Front Row Folgen

As Shirley MacLaine releases a new film about a woman curating her obituary, she reflects on her long career in Hollywood, including working with Alfred Hitchcock, being the only female member of the Rat Pack and starring in Downton Abbey alongside Maggie Smith.As the Bolshoi Ballet cancels the eagerly awaited adaptation about Nureyev, ballet critic Ismene Brown discusses what might have caused this to come about.For our Queer Icons series, trans rights activist and journalist Paris Lees chooses Neil Jordan's 1992 film The Crying Game, about an IRA man's relationship with a British soldier's lover. The baritone and composer Roderick Williams talks about his upcoming performances at the Cheltenham Music Festival and at the Proms where a world premiere of his new BBC commission, inspired by the text of a well-known aria from Mozart's Don Giovanni, will be performed.

Sarah Hall's short story Mrs Fox won her the BBC National Short Story Award. Now it forms part of her new collection of short stories, Madame Zero, and she talks to John Wilson about depicting extraordinary transformations and where human behaviour meets the animal.For our Queer Icons series, actor Sir Antony Sher chooses the play and film Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein, which tells the story of a New York drag queen's search for love and a family. As Fatherland, a play exploring relationships between fathers and sons, premieres at the Manchester International Festival, Front Row invites filmmaker Josh Appignanesi and Jeremy Davies of the Fatherhood Institute to discuss contemporary portrayals of fatherhood.And as world leaders at G20 settle down to a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony conducted by Kent Nagano in Hamburg tonight, Tom Service talks about what he thinks is the most dangerous piece of music ever composed.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson.

The Royal Shakespeare Company production of Queen Anne has opened at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket. Set in the early 18th century, the play charts the intimate and increasingly fraught relationship between the childless and insecure queen and her closest confidante Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Romola Garai who plays Sarah Churchill and writer Helen Edmundson discuss this often overlooked British monarch. For our Queer Icons series, the Oscar-winning writer of Moonlight, Tarell Alvin McCraney, champions the film Paris is Burning, about drag houses, drag balls and fabulousness in 1980s New York. Queer Icons is Front Row's celebration of LGBTQ culture, to mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality. The philanthropist Lloyd Dorfman today announced a major donation to the Royal Academy of Arts in London with a view to transforming the future of architecture at the institution. Architecture critic Hugh Pearman assess the significance of his contribution.The outgoing Poet Laureate of Jamaica, Mervyn Morris, was on Front Row recently. Today Samira meets his successor, Lorna Goodison, the first female to hold that post. She explains her role as 'praise-singer to the nation'. Her Collected Poems has just been published and from this monumental book she reads work that expresses her admiration for the Jamaican people, their language and her love of the landscape of the island. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Edwina Pitman.