24/11/2010

This week Libby Purves is joined by Nina Conti, Anne Downie, John Stewart and Ann Martin-Davis. Ventriloquist Nina Conti returns to London's Soho Theatre, following a sell out run at this year's Edinburgh Festival, with her new solo show, 'Talk to the Hand'. Familiar favourite, the incorrigible Monk is joined by a host of new characters, including poetry penning Owl, mischievous Granny and vodka swilling Lydia. 'Talk to the Hand' is at the Soho Theatre. Anne Downie is a Scottish actor and writer who has worked in many of the major Scottish theatres. She is currently performing in Ena Lamont Stewart's 'Men Should Weep', a moving and funny portrayal of impoverished 1930s Glasgow, written in 1947. It was voted one of the top hundred plays of the 20th century in the NT2000 millennium poll. 'Men Should Weep' is at the Lyttelton Theatre. John Stewart began his career in photography in the 1950s, having previously served in the British army during WWII, including three and a half years as a Japanese POW. His first ever portrait was of Picasso, followed by Matisse. His photographs have appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Life and Esquire and in museums and major collections around the world. Now in his nineties, he has his first major retrospective in London at the Wilmotte Gallery at Lichfield Studios, Notting Hill, which will feature forty never before seen still life images, spanning his 60 year career. Pianist Ann Martin-Davis and her duo partner, soprano Susan Legg, discovered previously unheard, unperformed and unrecorded music by lost composer, Peter Pope. For the next two years they played musical detective, eventually discovering that Pope gave up his promising composing for love and religion. They've released an album 'Heaven-Haven - The Songs of Peter Pope' (on Nimbus records), and will be touring with Pope's song-cycle 'Five Landscapes'; a setting of the T.S. Eliot poetry of the same name, as part of their latest programme Landscape which they will be performing in extreme locations throughout next year.