Front Row

A reimagining of Caryl Churchill’s ground-breaking and celebrated play, Top Girls, opens this week at the Liverpool Everyman which sets the play – about female ambition and success across centuries and cultures - in Merseyside. Playwright Charlotte Keatley and theatre critic Susannah Clapp discuss the play’s themes and its continuing impact forty years after its premiere.

Prince Harry’s book Spare and the ripples it’s created have led to questions about the writing and publication of memoirs. In recent years, there has been a widening of the voices encouraged to write and getting published, but what is the impact on the authors, and should there be a greater duty of care? Agent Rachel Mills and Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love, a memoir about losing her brother, join Front Row to discuss.

The show must go on has long been the mantra of those working in theatre but last August, David Byrne, Artistic Director of New Diorama Theatre, made an astonishing announcement which began with the words, “The end of the show must go on” and went on to state that the theatre would be closing its doors for at least six months to allow time for an artistic reset. As New Diorama Theatre reopens, David joins Front Row to discuss what the resetting has revealed.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Picture: Top Girls – Lauren Lane as Pope Joan – Photographer’s Credit Marc Brenner

Daniel Mays talks to Samira Ahmed about starring as Nathan Detroit in a new immersive production of the musical Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theatre in south London.

Front Row investigates how accessible theatres and gig venues are, not just for audiences but for performers. Reporter Carolyn Atkinson talks to a comedian and a DJ who have struggled with access and asks how venues should be addressing the problem.

And actor Julie Fernandez and producer Sara Johnson discuss a new scheme to train access co-ordinators in film and television. The scheme aims to make the industry more accessible for deaf, disabled and neurodivergent cast and crew.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Sherlock and Dr Who writer Steven Moffat, and Lucy Caldwell, winner of the BBC National Short Story Award, discuss writing short stories inspired by the science of the Large Hadron Collider for a new collection called Collision. The project pairs a team of award-winning authors with Cern physicists to explore some of the discoveries being made, through fiction. From interstellar travel using quantum tunnelling, to first contact with antimatter aliens, to a team of scientists finding themselves being systematically erased from history, these stories explore the dark matters that only physics can offer answers to.

A new documentary called Subject explores the life-altering experience of sharing one’s life on screen, through the participants of five acclaimed documentaries. Samira Ahmed talks to Camilla Hall, one of the film’s directors, about the ethics of documentary making.

Writer Mojisola Adebayo and director Matthew Xia talk about their new play Family Tree, which won the Alfred Fagon Best New Play Award. The play, which opens at the Belgrade Theatre Coventry, explores the extraordinary story of Henrietta Lacks, the African American woman whose cancer cells were taken without her permission or knowledge in 1951 and which are still informing medical science today.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Riley Keough and Sam Claflin star in the 10-part adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel Daisy Jones And The Six, the story of a fictional 70s band loosely inspired by Fleetwood Mac. Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s film Close, about two teenage boys whose close friendship is challenged by their schoolmates, won the Grand Prix at Cannes. Critics Tim Robey and Kate Mossman join Front Row to review both.

Plus Edmund de Waal on late fellow potter Lucie Rie's life and work as a new retrospective opens at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

On St David's Day Front Row is coming from Cardiff with Huw Stephens bringing the latest arts and culture stories of Wales.

Welsh National Opera’s latest production is Blaze of Glory. The librettist Emma Jenkins and composer David Hackbridge Johnson talk to Huw Stephens about their new opera. Set in a Welsh Valleys’ village in the 1950s, it follows the a group of miners who raise spirits following a pit disaster by reforming their male voice choir.

Dawn Bowden, Deputy Minister for Arts and Sports, and Chief Whip in the Welsh Government, discusses cultural policy in Wales.

Gary Owen talks about his new play Romeo and Julie, the story of young lovers in the Cardiff district of Splott. They’re faced with circumstances that threaten to separate them but there the similarity to Shakespeare ends.

And the Barry Male Voice choir, who are involved in the production of Blaze of Glory, perform live in the Front Row studio.

Presenter: Huw Stephens

Tracy-Ann Oberman on playing a female Shylock in the RSC's new 1936 version of The Merchant Of Venice at Watford Palace Theatre.

As the Oldham Coliseum is forced to close at the end of March, reporter Charlotte Green updates the story of the diversion of Arts Council funding from the theatre to the local council.

Actor Michael B Jordan tells Samira about making his directorial debut with Creed III, while reprising the role of boxing champion Adonis Creed in the third sequel to the Rocky franchise.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano tells us about his two new versions of Puccini’s opera, Turandot – a revival on stage at the Royal Opera House, and a new recording with tenor Jonas Kaufman, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and the Orchestra dell’ Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

A year on from the invasion of Ukraine, Luke Jones hears from some of the Ukrainian performers living and working in exile. He joins Hooligan Art Community, a performance group that started in the bomb shelters of Kyiv, as they rehearse for their new show, Bunker Cabaret.

There are two blistering performances on the London stage today: Janet McTeer in Phaedra at the National Theatre and Sophie Okonedo as Medea at Soho Place. The plays' directors, Simon Stone and Dominic Cooke, discuss the hold these stories of two transgressive and tragic women have had over audiences for two and a half millennia, and why they speak to us today.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Reviews of the new immersive show David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) at Lightroom in London and Korean film Broker, with Larushka Ivan Zadeh and Ekow Eshun.

Installation artist Mike Nelson on the art in his new retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London and the challenge of reconstructing such epic work.

Plus AI writing. Neil Clarke, Editor of The American science fiction and fantasy magazine Clarkesworld, on suspending new submissions after being swamped by AI-generated stories, and why AI could be a serious challenge the way we think about literature.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Photo: David Hockney with his work at Lightroom. By Justin Sutcliffe

Nathaniel Martello-White on making his directorial debut with the psychological thriller The Strays, set between a south London estate and an affluent English suburb.

Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s show at FACT in Liverpool, Merseyside Burman Empire, references her MBE for services to Visual Art, awarded last year in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, and her experiences growing up in Bootle as the daughter of Punjabi-Hindu parents. Dawinder Bansal’s Jambo Cinema installation, which explored her life growing up in 1980s Wolverhampton with Indian-Kenyan parents, was one of the big commissions at last year’s Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival in Birmingham. Chila and Dawinder discuss making art that draws upon their South Asian heritage.

Throughout her career, the distinguished writer Janet Malcolm, who died in 2021, was fascinated by photography. She came to prominence through her journalism for the New Yorker including six years as the magazine’s photography critic. Photography was the subject of her first book and it has turned out to be the subject of her final book, a memoir – Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory. Photographer of the Year Craig Easton reviews.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Photo caption: Ashley Madekwe as Neve in The Strays

Hollywood star Michael Douglas talks about his double-Oscar winning movie career, how he’s still learning the craft of acting and about his new film, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, which is in cinemas now.

As the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches, we hear from two artists working in the country under conflict - Oksana Taranenko, director of the opera Kateryna in Odesa and Hobart Earle, Conductor of the Odessa Philharmonic.

William Sargent, the founder of Framestore, the visual effects studio behind Top Gun: Maverick and Sean Clark, the CEO of Aardman, the creators of Wallace and Gromit, join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss their fears for the future of visual effects and animation in the UK.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Image: Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas in the film Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.