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Samira Ahmed

Mark Eccleston

Austin Pendleton

Moira Jeffrey

Natasha Solomons

Ella-mai Robey

Front Row: Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy, Orson Welles play, The art of Liotard, UK song map

Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy, Orson Welles play, The art of Liotard, UK song map

03/07/2015

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy, Orson Welles play, The art of Liotard, UK song map

Reviews of Love and Mercy and the Liotard exhibition, plus the UK song map.

A review of the Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy, Austin Pendleton in Orson's Shadow, the Jean-Etienne Liotard exhibition reviewed, and Natasha Solomons and the UK song map.

With Samira Ahmed.

Love and Mercy is a biopic of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. It follows Wilson through the 60s, at the height of his fame, and the 80s, when he suffered a nervous breakdown and was in the care of controversial therapist Dr Eugene Landy. Mark Eccleston gives his verdict on the film and discusses the challenges actor's face when playing rock stars.

The play Orson's Shadow fictionalises the details of a reported clash of egos between Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier during the rehearsals of a theatrical production of Ionesco's Rhinoceros in 1960, which also starred Joan Plowright. The play was to be Orson Welles' last work as a theatre director, and coincided with the breakdown of Olivier's marriage to Vivienne Leigh. Playwright Austin Pendleton discusses how working with Orson Welles on the film Catch 22 inspired his portrayal of him.

Jean-Étienne Liotard was an artist renowned throughout Europe in the age of Mozart and Casanova for the detail and honesty of his portraits, but he is almost unknown in Britain. The Scottish National Gallery aims to put that right with the first major exhibition of his work here. Moira Jeffrey reviews.

When Natasha Solomons was writing her novel, The Song Collector, she found out all about the art of song collecting and this duly inspired her to set up The Great British Song Map, a communal project to collect songs and pin them to an online map, accessible to the public. She tells Samira about the project and the novel

Producer: Ella-mai Robey.

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