:00:16. > :00:22.Good night. Tonight on the review show, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln
:00:22. > :00:27.comates the Oscar's shortlist -- dominates the Oscar's shortlist,
:00:27. > :00:32.and Day-Lewis Louis just dominates. I'm the President of the United
:00:32. > :00:37.States, clothed in immense power. Edouard Manet gets his biggest-ever
:00:37. > :00:41.show in Britain, but is it big enough. Hammer Horror walks the
:00:41. > :00:47.boards for the first time. Is Henry James's supernatural classic, Turn
:00:47. > :00:51.of the Screw, as spooky on the stage as it is on the page.
:00:51. > :00:55.I was just saying good night. Radio 4 celebrates George Orwell,
:00:55. > :01:01.with a season the documentaries and dramas.
:01:01. > :01:07.Hailed as a comic genius in the US, Louis CK crosses the pond and lays
:01:07. > :01:12.his life bare, for a anarchic take on the sitcom. Why am I trying to
:01:12. > :01:17.impress you, why not tell me about your God damn life and impress me.
:01:17. > :01:21.Joining me tonight are the novelist Lionel Shriver, academic and writer,
:01:21. > :01:25.Sarah Churchwell, and the art historian and Cambridge lecturer,
:01:25. > :01:33.James Fox, you too can join us on Twitter.
:01:33. > :01:40.Django, reviewed on last week's show is Jantore Tarnross's take on
:01:40. > :01:46.slavey d Quentin tar Tino's take on slavery. But Lincoln dominates the
:01:46. > :01:52.owes cars with 12 nominations, Tony Kushner has written a screenplay
:01:52. > :01:57.where Abraham Lincoln is the head, heart and soul of the passing of
:01:57. > :02:00.the 13th amendment, while the Civil War was in its dying days.
:02:00. > :02:03.Spielberg's film provides an intimate portrait of arguably
:02:03. > :02:08.America's most progressive President, as he attempts to
:02:08. > :02:12.abolish slavery while the fighting continues. Shall we stop this
:02:12. > :02:16.bleeding? Daniel Day-Lewis plays the statesman in the stovepipe hat,
:02:16. > :02:23.he's already won the Golden Globe, and he's tipped for a third Oscar
:02:23. > :02:28.with his portrayal. You are going to pass the 13th amendment to
:02:29. > :02:37.abolish slavery. Doesn't waste your power. A stellar cast with Sally
:02:37. > :02:43.Field as Lincoln's misunderstood wife, Mary Todd, Marian de Swardt
:02:43. > :02:48.with Tommy Lee Jones and Thaddeus Stevens. How can I say that all men
:02:48. > :02:54.are created equal, when here before she stands the stinking carcass of
:02:54. > :03:04.the man from Ohio, proving some men are lower, impermable to reason,
:03:04. > :03:07.with cold, climb slime in their veins instead of hot blood. Despite
:03:07. > :03:12.taking on an historical subject, it focuses on one month in January
:03:12. > :03:15.1965, when the President has only three weeks to get the 13th
:03:16. > :03:20.amendment through the house of representatives. I can't end this
:03:20. > :03:25.war, until we cure ourselves of slavey, this amendment is that cure.
:03:26. > :03:30.We need two yeses. Get the hell out of here and get them. But how.
:03:30. > :03:35.the President of the United States, clothed in immense power, you will
:03:35. > :03:39.procure me these votes. Abraham Lincoln has been portrayed
:03:39. > :03:44.on film more than 270 times, has Daniel Day-Lewis done the President
:03:45. > :03:54.proud? The fate of human dignity is in our
:03:54. > :03:58.hands. Blood has been spilt to afford us this moment, now, now.
:03:58. > :04:02.James, was this the Lincoln you expected from Spielberg? No, not
:04:02. > :04:08.really, actually. It was a sympathetic treatment of Lincoln, I
:04:08. > :04:13.thought. The thing that surprised me, it was no real hagiography at
:04:13. > :04:18.all. The Lincoln depicted was bad husband, bad father, a boring man.
:04:18. > :04:22.As a leader he was passing draconian legislation against civil
:04:22. > :04:25.liberties. Also, someone who was prepared to extend the Civil War
:04:25. > :04:29.for longer than it needed to go, and see more people die than needed
:04:29. > :04:35.to die in order to achieve his political objectives. And someone
:04:35. > :04:39.who was willing to bully, bribe and lie in order to get this 13th
:04:39. > :04:43.amendment passed. He's the hero? is not saint but he is the hero.
:04:43. > :04:46.Tony Kushner was on the project from the start, but reworked it
:04:46. > :04:53.radically, it was more of an epic, he brought it down to, I would say,
:04:53. > :04:57.the Lincoln for the West Wing, it was about the machinations.
