Saturday Review - 20/06/2009

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by historian Dominic Sandbrook, writer Linda Grant and poet Cahal Dallat to discuss the cultural highlights of the week - featuring multiple Charlie Chaplins, two inspirational satellites and a loose moose. Glen David Gold's second novel, Sunnyside, opens in 1916 with 800 simultaneous sightings of Charlie Chaplin. With action which ranges from California's early cinema industry to wartime France and on to Arctic Russia, it captures the moment when American capitalism, a world at war and the emerging phenomenon of Hollywood intersected to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity. Set in a remote, impoverished village in the Karoo, Lara Foot Newton's award-winning play Karoo Moose is part of the Tricycle Theatre's South African season. A violent, terrifying incident and the unlikely appearance of a moose both have profound effects on a young woman's life. Traditional storytelling meets magical realism with added singing and dancing. Joe Meek is frequently labelled with that one-size-fits-all tag Flawed Genius, so it was only a matter of time before the visionary 60s music producer became the subject of a biopic. Telstar, adapted by Nick Moran from his original stage play, stars Con O'Neill as Meek and captures the chaotic brilliance which he presided over in his studio above a north London leather goods shop. The Radical Nature exhibition at the Barbican is subtitled Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969 - 2009 and brings together artists across different generations who have created utopian works and inspiring solutions for our ever changing planet. It includes key works by Joseph Beuys, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Hans Haacke and Robert Smithson. It's almost 40 years since Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. At the time NASA commissioned film-maker Theo Kamecke to make a documentary about the Apollo 11 mission. Thirty five years after last seeing the light of day, the film has now been disinterred like some kind of time capsule and is being screened at Glastonbury Festival and released on DVD.