Front Row

Oscar-nominated Elliot Page, best known as star of comedy drama Juno, on coming out as gay and as a trans man, all in the glare of the Hollywood spotlight - and sharing this now in his new memoir, Pageboy.

Marking Jewish history. With proposals for a Holocaust Memorial in London, and the closure of the Jewish Museum building, historian Sir Simon Schama, and Aviva Dautch, poet and Executive Director at Jewish Renaissance, discuss what recent developments mean for Jewish culture.

The Wicker Man. As the cult horror film turns 50, Scottish folk musician Alasdair Roberts and ex-Pogues hurdy gurdy player Jem Finer celebrate with music, live in the Front Row studio.

Plus, writer on architecture Gillian Darley appreciates the work of the late Sir Michael Hopkins.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

This programme has been edited since broadcast

Tom is joined by reviewers Boyd Hilton and Susannah Clapp who look at Dear England, a new play by James Graham at the National Theatre which examines the changes in England’s football since Gareth Southgate became manager. And the National Portrait Gallery reopens today having had the most extensive refurbishment since 1896, including a redisplay, a new entrance and public spaces.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Front Row hears from the winner of this year’s Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing, which is awarded for a book for children or young people. Manon Steffan Ros has won for her novel The Blue Book of Nebo, the first time the prize has been awarded to a book in translation. Originally written in Welsh, it explores Welsh identity and culture.

There are plans for eight new arenas across the UK, including ones in Cardiff, Bristol, Gateshead and Dundee. But does the UK really need more arenas when smaller, grassroots music venues are said to be struggling, closing at the rate of one per week? Mark Davyd, CEO of the Music Venue Trust, and Tom Lynch of ASM Global, who run arenas all over the world, discuss.

Steven Rainey reports from the MAC, the Metropolitan Arts Centre, in Belfast, which has been shortlisted for this year’s Art Fund Museum of the Year. The museum’s chief executive Anne McReynolds and creative director Hugh Mulholland discuss how the venue has thrived as a creative hub in a Belfast looking to the future after the Troubles.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

The Beatles at Stowe School: Front Row made the news with the discovery of the earliest recording of a concert by The Beatles in this country, at Stowe School in April 1963. Today Samira brings news of a new home for that recording, one where anyone interested will be able to hear it. And, remarkably, another Beatles recording, made that day, has surfaced too.

Plus Maggi Hambling discusses her new exhibition, Origins, which has just opened at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury in Suffolk. Like Gainsborough, Maggi Hambling was born in Sudbury and these works reflect on her early life as an artist and the influence of her parents and lifelong friends on her career.

And Nick Drake. Today would have been the musician’s 75th birthday. He died aged 26, before he found worldwide fame and admiration. His sister Gabrielle Drake and biographer Richard Morton Jack join Samira to remember his life and music.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Front Row plays tribute to Oscar winning actor Glenda Jackson, who has died aged 87. Theatre critic Sarah Crompton remembers the power of her stage performances, and Aisling Walsh discusses directing her in her TV drama Elizabeth is Missing.

Choreographer Wayne McGregor talks about his new ballet, Untitled 2023, which was inspired by the works of Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera.

And Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics Erica Wagner and Isabel Stevens to review some of the week’s cultural highlights, including the new series of dystopian TV drama Black Mirror and the new novel from Lorrie Moore, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Allan Little visits the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, which re-opened last year after a £68 million transformation and is now a finalist for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2023. He talks to Director Duncan Dornan and Caroline Currie, Learning and Access curator.

Ahead of their performance at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney which gets underway on Friday we have a live performance from members of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Accordion Ensemble whose theatrical performances breathe new life into existing repertoire from tango to classical. We hear from one the players who'll be performing in the ensemble and in a number of other concerts throughout the festival; BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Ryan Corbett and Serbian born accordion professor at the RCS, Djordji Gajic who'll also perform with Ryan a duet of Puccini's Crisantemi.

The winner of the Women's Prize is announced tonight. We hear live from the winner direct from the ceremony.

Jamie Chambers founded The Folk Film Gathering in 2015. He explains what that is to Allan Little and introduces the focus this year on Ukrainian folk filmmaking. There are also documentaries about second sight in the Hebrides, and rarely screened Scottish classics from the 1970s. Each screening is preceded with live music and storytelling.

Presenter: Allan Little

Author and former data scientist, Cecilia Rabess joins Samira Ahmed to discuss her debut novel, Everything’s Fine, which explores the unlikely and complicated relationship between a liberal black woman working in the world of investment banking and her conservative white male colleague, during the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Following yesterday’s announcement that the Epstein Theatre in Liverpool is to close by the end of the month, Front Row takes a close look at the cost for arts organisations of maintaining infrastructure and cultural heritage sites across the UK. Joining Samira to discuss this are: architecture correspondent for The Times, Jonathan Morrison; Gillian Miller, CEO of Liverpool’s Royal Court, who reflects on the challenges of maintaining and modernising that grade II listed art deco theatre; and CEO of the Southbank Centre in London, Elaine Bedell, who thinks it’s time for new era of regeneration of the arts.

Pretty Red Dress, which captured a lot of attention when first shown at the BFI London Film Festival last year, is the debut feature film of screenwriter and director Dionne Edwards. She joins Front Row to talk about how the eponymous red dress becomes a way for the black family members, at the heart of the film, to define and redefine themselves.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

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 of climate change.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

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 admired by many. Now Dave has adapted the film for the stage. It opened at Northern Stage in Newcastle and begins a nationwide tour next week. He talks to Nick Ahad retelling the story of the film in a new way.

Presenter: Nick Ahad