:04:57. > :05:06.Borgen. I thought it was intense? was greatly relieved that he didn't
:05:06. > :05:10.decide to do a Saving Reb Ryan on me. I have seen lots of epic Civil
:05:10. > :05:16.War enactments, we have had enough of that, I think. This film
:05:16. > :05:21.probably has just a teeny bit much and it has too little. There is one
:05:21. > :05:28.scene that says it all, the hospital attendants are taking out
:05:28. > :05:35.a load of medical waste from the hospital, and they throw out this
:05:35. > :05:42.huge VAT of severed limbs no a big pit of other severed limbs, that's
:05:42. > :05:47.enough, you get it. I always like it when film or television manages
:05:47. > :05:52.to enliven politics and make it seem really riveting, in this way
:05:52. > :05:57.this film succeeds fatastically. You got the sense of Lincoln, they
:05:57. > :06:01.humanised him, it showed what an intensely clever and political man
:06:02. > :06:05.he was? Absolutely. I think you come into this film now everybody
:06:05. > :06:09.has already heard all the hype about Day-Lewis's performance. I
:06:09. > :06:16.thought it would be oversold. I would expect something a bit
:06:16. > :06:20.thespie, and sceney eschewing, but the degree to which he humanises
:06:20. > :06:23.Lincoln, it is hard to overstate how iconic Lincoln is to the
:06:23. > :06:26.American population. To bring that statue to life, making him a living,
:06:26. > :06:30.breathing human being, and show all of those machinations, all the
:06:30. > :06:34.things he had to do, but that is the dirt and the blood and the guts
:06:34. > :06:38.of 19th century American politics, indeed politics today, that is one
:06:38. > :06:42.of the subtexts of the film, how much parallel there is between then
:06:42. > :06:47.and now. Daniel Day-Lewis, you cannot say too much about how
:06:47. > :06:50.absolutely brilliant it is. If that is Lincoln I'm happy. I think he
:06:50. > :06:53.absolutely disappears into Lincoln? I honestly think that might be the
:06:53. > :06:58.best screen performance of our lifetime. I have never seen
:06:58. > :07:04.anything like that. Let's see a bit more, it is very much a film with
:07:04. > :07:08.loads of dialogue, little action, and here he is talking about Euclid,
:07:08. > :07:15.whom he studied since a boy. Euclid's first common notion is
:07:15. > :07:19.this, things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.
:07:19. > :07:29.That's a rule of mathematical reasoning, it is true because it
:07:29. > :07:29.
:07:29. > :07:33.works, has done and always will do. In his book, mm, Euclid says this
:07:33. > :07:37.is self-evident. There has been lots of discussion
:07:37. > :07:41.about what he did with the voice, raising the voice and so forth,
:07:41. > :07:44.there were so many things that were actually particular, the way he
:07:44. > :07:49.held himself. The study had been extraordinary? The voice of a
:07:49. > :07:54.revelation to me. Usually you imagine Lincoln to be a fore score
:07:54. > :07:58.and 70. He did this rather high meandering voice, that humanised
:07:58. > :08:04.him. All that myth that accrued around this figure disappears and
:08:04. > :08:08.he becomes this rather fragile me meandering individual. You see when
:08:08. > :08:13.he needs to kick in he really kicks in. There is criticism that he can
:08:13. > :08:16.delay and delay for other people, when he wants something he kicks in
:08:16. > :08:20.fast? It is the range where Day- Lewis shows in the role, he can
:08:20. > :08:25.switch from the folksy, warm, humour, telling these American
:08:25. > :08:28.parables, which is how he got his point across indirectly all the
:08:28. > :08:32.time. You could feel the warmth and why people love him, he turns on a
:08:32. > :08:35.dime and you feel the pourb and ability to push things through, to
:08:35. > :08:39.be unscrub Louis, he is Machiavellian as hell, but to
:08:39. > :08:43.achieve greater aims. It is so much about the script and performances,
:08:43. > :08:47.the Daniel Day-Lewis performance is allowed to be so brilliant because
:08:47. > :08:51.he's surrounded by such a great cast. He feels comfortable with
:08:51. > :08:55.that cast. David Strathairn as Seward is extraordinary, as is
:08:55. > :09:02.Sally Field. Such an underestimated actor, David Strathairn. I would
:09:02. > :09:05.say that they are so meticulous on the verse and militude of Lincoln,
:09:05. > :09:09.the voice and everything, yet the whole political premise of the film
:09:09. > :09:18.is going out on a limb. I'm not even sure they really make a case
:09:18. > :09:22.for it within the context of the film. That is, it was vital to get
:09:22. > :09:25.the 13th amendment passed before the war was ended. If the war ended
:09:25. > :09:29.then all the excitement about passing the amendment would go away.
:09:29. > :09:35.I just didn't see that. I thought that was very clear in the film?
:09:35. > :09:38.They certainly lay it out. But I wasn't convinced of it, especially
:09:38. > :09:41.since historically Lincoln was about to, this was a lame duck
:09:42. > :09:48.Congress, and the next Congress coming in was far more behind him
:09:48. > :09:53.than the one, than the lame duck one. It is historically accurate.
:09:53. > :09:58.It is amazingly historically accurate. On the whole look of it,
:09:58. > :10:01.the dark look. We were talking about the effort made to make it
:10:01. > :10:05.accurate, apparently the sound engineer managed to find a match
:10:05. > :10:08.that hadn't been turned for 100 years which he recorded, he
:10:08. > :10:13.recorded someone sitting down in Lincoln's chair. Rather than that
:10:13. > :10:19.being over the stop, it ated to the idea of the craft and -- it added
:10:19. > :10:22.to the craft and air of the film, the idea of that? It was
:10:22. > :10:27.understated everything, Daniel Day- Lewis's performance and Stefano
:10:27. > :10:32.Pioli's directing. The camera hardly moved, we had close smoky
:10:32. > :10:38.interior, desaturated colours, it looked like it was constructed out
:10:38. > :10:43.of 19th Degara types. It is an interior film, despite it being
:10:43. > :10:49.about the Civil War, which we associate with canons and that,
:10:49. > :10:58.this is about rooms. Tommy Lee Jones is chewing sceney on screen.
