Front Row - 05/05/2009

In the current production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot at The Theatre Royal Haymarket in London, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart play Estragon and Vladimir, the bantering twosome awaiting the mysterious Godot. Mark Lawson met them backstage to ask about their interpretation of what has long been perceived as a difficult play, and how playing Beckett on the London stage differs from their celebrated film roles in The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and X-Men. The poet Peter Porter discusses the final writings of the late John Updike who died earlier this year. His collection, Endpoint, contains poems which culminate in his confrontation with his final illness. The writer Christopher Hampton and director Stephen Frears, who previously made Dangerous Liaisons, have joined forces once more in an adaptation of another French work, Cheri. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews the film. And Lord Puttnam reveals the shortlist for the 2009 Art Fund Prize for the UK's best museum or gallery.