13/11/2010

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests poet Craig Raine, writer Antonia Quirke and theatre writer David Benedict review the week's cultural highlights including The Train Driver. The Train Driver by Athol Fugard was inspired by a newspaper article which Fugard read in December 2000, reporting the death of a woman in South Africa who had stepped in front of a train with her three children. This production at the Hampstead Theatre stars Sean Taylor and Owen Sejake. We Are What We Are is the directorial debut of Jorge Michel Grau. Set in Mexico City, the film tells the story of a family of cannibals, thrown into disarray when their father and provider dies. Rufus Norris's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni for English National Opera is deliberately dingy and downbeat. It features a free translation of Da Ponte's libretto by Jeremy Sams and stars Iain Paterson as the dissolute Don. Jimmy McGovern's new six-part BBC1 series - Accused - places six different characters in the dock. Rather than following the traditional route of the courtroom drama, each episode explores how the accused ended up there. Stars include Christopher Eccleston, Mackenzie Crook, Juliet Stevenson, Peter Capaldi and Andy Serkis. Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices is an exhibition at the British Library in London which takes on the daunting task of telling the story of the English language since its birth 1500 years ago. Highlights include the oldest surviving copy of Beowulf and the first printed book in English along with many other treasures from the British Library's vaults. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.