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Saturday Review

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events, with Tom Sutcliffe and guests

Presenter Tom Sutcliffe and guests offer sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events

Tom Sutcliffe

Saturday Review: The Fault in Our Stars, The Silkworm, Making Stalin Laugh, Making Colour, The Human Factor

The Fault in Our Stars, The Silkworm, Making Stalin Laugh, Making Colour, The Human Factor

21/06/2014

BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Review, The Fault in Our Stars, The Silkworm, Making Stalin Laugh, Making Colour, The Human Factor

Tom Sutcliffe chairs sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events.

The Fault In Our Stars, Robert Galbraith's The Silkworm, David Schneider's new play Making Stalin Laugh, Making Colour at the National Gallery and The Human Factor at the Hayward.

The Fault In Our Stars, starring Shailene Woodley, is the screen adaptation of John Green's best selling young adult novel of the same name about a pair of love struck teenagers both of whom are terminally ill with cancer. Brought together at a cancer support group the pair embark on a pilgrimage to Holland to meet the author of a book on dying. Green himself was a hospital chaplain and the story is based on an actual encounter with a dying 16 year old girl.

Following on from the huge success of The Cuckoo's Calling a second novel from Robert Galbraith - aka JK Rowling. Featuring private investigator Cormoran Strike it merges an old fashioned detective story with Jacobean tragedy, whilst providing insight into literary London, a grisly murder and a page turning plot.

Comedian and actor David Schneider's new play Making Stalin Laugh - at the JW3 Community Centre in London - tells the story of the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre which in the 1920s was one of the most respected in the world. Chagall designed for them, Prokofiev, Stanislavski and Eugene O'Neill all saluted them. By 1952 the surviving members of the troupe had all been purged - executed by Stalin on the same day in August. Making Stalin Laugh tells their story, with at its centre the most celebrated Yiddish actor of his generation, Solomon Mikhoels.

Making Colour at London's National Gallery is the first ever exhibition of its kind in the UK and was developed from the National Gallery's own internationally recognised Scientific Department's work into how artists historically overcame the technical challenges in creating colour. As well as paintings it includes objects such as early textiles, mineral samples and ceramics and shows the huge impact the development of synthetic paint had on major art movements such as Impressionism.

And The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture brings together major works by 25 leading international artists who have fashioned new ways of using the human form in sculpture over the past 25 years. Featuring work from Jeff Koons, Mark Wallinger and Yinka Shonibare, exhibits include two re-imaginings of Edgar Degas's famous Little Dancer Aged Fourteen and in a work by French artist Pierre Huyghe a live beehive adorns a cast in concrete of a beautiful reclining nude woman.

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