:10:58. > :11:01.He hams it up. He does. And James Spader who plays a character out of
:11:02. > :11:07.Mark Twain, there are lots of familiar faces looking unfamiliar
:11:07. > :11:14.and playing character roles. then there is Barack Obama, the
:11:14. > :11:19.second inAugustation, with his hand on Abraham Lincoln's Bible. Lincoln
:11:19. > :11:26.died just as Edouard Manet was making his way in the art world,
:11:26. > :11:31.his canvasses reflecting Parisian life. His close friends were Zola
:11:31. > :11:37.and others. He portrayed life as he saw it. Manet came to dominate the
:11:37. > :11:42.scene in the latter half of the 19th century. He eventually formed
:11:42. > :11:45.a close wond with Monet. Given his significance, it is surprising that
:11:45. > :11:49.the first show in the Royal Academy now is the first showing of his
:11:49. > :11:53.work in the UK. In portraying life in the Royal
:11:53. > :11:57.Academy in London, 50 of Manet's portraits are hung together for the
:11:57. > :12:03.first time. Yet, at first glance, many may not look like portraits in
:12:03. > :12:08.the traditional sense. We have defined portraiture to mean
:12:08. > :12:14.representation of an individual. Be it a bust length or half length or
:12:14. > :12:22.even a full length, but we have also included portraiture within
:12:22. > :12:26.scenes of every day life, as Baudelaire spoused and urged Manet
:12:26. > :12:36.to represent. Manet painted friend, family and models in his studio,
:12:36. > :12:40.
:12:40. > :12:44.and then placed them in a scene of Paris that was rapidly modernising.
:12:44. > :12:48.His bold use of the colour black has a firm presence in this
:12:48. > :12:57.exhibition. Manet's interest in black. He made pilgrimages to
:12:57. > :13:02.Madrid to Amsterdam, to study artists renowned for their handling
:13:02. > :13:06.of black. He realised it could be a counter point to colour, but
:13:06. > :13:11.compositionally was remarkably important. For many artists and
:13:11. > :13:15.historians, Manet is the father of modernism, in his lifetime, though,
:13:15. > :13:20.he was the subject of widespread villification.
:13:20. > :13:24.He once said he wouldn't want a young artist to endure what he had
:13:24. > :13:31.to experience from the point of criticism levied at him. But he
:13:31. > :13:38.wrote it is his plate in life to suffer what's transpierg here. The
:13:38. > :13:43.fates will tell how I'm to be received. Walking out of this
:13:43. > :13:48.exhibition, which when I went there was packed out already, do you feel
:13:48. > :13:52.you got to know Edouard Manet, and more about him as opposed to his
:13:53. > :14:00.work? There is definitely as many Manet as I have seen in one place.
:14:00. > :14:04.It was an education. I hadn't appreciated the degree to which he
:14:04. > :14:10.hasn't an impressionist, I had hazely thrown him in with them.
:14:10. > :14:17.That he was part of a separate movement called The Realists. The
:14:17. > :14:20.irony was he was becoming less realistic, but the realists
:14:20. > :14:26.referred more to the fact that he was picturing people in ordinary
:14:26. > :14:36.circumstances, not necessarily posing for a portrait, but often
:14:36. > :14:41.sitting in front of a fence, Or doing things, eating, looking at
:14:41. > :14:44.their study. He pictured them in their own environment. That
:14:44. > :14:49.environment becomes both part of the the composition but also the
:14:49. > :14:51.character. They are not actually what you necessarily call portraits,
:14:51. > :14:56.even railways, it is not necessarily what you would regard
:14:56. > :14:59.as a portrait? Manet is such an inscrutable artist, I have never
:14:59. > :15:03.been able to get to the bottom of him. Particularly with his
:15:03. > :15:07.portraits. One artist said Manet's portraits were like still lives.
:15:07. > :15:11.That is what it is, when you look at the people, none of the cities
:15:11. > :15:15.are real people, they are mannequin -- none of the scenes are real
:15:15. > :15:22.people, they are mannequins he's arranging in a shop window. If you
:15:22. > :15:25.go and look at the paintings of Zola, it is one great writest of
:15:25. > :15:30.the century, it is about Manet, he surrounded him with things that are
:15:30. > :15:35.important to him. It is an inscrutable exhibition of an
:15:35. > :15:42.inscrutable artist. If you look at the Smoker, that refers back to the
:15:42. > :15:47.Spanish, Valasquit was a huge influence. The other painter who
:15:47. > :15:51.painted every day life, The Smoker is like that, a restrained palate?
:15:51. > :15:55.People talk about Manet being the father of this and the stepfather
:15:55. > :16:00.and the uncle, all these relationships to modernism, but he
:16:00. > :16:08.was a traditional artist, and Valaqez was his hero. What he was
:16:08. > :16:12.trying to do in the exhibition is reinvented old master tradition.
