Front Row

Anish Kapoor’s latest exhibition features new sculptures in welded steel, granite and onyx, as well as a series of large-scale paintings which he rarely shows. The artist discusses his continuing fascination with depicting bodily fluids, and with his favourite colour, alizarin crimson.In the new film Booksmart, Beanie Feldstein plays one half of a pair of high school female friends who have succeeded in getting places at Ivy League colleges by keeping their heads down and studying hard. But when they find that less dedicated students at their school have also been successful college applicants, the girls begin to question whether they have sacrificed too much for their academic futures. Beanie discusses the friendship at the heart of Booksmart and why she thinks it’s such a breakthrough movie.US indie rock band Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig discusses their latest album Father of the Bride, ahead of their forthcoming Glastonbury gig.Presenter Shahidha Bari Producer Jerome Weatherald

Matthew Bourne's new dance work Romeo + Juliet has a young cast featuring dozens of teenage dancers who auditioned to join his professional company. John talks to choreographer Matthew Bourne, Paris Fitzpatrick and Cordelia Braithwaite who play Romeo and Juliet, and two young dancers from Leicester, Megan Ferguson and Alexander Love. Little Steven, or Stevie Van Zandt, is best known as the guitarist to Bruce Springsteen and a member of the E Street Band. As he releases Summer of Sorcery, the new album by his all-star band the Disciples of Soul, Little Steven discusses his own music, performing with The Boss, and his unexpected acting role The Sopranos.The Tiger Who Came To Tea author Judith Kerr has died at the age of 95. Michael Rosen pays tribute and we hear John's recent interview with Judith at her home. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser

Comedian Frank Skinner returns to the stand-up stage with his new tour Showbiz which he will be taking to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer where he first made his name, winning a Perrier Award in 1991. Now a radio and panel show host and co-writer of football anthem Three Lions with long time double act David Baddiel, he talks about the changing face of comedy and the thrill of improvisation.BAFTA have analysed nearly 130,000 non-news programmes between September 2017 and September 2018, and found out that climate change featured fewer times than cats, cakes and picnics. But how much is it the responsibility of the arts to enact social change through its programming? Aaron Matthews, the head of industry sustainability at BAFTA and David Butcher of The Radio Times discuss.Anna, a new immersive play by Ella Hickson, is a thriller set in 1968 East Berlin, a place where what you said in public and what you might admit in private needed to be rather different. The audience for this production have to wear headsets so as to experience things from the perspective of the secret service. Theatre critic Susannah Clapp reviews.George the Poet won big at this years British Podcast Awards in a wide range of categories - fiction, arts and culture and current affairs - for his show Have You Heard George's Podcast? He talks about what he felt he could do differently in a podcast as opposed to a new poetry collection.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May

Stephen Poliakoff talks about his new BBC Two drama Summer of Rockets. The story of Russian immigrant and inventor Samuel Petrukhin's attempts to induct his family into English high society against the backdrop of the Cold War, stars Toby Stephens, Keeley Hawes and Timothy Spall and is Poliakoff's most autobiographical work yet.The first time Selina Thompson used her adult passport it was to get on a cargo ship from Belgium to Ghana. She was 25 and beginning a journey that retraced the route of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle. The resulting piece, salt., won plaudits at the Edinburgh Festival and is now at the Royal Court Theatre. She talks about the impact of the piece and why she’s now handed the piece over to actor Rochelle Rose. More news from the Cannes Film Festival, including the premieres of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, and Asif Kapadia's documentary Diego Maradona. With film critic Jason Solomons. Presenter : Kirsty Lang Producer : Dymphna Flynn

Rocketman is the new Elton John film musical that charts the singer’s life from his upbringing in Pinner, meeting his long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin, making it big and then struggling with addictions. We speak to the director Dexter Fletcher - who also worked on Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody - about making the film which stars Taron Egerton and was executive-produced by Sir Elton and his husband David Furnish Saltwater is a new novel by Jessica Andrews, a published poet who also runs a literary magazine for under-represented writers. Based on her own life, Saltwater follows the character of Lucy who moves from her working-class family home in Sunderland to university in London and warehouse parties. But her new life is not what she expected. Artists taking risks – and artists putting themselves at risk – is the focus of a forum happening at Tate Modern this weekend. Áine O’Brien of campaigning group Counterpoint Arts and Syrian playwright Abdullah Alkafri discuss the threats to artistic freedom and expression faced by artists in politically turbulent countries around the world.We announce the winner of the Folio Prize, open to all genres and all forms of literature, except work written primarily for children.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer Oliver Jones

