Front Row

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 10 years, won many plaudits for her voice that’s been described as distinctive and unforgettable. She discusses taking on the title role in a production of Verdi’s Luisa Miller at ENO – the first time the opera, dating from the middle of Verdi’s career, has been performed at the Coliseum.

Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights is a 19th century classic with its tempestuous love story between spirited Catherine Earnshaw and brooding Heathcliff becoming a shorthand for obsessive passion. Conventionally, it’s been seen as book for girls but that hasn’t deterred playwrights Andrew Sheridan and Ben Lewis who join Stig to discuss their respective new stage adaptations of Brontë’s gothic tale.

Presenter Stig Abell

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 Festival was launched in Leicester. We talk to the UK's youngest comedy double-act, Samson and Mabel, and their father Howard Read.

We hear about the school that has just won the title "Funniest School in Leicestershire", talking to Mayflower Primary School Deputy Head, Hannah Boydon.

Plus Sam Hewitt from Leicester band Easy Life. Championed by BBC Introducing, Easy Life recently came second in the BBC Sound of 2020 poll, and tonight are up for three prizes at the NME Awards, including Best New Act in the World.

Presenter: Geeta Pendse

Main image: Eshaan Akbar

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 speaks about how, in the 1990s, he came to appreciate his own Jewishness and how, now in his 80s, he came to write what might be his last play, about a family whose tragic story parallels that of his own.

After the unprecedented success of South Korean film Parasite, which was the first foreign language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday, Hyun Jin Cho, film curator at the Korean Cultural Centre, offers a guide for fans of the film of what to watch next.

Oscar-winning film director Sir Steve McQueen discusses the first survey of his art in the UK for over 20 years. The show at Tate Modern sees the Turner Prize-winning artist revisit works which include film, photography and sculpture, that he’s created in the last two decades.

Presenter: John Wilson

Image: Tom Stoppard

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 the aftermath of the Holocaust. Talking to John Wilson in the theatre, Stoppard speaks about how, in the 1990s, he came to appreciate his own Jewishness and how now, in his 80s, he came to write what might be his last play, about a family whose tragic story parallels that of his own.

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 and design that evoked far-off exotic places like New York and Paris.

Britain rightly celebrates its part in the abolition of slavery but what many people in this country are unaware of is the compensation agreed by the British government in 1833 to pay slave-owners to release their slaves. The cost amounted to 40% of the nation’s budget and the British tax payer was still paying off this debt in the second decade of the 21st century. The wrangling inside and activism outside parliament that led to abolition is at the heart of a new play, The Whip, by Juliet Gilkes Romero which premieres this week at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. Juliet joins Samira to discuss her play which questions the morality of that long-hidden debt.

In a new BBC4 documentary Meet the Family, dierector Catherine Bray explores how families have been portrayed in cinema. Why have families in film often been overlooked in favour of romances, bromances, buddy movies etc. From Mommie Dearest to Back to the Future, she shows how filmmakers have approached the challenge of depicting the most universal relationship of all. And Catherine also discusses the biggest winners from last night’s Oscars.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main image: New Brighton and Wallasey, Scott, 1923-47 © National Railway

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 American artists from Alabama and the surrounding southern states, made mainly during the Civil Rights movement of the '50s and '60s. Art critic Asana Greenstreet reviews the show, which is at Turner Contemporary in Margate and includes many works not seen before in the UK.

This week Edward Kamau Brathwaite, the great poet of the Caribbean, died. Brathwaite realised the potential of West Indian vernacular, the beauty of its rhythms and vocabulary, as the language to speak of the Caribbean experience – surf, hurricanes, rum and calypso, the memory of Africa and the history of slavery. The poet Fred D’Aguiar pays tribute.

Following the announcement of the death of the writer, academic and cultural critic George Steiner, the writer Robert McCrum - his editor at the Observer newspaper, and the publishing house Faber & Faber – pays tribute to Steiner’s life, work and his legacy as a public intellectual.

Presenter Chrystal Genesis

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 debate over the last fortnight. One of the 2020s' most hotly-anticipated releases, its white author Jeanine Cummins has been accused of exploitation, pedalling clichés and being culturally ‘tone deaf’ to the plight of the lives of Mexican migrants which the book attempts to explore. Ignacio Sanchez Prado, Professor of Latin American Culture, and Telegraph book critic Jake Kerridge, explore the issues.

Daniel Kehlmann, author of the global bestseller Measuring the World, speaks to Samira about his new historical epic Tyll, about a wandering performer and court jester who lives through the Thirty Years War.

Presenter Samira Ahmed

Main image: Kirk Douglas

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 play a role in what's risky?

To discuss and reveal the list our panel are: artist and activist, Scottee, film and TV critic and columnist Ellen E. Jones, founder of Wakey and author of Outspoken Deborah Coughlin, author and cultural commentator Will Self and presenter of Saturday Review Tom Sutcliffe.

They'll join Stig in the Radio Theatre for a live show in front of an audience in a special extended programme.

Presenter Stig Abell

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 artists working in different forms about their greatest career risks. Tonight we speak to Jasmine Lee-Jones, the 20-year-old playwright of Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner which was produced at the Royal Court last year. She considers the risk of discussing divisive topics such as cultural appropriation and colourism - prejudice against people of darker skin tone by those of the same ethnicity - in her play.

Eimear McBride, whose experimental debut A Girl is a Half-formed Thing was a literary sensation, she tells Samira Ahmed about her new novel Strange Hotel, about a woman reflecting on her life whilst moving from one hotel room to another.

Art critic Richard Cork reports on the restoration of two paintings known as the Petworth Beauties. The portraits of two ladies from Queen Anne’s court were shortened 200 years ago by folding back part of the paintings showing their lower legs to make more space on the wall at Petworth House in Sussex. The paintings are now on show, at full length, as part of British Baroque at Tate Britain.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main image: Parasite

Tom Hanks talks about his new film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, which is based on the true story of the popular American children's TV presenter Fred Rogers. For more than three decades Fred Rogers presented Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood , imparting words of wisdom tenderly, without condescension or skirting around difficult subjects, to very young viewers. This film charts the relationship between Rogers and Lloyd Vogel, a cynical investigative journliast looking to dig up and dish the dirt where there is none.

Prescriptive funders, cautious gatekeepers, social media scrutiny, cancel culture – are we living in an especially risky moment for artists? As part of Front Row’s Risk Season John is joined by playwright Roy Williams, critic Louis Wise and editor of Arts Professional Magazine Amanda Parker to consider how attitudes towards creative risk have changed over the past 20 years. How have the arrival of the internet, more than a decade of austerity and the increasing imperative to represent marginalised voices impacted the choices artists can make?

The Brexit negotiations may have inspired endless newspaper articles and documentaries but in Northern Ireland, choreographer Eileen McClory decided that she wanted to reflect on the negotiations with a new contemporary dance. The result – Brink – features two dancers on a small 1.5 metres high table. Eileen discusses why this non-verbal artform was the perfect medium for that most verbose of subjects – Brexit.

Presenter: John Wilson