:16:12. > :16:16.The antithesis of the impressionism, his love of black? Absolutely. That
:16:16. > :16:22.was a real revelation to me, I didn't realise how much that was in
:16:22. > :16:25.there. And how cleverly he uses it. The velvet in the jacket of the
:16:25. > :16:32.young boy? It is all the way through it. There were pictures
:16:32. > :16:37.that were a revelation, and like guests it was the most Manet I have
:16:37. > :16:41.seen. The other thing that was new was the influence of the new art of
:16:41. > :16:45.photography, and how much these ideas about realist photography are
:16:45. > :16:51.infiltrating into his porture. Having said that it is the most
:16:51. > :16:56.Manet I have seen, there were an awful lot missing, even I knew that.
:16:56. > :17:05.Some travelled from the Musee d'Orsay, and the one from Glasgow
:17:05. > :17:08.won't travel, the women drinking beer? You can't blame the Royal
:17:09. > :17:13.Academy if people won't lend them things, they have to be clever
:17:13. > :17:15.about that. Did you miss stuff? There were glaring omissions, I got
:17:15. > :17:21.the impression, I don't know what you thought, I got the impression
:17:21. > :17:28.they had had original low wanted to do a major -- originally wanted to
:17:28. > :17:32.do a major Manet retrospective, had he had missing things and they had
:17:32. > :17:38.align it with portraits and it felt like they were trying to stretch it
:17:38. > :17:41.There is also a whole room which has the timeline of his wife. I
:17:41. > :17:48.wasn't interested. That could have been in the cafe, I thought. There
:17:48. > :17:53.was room just for tables and people reading books in the exhibition.
:17:53. > :17:56.thought the painting on the cover was underplayed, a hugely function
:17:56. > :18:02.painting, a number of different paintings of the same woman, I
:18:02. > :18:07.thought she was stuck with stuff. One of the other models had more or
:18:07. > :18:12.less a whole room to herself. However, to be fair, it is still a
:18:12. > :18:18.lot of paintings. It is not physically exhausting to walk from
:18:18. > :18:22.room-to-room, on if they are not overly filled. I think that Manet
:18:22. > :18:25.does not reproduce very well. This doesn't look very good. If you are
:18:25. > :18:30.going to appreciate these paintings you have to see them in person.
:18:30. > :18:37.is well worth seeing, I don't think there is any question. Those blacks,
:18:37. > :18:41.you can't get those blacks in this. I stood in front of this for 30
:18:41. > :18:46.minutes, mouthwatering, it was the most delicious black I have seen.
:18:46. > :18:51.He did do some tender and unfinished pictures of his family?
:18:51. > :18:58.He had beautiful one of this ambiguous son. There was one of him
:18:58. > :19:01.on a velocopede, the early bicycle, it is so blurred, there is a sense
:19:01. > :19:11.of the boy racing towards you. It is lovely, the boy is in great
:19:11. > :19:12.
:19:12. > :19:17.detail and the vlocopede is blurred. And the portrait of Zach y Astruc,
:19:17. > :19:22.on the one hand there is a more modern painter in transition.
:19:22. > :19:25.came to Monet and painted him and his familiary, in that painting
:19:25. > :19:30.there is definitely a hint, there is an impressionist corner, which
:19:30. > :19:34.says I get what you guys are doing but I don't like it? He had a
:19:34. > :19:36.strange relationship with the impressionists, he endorsed them
:19:36. > :19:40.and thought they were great and was friends with many of them, he
:19:40. > :19:45.didn't want to go the way they were going. If you get a chance, it
:19:45. > :19:50.doesn't give awe real sense of the black there. Manet Portraying Life
:19:50. > :19:55.is at the Royal Academy until 14th April.
:19:55. > :20:03.Turn of the Screw has inspired a whole host of adaptations,
:20:03. > :20:10.including an opera by Benjamin Britten, and a film starring Nicole
:20:10. > :20:14.Kidman. Now Hammer's first foray into the theatre, with the
:20:14. > :20:19.company's reintention. Hammer's horror films made the careers of
:20:19. > :20:23.actors such as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and were fameded
:20:23. > :20:29.for their melodramatic story telling and gory violence. More
:20:29. > :20:32.recently the company has updated its style with a production of The
:20:32. > :20:38.Woman In Black, which starred Daniel Radcliffe. The brand has now
:20:38. > :20:42.turned its hand to theatre, co- producing Rebecca Lenkiewicz's new
:20:42. > :20:47.adaptation of London's Almeida Theatre. Turn of the Screw tells
:20:47. > :20:52.the story of an unnamed governness, who is sent to a country estate to
:20:52. > :20:57.care for two orphan children, there she appears to witness a number of
:20:57. > :21:02.increasingly frightening ap pier rigss. We have the benefits of
:21:02. > :21:05.thrills and spills and hopefully jumps of ghost moments, plus, very,
:21:05. > :21:12.very complex and ambiguous theme, and the main theme, which is the
:21:12. > :21:17.corruption of innocence. Please, you look a little ill yourself.
:21:17. > :21:23.What could you be capable of? could be your heart beat, they
:21:23. > :21:28.taught us how to care for people. Can I check your's. He Rebecca has
:21:28. > :21:33.pushed with James said and made it more overt and sexual, and a
:21:33. > :21:36.contemporary audience can take that. We try to manage what Henry James
:21:36. > :21:42.may have written if he was writing now.
