Will take-offs of Bush's America and rolling news take off? Join Matthew Sweet to explore the history of attempts to satirise the news, and the Sam Shepard play billed as a "take-off on Republican fascism", plus why Sir Richard Burton is the quintessential Victorian, and the afterlife of the Fauvists...
Programme details
On Night Waves with Matthew Sweet tonight...
Barely a week before last year's American Presidential elections, leading US playwright Sam Shepard's The God of Hell opened in New York. Shepard's "take-off on republican fascism" failed to stop the re-election of President Bush, but will it win hearts and minds here? Expat American theatre critic Matt Wolf joins Matthew to cast his vote...
For TV and radio comedians like The Two Ronnies, the News was just an easy way to frame whatever jokes you liked. But over the last few years, the forms and flaws of broadcast journalism itself have been subject to ever sharper comic scrutiny. With the launch of a new BBC2 satire of twenty-four hour rolling news channels, Alkarim Jivani of Time Out joins Matthew to explore how and why news itself has become one of comedy's lead stories...
Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer and translator of the Arabian Nights, was widely regarded at the time as a gypsy-like outsider to polite standing apart from his time. And the image has stuck ever since. But in a new biography, Harvard Professor Dane Kennedy argues that Burton, who wandered the Middle East disguised as an Arab, has as much to tell us about both England and Empire as anyone...
A hundred years ago this month, an exhibition of new paintings opened in Paris that prompted one critic to brand them as savage beasts. But how much impact did the Fauvist painters really have? With an exhibition of the London Paintings of leading Fauve André Derain opening in the capital, Matthew is joined by art critic Richard Cork and Sarah Whitfield, author of a definitive study of the movement, to find out how much influence do the wild beasts of the Fauvist movement still have over painting today...
That's Night Waves, this evening at 9.30pm with Matthew Sweet, here on BBC Radio 3.
Presenter: Matthew Sweet Producer: Phil Tinline
Further information
God of Hell by Sam Shepard runs between 20th October and 3rd December 2005. Click here for further information.
Broken News starts on Monday 31st October, at 9.30pm on BBC Two.
The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World by Dane Kennedy is published by Harvard University Press.
André Derain: The London Paintings is runs between 27th October and 22nd January 2006 at the Courauld Institute of Art Gallery. For further information, click here.
