Front Row - 30/09/2009

The artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Michael Boyd, announces his plans for the 2010 season, including a new production of Hamlet for young audiences and the countdown to the reopening of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. BRIT Award-winning singer-songwriter Mika discusses his new album and tells Mark Lawson about his classical training, mixed racial heritage and why he may lose friends by writing songs. Writer and academic Sarah Churchwell reviews the new stage version of Truman Capote's novel, Breakfast At Tiffany's, starring Anna Friel as good-time girl Holly Golightly. Ben Stephenson, the newly-appointed controller of BBC drama commissioning, announced a moratorium last January on what he called 'bonnet drama'. With a new dramatisation of Jane Austen's novel, Emma, about to begin on BBC1, Ben Stephenson joins Mark Lawson to debate the presence and role of costume drama on television.