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18/09/2010

Tom Sutcliffe and guests review the week's cultural highlights including Noel Coward's play Design for Living opening at the Old Vic in London.

Tom Sutcliffe and guests writer Miranda Sawyer, critic John Mullan and academic and critic Maria Delgado review the week's cultural highlights including Design for Living.

Initially banned in the UK, Noel Coward's play Design for Living is being revived at the Old Vic in London and stars Andrew Scott as Leo, Lisa Dillon as Gilda and Tom Burke as Otto. Set in 1930s bohemian Paris and the height of Manhattan society - the play had its origins in a real three-sided friendship between Coward, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

This week's book is Charles Yu's How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, about a time machine repairman who accidentally shoots his future self, thereby becoming trapped in a perpetual time loop. In 2007 Charles Yu was nominated by the National Book Foundation as one of its '5 Under 35' writers to watch out for.

Bandits, Wilderness and Magic, the first major Rosa exhibition since 1973 is now open at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. One of the boldest and most powerfully inventive artists and personalities of the Italian 17th century, Salvator Rosa was a rebel, a libertine and often in very real danger from the Inquisition.

Debra Grahnik's film, Winter's Bone, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival this year, stars Jennifer Lawrence as Ree and Garret Dillahunt as Sherrif Baskin. Set in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, it tells the story of a young woman struggling to keep the family home after her father - a crystal meth dealer - mysteriously disappears.

And Julian Fellowes, Oscar-winning scriptwriter of Gosford Park, pens another period drama set in a country house - Downton Abbey, the eponymous title of ITV1's new Sunday night drama.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

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45 minutes

Last on

Sat 18 Sep 2010 19:15

Broadcast

  • Sat 18 Sep 2010 19:15

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