artworks with vocal masterworks, illuminating his images through the prism of music. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Edwina Pitman

JRR Tolkien’s literary canon has inspired some of the highest-grossing films ever, now a biopic about his life is being released to cinemas. Tolkien stars Nicholas Hoult as The Lord of the Rings author and looks at his formative years at school and during World War One. But last week the family of Tolkien have issued a rare public statement disavowing the film. Fantasy author and Tolkien fan Samantha Shannon gives her verdict on the film and the disapproval from the Tolkien estate. John Singleton directed Boyz n the Hood when he was 24, becoming the youngest director, and the first African-American to be Oscar nominated. He also worked with rap artists such as Ice Cube, Tupac and Snoop Dogg as well as making the music video to Michael Jackson’s hit Remember the Time which starred Eddy Murphy and Iman. Music journalist Jacqueline Springer considers his legacy.For the first time in its 14 year history, the Afghanistani TV talent competition Afghan Star, has been won by a woman. Journalist Sahar Zand discusses