:21:42. > :21:48.No. I was just saying good night. No you weren't. I was just checking
:21:48. > :21:51.your heart old girl. No. I should like to go to sleep now, if I may.
:21:51. > :21:55.If you don't get proper sleep it stunts your growth and I don't want
:21:55. > :21:59.to be short. I think you have a very vivid imagination, do you
:21:59. > :22:04.think so. Since it was first published, there
:22:04. > :22:08.has been much debate over whether the ghosts in the Turn of the Screw
:22:08. > :22:12.are real, or figments of the governness's troubled imagination.
:22:12. > :22:15.We didn't come down on one side or the other, in the sense that I
:22:15. > :22:19.think the audience needs to leave debating whether it is her fantasy
:22:19. > :22:28.projection and she has gone slightly mad, or whether the ghosts
:22:28. > :22:32.are real. The ambiguity was still there, it was said, did you feel
:22:32. > :22:37.that? I thought it was there in the first act i thought they did a very
:22:37. > :22:41.good job with it. In the second act, as you saw in some of the scenes in
:22:41. > :22:45.the clip, there is no ambiguity, it is completely sexually explicit,
:22:45. > :22:50.and Lindsay Posner said they made the choice. I have to completely
:22:50. > :22:55.disagree with him that Henry James would have done this if he was
:22:55. > :23:00.writing it today. He opens with something that the films leave out,
:23:00. > :23:04.he says the story doesn't tell in a vulgar way, he thought to be
:23:04. > :23:09.literal is vulgar not sexual, he's interested in ambiguity that is
:23:09. > :23:13.what the book is about, he would have still written an ambiguity in
:23:13. > :23:18.the book because that is what it was about. You have to have buy
:23:18. > :23:22.into it, did you buy into it? first act is great. It is the only
:23:22. > :23:25.time the theatre for me, when we got to the interval, it was like
:23:25. > :23:33.what do you mean. Usually I'm looking at my watch, where's my
:23:33. > :23:39.glass of wine. And I was a little annoyed. To be fair, I felt simply
:23:39. > :23:43.about the second act in that I was not suffering. I was sorry it was
:23:43. > :23:49.over. It is a very successful production. But I do think that as
:23:49. > :23:54.the, as it becomes more literal, as it becomes more specific about what
:23:54. > :23:57.the children were exposed to, it is less interesting. It is less
:23:57. > :24:05.convincing to a modern audience. Because what, when you make it
:24:05. > :24:11.explicit, what you are also making explicit is that sexual literacy
:24:11. > :24:16.equates with corruption, and evil, and I'm not sure that we can accept
:24:16. > :24:19.that. Or that Henry James meant that. As, in a sense, goes along
:24:19. > :24:23.with the modern interpretation. feeling is I just thought it was, I
:24:23. > :24:28.never thought I would be scared in the theatre, and it was pretty
:24:28. > :24:32.scary. Particularly in the second half. This is what the second half
:24:32. > :24:35.had going for it. There were half- a-dozen horrible shocks. One of the
:24:35. > :24:40.shocks was so horrible that a woman about three seats down from me
:24:40. > :24:44.jumped so high up, and then she said to the audience, I'm so sorry,
:24:44. > :24:51.and everybody started laughing. There was a buzz, I think people
:24:51. > :24:55.were really enjoying it. That was nervous laughter. But do you think
:24:55. > :25:01.that the humour and horror were calibrated properly. I didn't think
:25:01. > :25:04.there was nearly as much humour that is there was? It was not
:25:04. > :25:09.subjectable -- subtle, what was lost was the tension and Spence.
:25:09. > :25:13.you think it came out in the set, the set was amazing? And the light
:25:13. > :25:16.something great. Even the rotation of the rooms was ominous, you are
:25:16. > :25:20.thinking what will I see next. I felt you didn't really have that
:25:20. > :25:25.sense of a build-up of tension. It was very entertaining because it
:25:25. > :25:28.was either scary or funny. I didn't think it was that scary, there were
:25:29. > :25:33.moments that were, they relied on startling you, which is what Hammer
:25:33. > :25:36.does. It is good at startling you, is that frightening, I'm not sure
:25:36. > :25:41.it is ultimately frightening. By making the choices to become more
:25:41. > :25:45.and more explicit, they take the mood of hor yo, which is what James
:25:45. > :25:50.sustains very well, you are not sure of the source of the evil.
:25:50. > :25:56.should talk about the performances, 17-year-old Miles Lawrence, and
:25:56. > :26:00.there are three girls, last night it was Amelie Jones, to play Floral,
:26:00. > :26:06.I was worried they could stay, they were stand-out performances?
:26:06. > :26:09.girl ten years old had a lot of lines, she was terrific.
:26:09. > :26:15.timing? The boy delivered one of the most sinister performances I
:26:15. > :26:19.have ever seen on stage. That is a contest, that literal girl is
:26:19. > :26:26.magnificent. What makes it work, especially in the beginning, is
:26:26. > :26:31.this creepy, greaseyness to the kids. They are so happy, and sweet,
:26:31. > :26:36.and what I loved about these performances is they got that
:26:36. > :26:40.without overdoing it. They are very restrained, like Lincoln. They are
:26:40. > :26:46.very finely calibrated. The little girl, Amelie Jones was spectacular.
:26:46. > :26:51.The problem is not at all, the boy who played Miles, Lawrence Belcher,
:26:51. > :26:55.he gave a terrific performance, he's far too old for the part.
