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Episode details

Radio 4,20 Dec 2014,45 mins

V&A Cast Court, City of Angels, Big Eyes, Kureishi/Murakami/AN Wilson, Mapp and Lucia

Saturday Review

Available for over a year

London's V+A Museum has just reopened the Weston Cast Court, which houses life-size plaster casts of statuary and artefacts from around Europe. It includes the museum's largest items, can it draw their largest crowds? Larry Gelbart's City of Angels is revived at London's Donmar Warehouse. A musical about the golden age of Hollywood, it garnered awards galore 25 years ago in its original run, will this production be a winner? Tim Burton's new film Big Eyes is about 1960s housewife Margaret Keane whose paintings of waifs with enormous dark eyes were wildly commercially successful, but her husband claimed all the glory until she decided to make a break for fame in her own right. Small Books: We look at 3 works of extremely short fiction. Hanif Kureishi, Haruki Murakami and AN Wilson all have stories to tell, that they feel are best-suited to new diminutive formats. The BBC has remade EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia in sumptuous style; is it a new classic?

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