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Mad Musicals, Eric Whitacre, Women's Prize - Laline Paull

New musicals with unlikely subjects. Composer Eric Whitacre on choral music and his album with ensemble Voces8. Women's Prize For Fiction - author Laline Paull on her novel, Pod.

Surprising musicals: new musicals are packing in audiences - and some with quite unlikely subjects. Whilst the classic Broadway musical, like 42nd Street, Guys and Dolls, and Oklahoma!, remain as popular as ever, there鈥檚 now a musical based on Bake Off, and the plot of Operation Mincemeat is itself a plot - to hoodwink the Nazis with a corpse in disguise. Critic David Benedict, Natasha Hodgson, co-writer of Operation Mincemeat, and Matthew Iliffe, Assistant Director of Assassins, discuss what鈥檚 happening with the musical.

Eric Whitacre is one of the world鈥檚 most popular living composers. He specialises in choral music and is a virtual choir pioneer, uniting thousands of singers all over the globe. He talks to Samira Ahmed about Home, his new album with acclaimed vocal ensemble Voces8.

Plus, the Women鈥檚 Prize For Fiction. In the last of our interviews from authors on the shortlist, we speak to Laline Paull - whose novel Pod explores sealife in the Indian Ocean, with themes of war and migration under the shadow of climate change.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Julian May

Available now

42 minutes

Broadcast

  • Mon 12 Jun 2023 19:15

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