Saturday Review - 23/05/2009

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by novelist Liz Jensen, writer and comedian Danny Robins and playwright Mark Ravenhill to discuss the cultural highlights of the week - featuring Scandinavian women battling against oppression, fun and games at Tate Modern and electropop from Blackpool with a nod to Caligula. Ibsen's A Doll's House has been given a makeover by Zinnie Harris who has relocated the play to the milieu of British politics in the Edwardian era. With a cast which includes Gillian Anderson, Toby Stephens and Christopher Eccleston, the setting may have changed from 19th century Norway, but hypocrisy, blackmail and despair are still present. Meanwhile, in early 20th century Sweden, a woman's life is changed when she wins a camera in a lottery. Jan Troell's latest film, Everlasting Moments, depicts a hard life with a drunken womaniser for a husband softened round the edges by the pleasure of seeing life through a lens. Robert Henryson is one of the greatest voices in late medieval Scottish literature and his narrative poem Testament of Cresseid is regarded as his best work. Now Seamus Heaney has translated this piece from Middle Scots into modern English along with seven fables which Henryson took from Aesop. If you enjoyed Beowulf... Back in 1971, the Tate Gallery played host to a ground-breaking interactive installation by American artist Robert Morris. The public were encouraged to climb over, explore and play with the geometric sculptures, but unfortunately they had so much fun, inflicting damage both on themselves and the work, that the exhibition closed after only five days. Nearly four decades later, Tate Modern is restaging a less hazardous version of the original - Bodyspacemotionthings - where art lovers get to swing, climb and roll to their hearts' content. Little Boots is the moniker under which Victoria Hesketh plies her trade as a would-be electropop princess. Her debut album Hands could well do the trick of elevating her to that throne. While her label describes her songs as 'crystal-tipped sabres of dance-pop truth', all you really need to know is that they contain plenty of squelchy synths and you can dance to them.