22/10/2011

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests writers Rowan Pelling, Jim White and Deborah Moggach review the week's cultural highlights, including Tilda Swinton in We Need To Talk About Kevin. Lynne Ramsay's film We Need To Talk About Kevin is adapted from the Orange Prize winning novel by Lionel Shriver. Tilda Swinton stars as Eva, a former travel writer who has enormous problems forming a bond with her son Kevin - a child who, from the start, seems to go out of his way to provoke and antagonise her and whose actions spiral into the truly atrocious. David Guterson is a writer best known for his 1994 bestseller Snow Falling On Cedars. His latest book - Ed King - takes the Oedipus myth and relocates it on the West coast of America. When Walter Cousins has an ill-advised fling with the teenage au-pair in 1962 he sets in train a disastrous series of events. Jumpy is a new play by April de Angelis which has opened at the Royal Court in London. It stars Tamsin Grieg as Hilary - a former Greenham Common activist who is having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that she's turned 50 and also with the challenging behaviour of her teenage daughter Tilly (Bel Powley). Dubbed 'Mad Men with wings', Pan Am is a new American TV drama - created by ER writer Jack Orman -which transports viewers back to the golden age of air travel. Centre stage are the stewardesses, wearing regulation girdles and forbidden to exceed their personal weight limit, and including a runaway bride and a spy. George Condo: Mental States at the Hayward Gallery in London is the first major retrospective of the American artist's work. The exhibition focuses on his 'imaginary portraits' which conjure varied mental states with a mixture of absurdity and pathos. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.