Front Row - 03/12/2009

Tamzin Outhwaite, best known for playing Mel in EastEnders, stars as the sweet-natured dance hall hostess in the Menier Chocolate Factory's new production of the hit 60s musical Sweet Charity. JM Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace has just been made into a feature film starring John Malkovich. The film, which is faithful to the book, focuses on a university professor in post-Apartheid South Africa who loses everything as a result of his inappropriate behaviour with a young student. The BBC's former South Africa correspondent Allan Little reviews. Front Row talks to George Crumb, the 80-year-old American classical composer who won Grammys and Pulitzers in the 1960s and 70s, for his pioneering and unorthodox music. Following a Prom concert in September dedicated to his work, the BBC Symphony is launching its 2009/2010 Total Immersion series, with a day of concerts, films, and talks at the Barbican in London, devoted to Crumb's life and work. If last year's buzz-word in the arts was 'interactive', this year's has been 'immersive'. Writer Andrew Dickson prefers not to be immersed. Jane Rogers gives the fifth and last of Front Row's interviews with authors shortlisted for this year's BBC National Short Story Award. The stories are broadcast at 3.30pm every day this week on Radio 4, with Jane Rogers's story, Hitting Trees With Sticks, going out tomorrow.