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Front Row: Byzantium; Lucy Kirkwood; Audrey Niffenegger; Nicholas Hytner's Cultural Exchange

Byzantium; Lucy Kirkwood; Audrey Niffenegger; Nicholas Hytner's Cultural Exchange

28/05/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Byzantium; Lucy Kirkwood; Audrey Niffenegger; Nicholas Hytner's Cultural Exchange

Mark Lawson reviews Neil Jordan's vampire film Byzantium, which stars Saoirse Ronan.

Mark Lawson reviews vampire film Byzantium, plus Lucy Kirkwood on her play Chimerica, Audrey Niffenegger on working with the Royal Ballet, and Nicholas Hytner's Cultural Exchange.

With Mark Lawson.

Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace) and Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) play mother and daughter in Neil Jordan's vampire film Byzantium. After setting up home in a run-down seaside guest house, schoolgirl Eleanor (Ronan) confides to a friend that she survives on human blood. Natalie Haynes reviews.

Lucy Kirkwood's new play Chimerica opens in Beijing in 1989. As the tanks roll into Tiananmen Square, an American photographer captures a piece of history - which comes back to haunt him as he works on the U S presidential elections in New York 2012. Lucy Kirkwood and director Lyndsey Turner talk to Mark about working together on the play.

Novelist Audrey Niffenegger, who wrote the best-seller The Time Traveller's Wife, has now collaborated with the Royal Ballet on Raven Girl. Based on a fairy tale written by Niffenegger, Raven Girl tells the story of a girl who wants to fly. Audrey Niffenegger reflects on how the creative partnership worked.

For the Cultural Exchange, in which leading creative minds share a cultural passion, Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre, nominates Mozart's opera, The Marriage of Figaro.



Producer Nicki Paxman.

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