:26:55. > :26:59.Miles is ten years old in the story. Again, this question about
:26:59. > :27:03.innocence isn't nearly as interesting when it is played by a
:27:03. > :27:08.17-year-old. He was supposed to be pubesant. I'm not taking it away
:27:09. > :27:13.from his performance, it was terrific. This was a collaboration
:27:13. > :27:18.with Hammer and Almeida, this is the first stage we have, The Woman
:27:18. > :27:23.In Black, and we have some Newham hams. Can you see more Hammer on
:27:23. > :27:27.stage, as you say it is difficult to deliver horror on stage?
:27:27. > :27:33.haven't seen it done before, I thought it was pretty successful.
:27:33. > :27:38.There was a sequence that was very Hammer, you have chalk and a board,
:27:38. > :27:41.I'm still clueless about how they did this. But there are great
:27:41. > :27:45.shocking moments. It was very Hammer, I think it is good to see
:27:45. > :27:55.this British cultural brand, reviving itself.
:27:55. > :27:57.
:27:57. > :28:02.The Turn of the Screw is running at the Almeida thee -- theatre.
:28:02. > :28:06.The adaptation of George Orwell's dramatisations of his life and work,
:28:06. > :28:11.which shed light on his background and the intensity of his political
:28:11. > :28:15.beliefs. The inaugural Orwell Day was launched this week. An annual
:28:15. > :28:19.celebration of the great writer's work. The occasion is marked by the
:28:19. > :28:23.publication of new editions of his best known works, and his
:28:23. > :28:29.influential essay, politics politics.
:28:30. > :28:37.Radio -- Politics and the English Language, there is an ensemble cast
:28:37. > :28:42.of the play, including Patrick Brennan as the Trotsky inspired pig,
:28:42. > :28:46.in Animal Farm. It must show manor farm for what it is, the whole farm
:28:46. > :28:51.in the whole country and the whole of England owned and operated by
:28:52. > :29:01.animals. The farm of the animals. Beast farm.
:29:02. > :29:09.
:29:09. > :29:14.Animal manor! Animal Farm. So be it Napoleon. Animal Farm.
:29:14. > :29:17.Also dramatised are Homage to Catalonia, and the dystopian
:29:17. > :29:21.classic, Nineteen Eighty-Four, with Christopher Eccleston as the
:29:21. > :29:27.rebellious Winston Smith, instigating an affair out of sight
:29:27. > :29:34.of the all-seeing Thought Police. She squeezed my hand, briefly. And
:29:34. > :29:38.the world has changed. I'm behind, slightly to one side of her. Thes
:29:38. > :29:43.of her breasts and shoulders and thigh -- the mounds of her breasts
:29:43. > :29:47.and shoulders and shys press against the blue of her party
:29:47. > :29:54.overalls. The hated uniform is made beguiling by her presence inside of
:29:54. > :29:59.it. The anti-sex league sash pinchs her waist and adds form to her lean
:29:59. > :30:09.muscular body and pronounced bossom. I'm excited by her as the enemy
:30:09. > :30:12.corpses dance on the jibbits. Jo let them hang! There is also a
:30:12. > :30:16.series of biographical dramas starring Joseph Millson and Eric
:30:16. > :30:21.Blair, the man behind the pen name Orwell. The dramas cover his life
:30:21. > :30:24.in Burma, through to his months on the island of Jura, and explore his
:30:24. > :30:30.relationships with women and battles with himself. I'm not a
:30:30. > :30:35.good man, not even a very nice man. I have done discredible things, I
:30:35. > :30:40.have, what did you say earlier, used people. What's worse I have
:30:40. > :30:45.used people I love just the same as those I despise. I think I have
:30:45. > :30:49.done good work, a little. But do you know there is nothing worth a
:30:49. > :30:54.single damn that I have ever written that hasn't been about
:30:54. > :31:00.politics. So, a whole host of opportunities to discover Orwell in
:31:00. > :31:08.the weeks to come. Does his writing continue to have powerful and
:31:08. > :31:12.resonant messages for today's world. Do you think that for people who
:31:12. > :31:16.have never read Orwell, or who perhaps have forgotten much of what
:31:16. > :31:23.they have read, it would be hard to imagine that, this is a timely
:31:23. > :31:28.primer on Orwell? It is very timely. The performance of Animal Farm, is
:31:28. > :31:35.not only delightful, it is a lot of fun to listen to, but now that we
:31:35. > :31:43.are post-Soviet Union to which the original alluded, I find that the
:31:43. > :31:46.text is released. It is about much more than just communism it is
:31:46. > :31:52.about the inevitable corruption of any ideology as it gets put into
:31:52. > :31:57.practice. I kept thinking of Egypt. And the ones still there, North
:31:57. > :32:03.Korea, for example, let's not forget. Did you take it and enjoy
:32:03. > :32:07.it as a drama? I have to make a confession, you are going to hate
:32:07. > :32:11.me for this, I love Orwell very much, I love him as an essayist and
:32:11. > :32:16.journalist, I have never liked his fiction, I think it is really very,
:32:16. > :32:20.veryed bad. I think Animal Farl, the adaptation was terrific as far
:32:20. > :32:25.as I was concerned, but the story was risable. I just can't believe
:32:25. > :32:28.it. It is a parable. But it is also, you know, I felt this is a problem
:32:28. > :32:33.I think with political art, actually. If the purpose of the art
:32:33. > :32:37.is simply to make a political point, the art becomes secondary and
:32:37. > :32:40.unnecessary and dry. It seemed much more interesting, like, hearing it
:32:40. > :32:47.on the radio, it seemed much more like a teenage book? Absolutely,
