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Guests:
Novelist Adam Mars-Jones
Spectator Magazine editor Matthew D’Ancona
Writer and broadcaster Bidisha

Morrissey
22 years after the Smiths went their separate ways, Morrissey is back with his ninth solo album, Years of Refusal. It was produced by the late Jerry Finn, who was also responsible for Morrissey’s 2004 hit You are the Quarry. But on the verge of hitting 50, can Morrissey sustain his lovelorn miserablism into his second half-century?

Years of Refusal is out on Monday on Decca, and Morrissey is touring the UK in May.

England People Very Nice
Nicholas Hytner has said he wants his National Theatre to be part of the national political conversation. The ‘liberal hawk’ playwright Richard Bean’s previous targets have included airheaded aid workers and corrupt MEPs. Now Hytner has let Bean loose on the Olivier stage to deliver his take on immigration: England People Very Nice is a sweeping, big-cast, three-hour tale of four waves of migration into London’s East End, which puts racial stereotypes before its audience with unusual directness.

England People Very Nice at the National Theatre in London is currently booking until 30 April.

The Theatre of the Public Hearing
If the theatre is anxious to be political, how well does politics work as theatre? This week, the Treasury Select Committee took on the bankers who led HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland to disaster. So how well does the highly theatrical format of witnesses appearing before interrogators dramatise public anger? Who played their roles convincingly? And what, if anything, do we have to learn from the spectacle of American Congressional hearings?

The Treasury Select Committee hearings continue at the House of Commons until March.

Three Monkeys
A politician runs someone over, and bribes his driver to take the rap. While he’s in prison, his family’s life falls apart. This Turkish tale of unarticulated grief won its acclaimed director Nuri Bilge Ceylan the Best Director award at Cannes. But did Bidisha, Adam, Matthew and Tom think Ceylan deserved his prize?

Three Monkeys is on release in selected cinemas now, certificate 15.

Unfolding the Aryan Papers
In the early 1990s, the film director Stanley Kubrick was deep in research for Aryan Papers, a movie about the Holocaust. Then Steven Spielberg made Schindler’s List. Kubrick abandoned his project, leaving his lead actress, Johanna ter Steege, mourning her lost stardom. Now the British Film Institute have commissioned Jane and Louise Wilson to make an installation exploring Kubrick’s lost work – and they have finally given ter Steege a version of her starring role.

Unfolding the Aryan Papers is at the BFI Southbank in London until 26 April.
Unfolding the Aryan Papers is also available to view online at the Animate Projects website.
The accompanying season of Stanley Kubrick films continues until 25 March.

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