Front Row Folgen

In Theatr Clywd’s new production of William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies, the group of schoolboys stranded on a remote island have all been reimagined as girls. Critic Gary Raymond reviews.Forty playwrights and actors have accused National Theatre Wales of favouring English artists and companies over Welsh ones. In an open letter on the Wales Arts Review website, the Welsh artists also claim that the company is staging too few productions and say that non-Welsh artists and companies should only be engaged to support Welsh or Wales-based artists. Gary Raymond, editor of the Wales Arts Review, and Kully Thiarai, Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales, discuss the issues.From John Cage’s controversial composition 4’33”, a three-act movement where no sound is made, to the Rothko Chapel in Texas, a place for contemplation housing 14 of the artist’s large, dark paintings, silence has had a significant place in culture. Actor and director Simon McBurney, conductor Jeremy Summerly, and art critic Charlotte Mullins consider the use and importance of silence in theatre, music and art.Berta Isla is the latest novel by Javier Marías, Spain's most celebrated contemporary writer. Critic Alex Clark explains its place in the context of the author's body of work.Presenter: Janina Ramirez Producer: Hannah Robins

Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie - The Goodies - join Samira to look back at their 1970s cult comedy series. As a complete box set of every episode is released, they reflect on their comedy writing that tackled police brutality, redefined comedy music and introduced television audiences to the little-known Lancastrian martial-art Ecky Thump. This week marks the centenary of the first performance of Gustav Holst's hugely popular orchestral suite The Planets. Composer and pianist David Owen Norris explains our enduring fascination with this work, and composer Samuel Bordoli talks about about his Planets 2018 project which commissioned eight composers to write new work inspired by current planetary science.Grime artist, poet and playwright Debris Stevenson explains how her coming-of-age theatre piece, Poet in Da Corner, sets the story of her own life growing up in a Mormon family in East London to the tracks of Dizzee Rascal’s seminal album Boy in Da Corner.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Edwina Pitman

Oceania at the Royal Academy is the first ever major exhibition in the UK of art from the Pacific. It is very ambitious, showing 200 works from across that vast ocean, from Hawaii to New Zealand, New Guinea to Easter Island. It spans time, too, the earliest piece being about 500 years old, the latest completed last year. A Hawaiian writer, Vanessa Lee Miller, and a western maritime historian, Robert Blyth, assess the exhibition.As the former Britpop band Suede release their eighth studio album, songwriter and lead singer Brett Anderson and bassist Mat Osman discuss The Blue Hour and their exploration of new sounds, including Brett’s own field recordings and the spoken word, as well as working with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.How do crime writers gain knowledge of the police to inform their writing? John speaks to Peter James, author of the Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series of novels, and to crime writer Clare Mackintosh, who worked in the police force for 12 years before becoming an author.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May