Front Row

As a trio, Bananarama remain one of the UK's most successful all-female groups. After four hit albums, founder member Siobhan Fahey left in 1988, with remaining members Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward choosing to keep the group going for the next three decades. They join John Wilson to discuss why now was the right time to reform for a comeback tour.The Wellcome Book Prize celebrates the best new books that engage with an aspect of medicine, health or illness, and can be fiction or non-fiction. As the winner is announced on tonight's Front Row, Val McDermid, chair of judges, joins John Wilson from the ceremony.On the first day that he gets access to the London gallery for his new exhibition Incoming, Scottish artist David Mach shares his thoughts on the challenge of creating a new work in situ from scratch, using 20 tonnes of newspaper and a second-hand Jeep. His two-week preparations will be streamed live online.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald.

In her new film, Their Finest, Gemma Arterton plays a screenwriter during World War II whose job it is to write women's dialogue - referred to as "the slop" by her male colleagues - for morale boosting films for the home front. Gemma discusses the role and her own experiences of being a woman in the film industry.In January last year, curator Sarah Gavanta came on to Front Row to talk about her exhibition for Historic England called Out There: Our Post-War Public Art. It was an exploration of the boom in public art created by the likes of Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Elizabeth Frink between 1945 and 1985. But it was also a call to arms to trace the missing sculptures of the period. Sarah returns to the programme to tell us how one of those lost pieces, The Sunbathers by Peter Laszlo Peri, has been discovered in a hotel garden.The new Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler broke box office records last year, exceeding $9 million on the first day tickets went on sale. Theatre critic Matt Wolf reviews Midler's performance - her first in a musical for 50 years - and discusses the big Broadway contenders vying for Tony awards this season. Martin Parr is known for his social documentary photographs - everything from the new BBC One idents to his earliest work documenting the rural farming communities of Yorkshire. As the Sony World Photography Awards acknowledge him for his Outstanding Contribution to Photography, he shows us around his exhibition at Somerset House in London and looks back over his work and influences.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Rachel Simpson.

In 1978 Harold Pinter sent Joan Bakewell a copy of his new play Betrayal. Upon reading it she discovered that it was based with vivid accuracy on an affair they'd had years earlier and which had remained a secret. Shocked and bewildered she wrote her own play in response. Keeping In Touch has been hidden away ever since, but is now being broadcast on Radio 4, reworked. Joan Bakewell talks to Kirsty about the play, Betrayal and her changing relationship with both.Yesterday Emma Rice, the Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, posted an open letter on the theatre's own website addressed to the future Artistic Director. The post is being advertised after Emma Rice announced her departure last October - a decision which was apparently sparked by her use of artificial lights and sound. The open letter is just the latest in an ongoing saga that's been evolving off-stage at the theatre so, with the Bard's birthday just days away, literary critic Matt Thorne helps us to untangle a drama that Shakespeare himself might have been proud of.David Pickard took up his role as Director of the BBC Proms last year. He joins Kirsty to announce highlights of this year's season, including the first Front Row commission, and to discuss the intricacies of putting on the world's largest classical music festival.New film The Zookeeper's Wife is a based on a true story of Antonina Żabińska and her husband Jan who ran the Warsaw Zoo and who during the Nazi occupation helped save hundreds of people and animals. The film stars Jessica Chastain and is directed by Niki Caro. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews.

The young American artist Awol Erizku was the man responsible for the photograph of Beyoncé as she announced she was pregnant with twins back in February. It became Instagram's most-liked image ever. As he prepares to open Make America Great Again, his first solo show in Europe, he discusses the political nature of his work and that famous photo.The Word-Hoard is an exhibition at Wordsworth House in Cumbria celebrating the natural world and the words we once used to describe it. It is curated by Robert Macfarlane, writer, walker, Cambridge don and author of the bestselling book Landmarks. He explains why it's important not to forget that clinkerbells, dagglers and ickles are all another way of naming icicles. ITV's latest drama Little Boy Blue focuses on the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool, in 2007. Mad about Everton, he was shot dead as he innocently walked home from football practice. The four-part series explores the family's ordeal, the community response and how Rhys's murderer was brought to justice. Broadcaster and journalist Shelagh Fogarty, who went to school in Croxteth, close to where Rhys died, reviews the drama.At the beginning of the year, the Liverpool Everyman resurrected its repertory company for the first time in 25 years. Front Row paid a visit to the new company at the start of their rehearsals in January. Three months on, and two productions opened, Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz discusses the challenges of the new repertory project.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Angie Nehring.