:32:47. > :32:52.that is what I would say. It is very good for students, it strikes
:32:52. > :32:56.me that its lesson is very, very obvious. I agree, it is political
:32:56. > :33:00.art and it dates very quickly and stays flat. It has a message to
:33:00. > :33:05.purvey, and it does. It does it perfectly well. Once you know what
:33:05. > :33:08.it is doing, and the parallel with Stalinism and any type of
:33:08. > :33:12.corrupting, totalitarian force, you are awaiting the inevitable. It
:33:12. > :33:16.doesn't go anywhere interesting. It is a children's book. It is an
:33:16. > :33:20.excellent children's book. It is not YEA, it is a children's book,
:33:20. > :33:23.that is what is good about it. That is why I like it T it is written as
:33:23. > :33:27.a children's book, and yet the grown-ups understand. Both children
:33:27. > :33:33.and adults understand it. I think the recording is one that I think
:33:33. > :33:41.children will enjoy. They have the actors do the animal voices, so the
:33:41. > :33:45.sheep are saying "four legs baaaa- d" so they can listen to it, adults
:33:45. > :33:51.might find it too cute. Getting to know Eric Blair, what about
:33:51. > :33:58.Dreaming, did you feel it was a successful drama? That I found flat.
:33:58. > :34:07.It wasn't a perfomance, it was the text. This was all about him going
:34:07. > :34:10.to visit? That is what I found flat, the disillusionment of the
:34:10. > :34:16.revolutionary coming back to Britain after having participated
:34:17. > :34:20.in the Spanish Civil War. But the characters are just defined by
:34:20. > :34:25.ideology, the dialogue is wooden. I didn't find this entertaining and I
:34:25. > :34:27.was waiting for it to be over. of course, was a new piece of
:34:28. > :34:33.writing. Then we have the other adaptation, which some of us
:34:33. > :34:38.managed to catch hold of, that was Christopher Eccleston, in Nineteen
:34:38. > :34:42.Eighty-Four, I thought was riveting, I was looking at the radio when I
:34:42. > :34:46.was listening to it? It is terrific. Agreeing with James almost entirely
:34:46. > :34:49.about Orwell as an essayist, preferring him as an essayist
:34:49. > :34:54.rather than fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four stands out. It is a
:34:54. > :35:01.classic for a reason. It is obvious as well. It is much subtler, it is
:35:01. > :35:10.much more complex, and it goes in other directions, it is bigger, it
:35:10. > :35:16.has a psychology. It is written for adult. It is an adult version of
:35:16. > :35:20.Animal Farm, Eccleston is fantastic. In the same way you talk about
:35:20. > :35:24.Animal Farm and it being relevant without the Soviet bloc. If you
:35:24. > :35:27.listen to Nineteen Eighty-Four and look around you, you think the
:35:27. > :35:31.relevance is in so many different organisations and the way people
:35:31. > :35:34.talk, it hasn't gone anywhere, it is as relevant as when it was
:35:34. > :35:39.written? That is the relevance of him, the discussion of language,
:35:39. > :35:42.the uses and abuses of language, how it can be used to manipulate
:35:42. > :35:46.and deceive us. That is where for me, this essay, the gem of the
:35:46. > :35:52.whole season. I remember reading this as a student, I remember being
:35:52. > :35:57.delighted it was only 20-pages long, and I read it four times it was so
:35:57. > :36:03.good. This is more relevent today than in 1946, now everyone has all
:36:03. > :36:06.these cliches and euphamism, "touching base", "blue-sky
:36:07. > :36:13.thinking". There is not a politician that wouldn't do well to
:36:13. > :36:18.read this? One of the ironies about the essay written in 1945, is that
:36:18. > :36:23.Orwell is completely disgusted with the quality of both or Asian and
:36:23. > :36:32.the written word, and yet I put money down, if any of us went back
:36:32. > :36:35.to 1945 we would be thrilled with the way people wrote and talk.
:36:35. > :36:40.teach this don't you? I do, I think it is something that students
:36:40. > :36:44.really need to come to grips with. It is like the economist school of
:36:44. > :36:48.writing? He boils it down it a six basic principle, they are still
:36:48. > :36:52.good principles of writing, but also of thinking. The key point he
:36:52. > :36:57.make, something that I really tried to hammer foam, forgive the pun
:36:57. > :37:03.from the last segment, with my students, thinking is inextricable
:37:04. > :37:07.from language, you can't think well if you are not articulate, if you
:37:07. > :37:12.become inarticulate your thoughts become fuzzy. Writing is a process
:37:12. > :37:15.of thinking and refining your thinking. He reiterates in the
:37:16. > :37:19.essay how important it is not to be lazy but search for the write word,
:37:19. > :37:24.any writer knows that is the key to the whole enterprise. The whole
:37:24. > :37:29.idea is we will have Orwell every year, is that merited, or do other
:37:29. > :37:34.writers? I don't think we need to rescue Orwell from obscurity, it is
:37:34. > :37:42.nice to revisit him every year, why not. I'm not sure that Orwell
:37:42. > :37:48.himself would warm to the idea of "Orwell Day". The real George
:37:48. > :37:52.Orwell season becomes on Radio 4 tomorrow. Louis CK is regarded as
:37:52. > :37:57.one of the finest stand-ups of his generation, he honed his skills
:37:57. > :38:03.which writingor David Letter plan and the likes of Chris Rock, he's
:38:03. > :38:08.the writer, director and producer of the award winning series, Louie.
