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Front Row: Stephen Graham, new Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, ENO's Dido

16/05/2019

Stephen Graham, new Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, ENO's Dido

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Stephen Graham, new Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, ENO's Dido

Stephen Graham discusses working with Shane Meadows on TV drama The Virtues

Stephen Graham discusses working with Shane Meadows on TV drama The Virtues, and Simon Armitage talks about his new role as poet laureate

The actor Stephen Graham originally made his mark as the racist skinhead Combo in Shane Meadows’s 2006 film This Is England. The actor and director have teamed up again for a new 4-part Channel 4 drama The Virtues, in which he plays a troubled alcoholic trying to get over the trauma of his childhood. The actor discusses making the show, as well as his recent role as undercover cop John Corbett in Line of Duty.  

The Unicorn is a theatre devoted to children. Its latest production is Dido, based on Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. Stig Abell investigates how you make a seventeenth-century opera fun for eleven-year-olds, talking to the director, conductor, a singer and two teachers. But what of the target audience? Two young lads tell him what they thought of it.   

Simon Armitage has been announced as the new Poet Laureate. As he begins his decade long post, he reveals his ambitions for the role and also discusses his new book of poems Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, which brings together his commissioned work including war poetry and poems responding to Henry Moore's sculptures and the life of Branwell Bronte.

Presenter: Stig Abell 
Producer: Hannah Robins

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