Samira Ahmed talks to the violinist Kyung Wha Chung, who after five years recovering from a finger injury is now performing the complete Bach Partitas and Sonatas. Murray Lachlan Young, the first poet to receive a million pound contract from EMI, discusses his collection How Freakin' Zeitgeist Are You?Hisham Matar, who recently won the Pulitzer Prize, and Briony Hanson review the Egyptian film Clash, which is set entirely in a police truck in Cairo in 2013.Michael Pennington pays tribute to the late theatre director Michael Bogdanov, who founded the English Shakespeare Company.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Warren Beatty has written, directs and stars in Rules Don't Apply, his film about the billionaire film producer, businessman and aviator, Howard Hughes. Writers Karen Krizanovich and Michael Carlson review.Nigerian-born poet Inua Ellams discusses and performs from his new collection #Afterhours, in which he responds to other poets and their poetry.Writer Stella Duffy reviews the new Channel 4 drama Born to Kill, from the producers of Line of Duty, starring Romola Garai, Daniel Mays and young actors Jack Rowan and Lara Peake.Music writer and former A&R man Ben Wardle strokes his stubbly chin and ponders his long-lasting love affair with that classic music genre - pop.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Kirsty Lang talks to the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, who turns 80 this summer. The Old Vic's production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Joshua McGuire, will be broadcast live into cinemas across the UK on Thursday 20 April. Travesties, starring Tom Hollander and Freddie Fox, is on in the West End until the end of the month. Tom Stoppard talks about fleeing Czechoslovakia in 1939, his fascination with word play, and his secret role as a script doctor in Hollywood. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser.

As councils across the UK struggle to meet the pressure on their budgets, art organisations have had to take their share of cuts. So how are they bringing their creative minds to the issue? The mac birmingham, an arts centre with close links to the local community, has had a 70% cut to its council funding. Its chief executive and artistic director, Deborah Kermode, is joined by actor and mac alumni Adrian Lester to discuss the issue.Actress and writer Frog Stone discusses her new comedy Bucket, in which she stars alongside Miriam Margolyes. Exploring the relationship between a free spirited mother and her reserved daughter from a proudly female viewpoint, Frog Stone explains why she wanted to explore the minutiae of female relationships. Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel, New York 2140, imagines the city 40 years after it has been completely flooded, when every street is a canal, every skyscraper an island. The bestselling sci-fi author, whose works include the Mars trilogy, discusses with Samira his fascination with environmental issues and exploring alternative futures. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Jack Soper.

Jim Broadbent stars as an elderly divorcee who receives a letter that unlocks memories of a relationship he had back in the 1960s. He and director Ritesh Batra describe how they've reinterpreted Julian Barnes' novel The Sense of an Ending for film.50 years ago this week Marvin Gaye finished recording a track that would go on to become one of the most iconic love songs ever written. To mark the moment, music journalist Kevin Le Gendre records his own tribute to I Heard It Through the Grapevine.Novelist Matt Johnson started writing as part of his treatment for PTSD after a career in the army and police. Author Johana Gustawsson tackled the horror of her grandfather's deportation to a Second World War concentration camp, to form a family bond that wasn't possible during his lifetime. They discuss how writing has helped them to process difficult life experiences. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Angie Nehring.

Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins has had seven Number One albums and sung around the world to huge audiences, but is a self-described 'newbie' to acting. Making her stage debut in the English National Opera's Carousel, she talks to John about her love of Rodgers and Hammerstein, learning an American accent and her dressing-room nerves.Netflix has replaced its users' star ratings with a simple thumbs up or down because, they say, the five-star system had begun to feel antiquated. Caroline Frost, Huffington Post UK's Entertainment Editor, and Sarah Crompton, Chief Theatre critic for WhatOnStage and former Arts editor of The Telegraph, discuss the pros and cons of star ratings. In April 2015, an underground safe deposit facility in London's Hatton Garden was burgled. Estimates for the amount stolen range from £25m to £200m, but the heist became as notorious for the gang of ex-criminals in their 60s and 70s who carried it off, as it did for the theft itself. John Wilson visits the vault where the burglary took place to talk to the stars of a new film about the story - Larry Lamb, who plays the group's ringleader, and Phil Daniels who plays the youngest criminal of the group. As Colson Whitehead's novel The Underground Railroad wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction we talk to literary critic Alex Clark about the win.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Ella-mai Robey.