:38:08. > :38:13.Who are you, what is your contribution, you are cute and have
:38:13. > :38:16.a flat stomach and you are young. Why am I trying to impress you, why
:38:16. > :38:26.not tell me about your God damn life and try to impress me. Why
:38:26. > :38:56.
:38:56. > :39:00.He is such a big hit in America, what do you make of the sitcom, has
:39:00. > :39:04.he done something radical with it? I'm not sure if it is radical yet.
:39:04. > :39:07.We only saw the first few episode, it is going for three series in the
:39:07. > :39:11.US. My friends and family rave about it. It becomes radical. In
:39:11. > :39:14.the opening episodes he's feeling his way through it. It is certainly
:39:14. > :39:20.smashing the conventions of the sitcom to an extraordinary degree
:39:20. > :39:24.right from the outset. No narrative, long, long scenes. And inKong grus,
:39:25. > :39:28.he will jump from one thing to the next, and will use the same people
:39:28. > :39:31.from unepisode to the next. He's not interested in character
:39:31. > :39:36.development and continuity in one sense. I have known his stand up
:39:36. > :39:39.for a long time, I think he's hysterical, and wonderful at
:39:39. > :39:43.breaking taboos and being inappropriate as you though there,
:39:43. > :39:47.I was surprised at what a good actor he is, and how moving he is.
:39:48. > :39:51.Gets these big sad eyes, and your heart goes out to him. You think
:39:51. > :39:57.this guy is actually very, very interesting. This is definitely a
:39:57. > :40:03.show to watch.'S A one man band, writer, producer, director, editor?
:40:03. > :40:08.It is extraordinary, it surprises me on what you would think as a
:40:08. > :40:11.commercial medium, an artist as quirky as Louis CK could be given
:40:11. > :40:14.such freedom to do what he wants to do. He doesn't have to get his
:40:15. > :40:19.scripts approved, he does everything. And the result of this
:40:19. > :40:23.is a completely bizarre and wonderful programme, I found it
:40:23. > :40:27.extremely funny as well. Probably not everyone's cup of tea. I
:40:27. > :40:31.thought it was brilliant. I was amazed he found so many taboos to
:40:31. > :40:36.break that hadn't already been broken. One after the other!
:40:36. > :40:41.gave me hope for the future, apparently it is still possible to
:40:41. > :40:47.be outrageous. On American television! Considering how out
:40:47. > :40:52.there people have gotten lately, this was incredibly refreshing. One
:40:52. > :40:55.of the things it does is it reveal, we have broken various taboo, most
:40:55. > :41:00.having to do with sex, we have replaced them with others. You are
:41:00. > :41:07.not supposed to have a shiftless, lazy, black bus driver, who doesn't
:41:07. > :41:15.know the way to the broings zoo, and is going to throw Bronx Zoo,
:41:15. > :41:20.and is going to throw it on you, and parks the bus because he lives
:41:20. > :41:24.two blocks from there. Louie's poker night the scene goes on and
:41:24. > :41:28.on, for seven minutes, becoming more out there. It is really rude,
:41:28. > :41:32.really rude. Really rude, and really will offend some people
:41:32. > :41:35.enormously. But it is funny. He just gets awhich with it being
:41:35. > :41:39.funny? That scene, I would recommend anyone who hasn't seen
:41:39. > :41:42.this programme to just watch that scene, you can probably find it on-
:41:42. > :41:48.line. It is the most incredible seven-minute discussion that is
:41:48. > :41:52.both offensive and amusing, and quite moving at times. Because in
:41:52. > :41:55.order to have this conversation these guys have to be very friendly.
:41:55. > :42:00.It is about homophobia, that is what they are taking on, we are
:42:00. > :42:05.skirting around it, it is a bunch of straight guys with one gay
:42:05. > :42:10.friend getting him to talk about gay sex. He says they are more
:42:11. > :42:14.obsessed with gay sex than anybody else. Louie is running on the Fox
:42:14. > :42:17.channel. You can find out about everything
:42:17. > :42:21.we have discussed tonight on the website. Thank you very much to my
:42:21. > :42:25.guested. We are off to the Green Room now for our a dram to
:42:25. > :42:31.celebrate Burns Night, to raise a toast to the Bard, we are playing
:42:31. > :42:41.out with a performance from 2009 from the wonderful musician Michael
:42:41. > :42:41.
:42:41. > :42:51.Maram, who died last year. Here he is. Good night, slainte, and go Go
:42:51. > :42:57.Andy Government -- go. # The lovely dears
:42:57. > :43:07.# Ow noblist work she classes up # A painter's hand
:43:07. > :43:11.
:43:11. > :43:19.# She tried on mine # Then she made the lassi, he's
:43:19. > :43:27.# Green grow the rashs up # The sweetest tours that