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Front Row: Brenda Blethyn; Nitin Sawhney and James Taylor; Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford

Brenda Blethyn; Nitin Sawhney and James Taylor; Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford

28/04/2011

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Brenda Blethyn; Nitin Sawhney and James Taylor; Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford

Mark Lawson talks to actress Brenda Blethyn. Plus Nitin Sawhney and James Taylor.

Mark Lawson talks to Brenda Blethyn about playing a detective in Vera; James Taylor and Nitin Sawhney take on the Royal Albert Hall organ; Macbeth and Cardenio reviewed.

With Mark Lawson. 

Brenda Blethyn stars in Vera, a new television crime series based on the Vera Stanhope novels by Ann Cleeves. She reveals how she was born Brenda Bottle, and reflects on the surprises of working with Mike Leigh. 

Is it a lost Shakespeare play? The Royal Shakespeare Company has chosen Cardenio as one of the first productions conceived for its new theatre. Peter Kemp reviews the new staging of a work attributed to Shakespeare and John Fletcher, along with a new production of Macbeth. 

Composer and musician Nitin Sawhney and jazz organist James Taylor were childhood friends who in 1981 went to buy a cheap electronic keyboard together. Three decades later, they're taking on a grander instrument: Nitin has composed a new work for the 9,999 pipes of the mighty Royal Albert Hall organ, to be performed by James. Mark talks to them both at the organ's keyboard, along with Jasper Hope, director of the Hall.

Producer Allegra McIlroy.

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