News from the Cannes Film Festival, including the premieres of Elton John biopic Rocketman and Ken Loach's Sorry We Missed You. With film critic Jason Solomons. David Chipperfield pays tribute to fellow architect I.M Pei, famous for his iconic designs such as the Louvre pyramid, who has died aged 102. Scottish crime writer Denise Mina on Conviction, her latest novel whose narrator is obsessed with listening to true crime podcasts. Welsh artist Sean Edwards has an exhibition at the Venice Biennale in which his elderly mother performs a monologue each day, broadcasting live from her flat in Cardiff into a Venice Church. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser

The actor Stephen Graham originally made his mark as the racist skinhead Combo in Shane Meadows’s 2006 film This Is England. The actor and director have teamed up again for a new 4-part Channel 4 drama The Virtues, in which he plays a troubled alcoholic trying to get over the trauma of his childhood. The actor discusses making the show, as well as his recent role as undercover cop John Corbett in Line of Duty. The Unicorn is a theatre devoted to children. Its latest production is Dido, based on Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. Stig Abell investigates how you make a seventeenth-century opera fun for eleven-year-olds, talking to the director, conductor, a singer and two teachers. But what of the target audience? Two young lads tell him what they thought of it. Simon Armitage has been announced as the new Poet Laureate. As he begins his decade long post, he reveals his ambitions for the role and also discusses his new book of poems Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, which brings together his commissioned work including war poetry and poems responding to Henry Moore's sculptures and the life of Branwell Bronte.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Hannah Robins

Television dramatist Sally Wainwright has written award-winning crime series such as Happy Valley, heart-warming love stories such as Last Tango in Halifax. The last time she turned her attention to the 19th century, it was to portray the Brontës in To Walk Invisible. Now she’s returned to the Victorian age, this time looking at the life of lesbian landowner Anne Lister. Historical novelist, Philippa Gregory reviews. The idea of the canon in contemporary and modern art is currently being fiercely debated in galleries and museums with many of these institutions now attempting to broaden the canon by including previously overlooked female artists and artists of colour, and challenging the idea of a universal canon by trying to reflect their localities in their collections. Caroline Douglas, Director of the Contemporary Art Society, and Helen Legg, Director of Tate Liverpool discuss the rebalancing of modern and contemporary art collections.In the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing, the name of one of the victims, 29-year-old Coronation Street superfan, Martyn Hett, began trending on twitter with the hashtag BeMoreMartyn. The hashtag has now evolved into the title of a verbatim play created from interviews with eight of Martyn’s friends. Theatre critic Lyn Gardner, and Mike Lee, the co-writer of the play, join Front Row to talk about making theatre from such a traumatic event. Recent days have seen English football clubs enjoy dramatic success in Europe, but it’s Welsh football that is the subject of celebration in a new exhibition at Tŷ Pawb, the arts centre in Wrexham. Curator James Harper discusses how contemporary artists have found inspiration in the beautiful game.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Mark Billingham, Val McDermid and Doug Johnstone are well-known for their detective stories, which they write alone. But they come together as members of the band Fun Lovin' Crime Writers. They perform live and talk to Stig Abell about their day jobs, the joys of collaborating as a popular beat combo and the connections between these. They stay on as cultural commentators to give their opinions of Robert De Niro's powerful new role - in an ad for bagels, the temporary ban on the export of the copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover that the judge annotated and brought with him to court when he presided at the famous obscenity trial in 1960, and, closer to home, the list of the 100 best crime novels published since 1945 - of which only 28 are by women. The impact Artificial Intelligence will have on our lives is the subject of the Barbican’s major new exhibition AI: More than Human, which also seeks to challenge our preconceptions. Tech expert Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino reviews.Medusa is an ancient myth that certainly speaks to our times, abused by a powerful male, she is somehow blamed for this and exacts revenge. The Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has chosen this tale for his first work for the Royal Ballet and has set his dance to songs by Purcell and modern electronic music. He explains to Stig Abell why he is melding the ancient, modern and Baroque.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May

Keanu Reeves returns to cinemas in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, reprising his role as the super-assassin. He takes pride in performing most of the action scenes and discusses working with the director Chad Stahelski, himself a former stuntman. Paul Gambaccini remembers the singer-turned-movie-star Doris Day whose death at the age of 97 was announced today. Research recently published in the British Medical Journal reports that regular sexual activity between couples is on the decline. The authors cite 'diversionary stimuli' such as smartphones and Netflix as distractions that could be impeding intimacy. Culture writers Louis Wise and Karen Krizanovich explore whether art can function as an effective aphrodisiac. Presenter Shahidha Bari Producer Jerome Weatherald