Front Row

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 Presenter: Ekene Akalawu

Rufus Wainwright talks to Samira Ahmed about his new album Folkocracy, a collection of reimagined Folk songs. The album includes collaborations with artists including John Legend, Chaka Khan and his sister Martha Wainwright.Thomas Hardiman talks about his new film Medusa Deluxe, a gritty murder mystery set at a hairdressing competition. He explains where his unusual idea came from and why he uses his films to explore obsession, whether with hairdressing or carpet sales. Before Covid, many theatre productions didn’t cast understudies at all but now plays are casting two for one role. The BBC’s Carolyn Atkinson investigates the rise of the understudy. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner

Charles Byrne was an 18th-century “Irish giant” whose skeleton was stolen and put on display against his wishes. 240 years after his death, he is being remembered in a new electro acoustic opera rather than as a museum-piece curiosity. Dawn Kemp of the Hunterian Museum discusses removing the famous skeleton from their collection, and composer, musician, and robotic artist Sarah Angliss tells us about her new opera, Giant, which celebrates Byrne on stage, and is opening the Aldeburgh Festival.The Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell’s last novel “Hamnet” is now playing on stage at the Globe Theatre and won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her latest “The Marriage Portrait” has made it onto the 2023 shortlist, and was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller. Both focus on the lives of women hidden in history behind men of influence. In the next of our series meeting the Women’s Prize finalists, we’ll be finding out what it is about these stories that inspire her, and how it feels to make the shortlist for a second time.It is commonly accepted, including here at Front Row, that creativity is a good thing. But two new books: Samuel. W. Franklin’s The Cult of Creativity and Against Creativity by Oli Mould, challenge that view, arguing that creativity is a recent invention and that the artistic impulse has been co-opted by the capitalist military industrial complex. Both authors discuss their ideas with Tom Sutcliffe.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

Critics Katie Puckrik and Michael Carlson join Front Row to review the exhibition Punk: Rage and Revolution at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery and Soft Touch Arts.The American writer and director Tina Satter talks about her new film Reality, starring Sydney Sweeney. The script is based on the transcript of the FBI interrogation of the whistleblower Reality Winner, who leaked secret documents about Russian interference in the 2016 US election.And Katie Puckrik and Michael Carlson also review a new TV drama series about Watergate starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux, White House Plumbers. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Sarah Johnson

Writer/director Shane Meadows and actor Michael Socha on the new BBC TV adaptation of Benjamin Myers' novel, The Gallows Pole.The Mercury Music Prize-nominated minimal jazz trio GoGo Penguin play tracks from their new album, Everything Is Going To Be OK, live in the studio – and discuss how they alter their instruments to extend their range of sound.As the interests and concerns of the First Nations people rise up the cultural agenda in Australia exemplified by the plan for the National Aboriginal Art Gallery, Ce Benedict, based in Australia and a Senior Producer at ABC Radio National, reports on how that story is resonating in their homeland and in the UK.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Broadway legend Chita Rivera, who made her name playing Anita in the original stage production of West Side Story, talks to Samira Ahmed about the highlights of her seven decade career, ahead of the publication of her memoir.Arts consultant Amanda Parker, formerly editor of Arts Professional magazine and now of the Forward Institute, and theatre director Tom Morris, who until recently ran Bristol Old Vic, discuss new approaches to funding the arts.Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist: Priscilla Morris on her nominated debut novel Black ButterfliesPresenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

The Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948 from Jamaica. Front Row marks the artistic and cultural contribution of a generation of people from the Caribbean, now characterised as the Windrush Generation, who arrived then, soon before or in the years following. Samira talks to the Jamaican-born actor and director Anton Phillips about his career, including starring in the cult classic Space 1999 and directing James Baldwin's The Amen Corner in a landmark production on the London stage. Andrea Levy's highly acclaimed 2004 novel Small Island tells the story of four people caught up in the Caribbean migration story and has been adapted for radio, TV and stage. The playwright Patricia Cumper, poet and writer Hannah Lowe and novelist Louise Hare discuss the impact of the book on them and their own writing. The composer Shirley J Thompson OBE talks about how her Jamaican heritage shaped her music making and about composing for the Coronation. And Kevin LeGendre explains the impact of the arrival of calypso and steel pan on the musical life of the nation.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Sarah Johnson

The Jhalak Prize is an annual literary prize for British or British-Resident writers of colour, established in 2016. Previous winners include Reni Eddo-Lodge and Johny Pitts. Tom speaks to the winners of this year’s Jhalak Prize and Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize, announced at the British Library this evening.This week Tate Britain revealed a complete rehang of its free collection displays - the first in ten years. There are over 800 works by over 350 artists, featuring much-loved favourites and recent discoveries, including 70 works which entered the collection in the past 5 years. The rehang intends to reflect revolutionary changes in art, culture and society, and present new work by some of Britain’s most exciting contemporary artists. Associate arts editor of The Times, Alice Jones, and TV and film critic Amon Warmann give their view.Plus The Little Mermaid. In their 100th year, Disney have reworked their 1989 Oscar winning animated musical classic into a live action version, starring Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King and Melissa McCarthy. Alice and Amon review.And the Cannes Film Festival - critic Jason Solomons offers his round up of this year's films.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Corinna Jones

Patriots, Peter Morgan’s play set in Russia in 1991, traces the rise and fall of Boris Berezovsky, who helped Vladimir Putin take power. As Patriots transfers to the West End, Allan Little – who as the BBC’s Moscow correspondent met Berezovsky – talks to the director Rupert Goold and Will Keen, winner of an Olivier Award for his performance as Vladimir Putin. The V&A Photography Centre opens this week, the largest suite of galleries in the UK dedicated to a permanent photography collection. Allan is joined by curator Marta Weiss and AI deep fake photographer Jake Elwes.DJ Taylor won the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Biography for his first telling of George Orwell’s life. He reveals why, twenty years later, he’s returned to the subject with the publication of Orwell: The New Life. Presenter: Allan Little Producer: Timothy Prosser