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Crazy Rich Asians, Touching the Void, Novels about the super rich, Leeds Piano Competition

Tom Morris on Touching the Void; Constance Wu, star of Crazy Rich Asians; novels about the super rich; and Murray McLachlan on the Leeds Piano Competition. With Kirsty Lang.

Touching The Void. Memoir, documentary, now theatre performance - at the Bristol Old Vic. Written by David Greig , it's an adaptation of Joe Simpson's bestselling 1988 mountaineering memoir and the subsequent 2003 docu-drama detailing Simpson's disastrous 1985 attempt to make a first ascent of a mountain in the Andes. Theatre director Tom Morris talks to Kirsty about the challenges of transferring the story to the stage. And as the Bristol Old Vic prepares to re-open after a major refurbishment, he describes how the new design aims to mark the theatre's history and slave trade past and welcome in new audiences.

Crazy Rich Asians is a box office hit in the US about a young Chinese-American woman who goes to a wedding in Singapore and encounters the fabulously wealthy Chinese family of her boyfriend. Its star Constance Wu talks to Kirsty about the issues it raises on the difference between Asian and American culture and the tricky question of stereotyping.

Crazy Rich Asians is based on a best-selling book Kevin Kwan of the same name satirizing Singapore's super-rich. Depictions of the wealthy in novels is nothing new as literary critic Toby Lichtig explains as he gives is a potted history of rich-lit.

As this year's Leeds International Piano Competition reaches the finals without a British finalist, concert pianist Murray McLachlan, Chair of the European Piano Teachers Association (UK) and Artistic Director of Chetham's International Summer School and Festival for Pianists, discusses whether British piano teaching is making the grade.

Available now

30 minutes

Tom Morris

Tom Morris
Fiona Hampton in
Touching the Void
Photo credit: Geraint Lewis

Touching the Void is at the 聽until 6 Oct and at the from 9 Oct until 20 Oct and at the from
24 January to 16 February 2019

Touching the Void is a聽a co-production between Bristol Old Vic, Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Royal & Derngate Northampton and Fuel


Leeds International Piano Competition

Leeds International Piano Competition
聽at the Town Hall, Leeds on 14 and 15 Sept

Broadcast

  • Thu 13 Sep 2018 19:15

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