Front Row - 27/05/2008

Presented by Mark Lawson. Including: David Hare pays tribute to Sydney Pollack, whose award-winning career as an actor and director includes Out of Africa, Tootsie and Three Days of the Condor, and whose death was announced today. Writer Natasha Walter joins Mark to discuss Sex and the City, as the exploits of New York columnist Carrie Bradshaw, her three friends and her shoes finally make it to the big screen. Novelist Ian McEwan has written the libretto for a new opera by composer Michael Berkeley. The chamber opera called For You is about sexual jealousy in the middle-class household of an ageing composer and premieres at this year's Hay Festival. Liza Minnelli's current show pays tribute to songwriting partners Kander and Ebb and her godmother Kay Thompson, arranger and vocal coach at MGM Studios. Minnelli recreates highlights from Thompson's life interspersed with anecdotes about her own. Adam Mars-Jones reviews.