28/05/2011

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests literary critic John Carey and writers Natalie Haynes and Sarfraz Manzoor review the cultural highlights of the week. One Man Two Guvnors is Richard Bean's adaptation of Goldoni's 18th century comedy A Servant of Two Masters. Updated to Brighton in the early 60s it's directed by Nicholas Hunter and stars James Corden as the perpetually hungry Francis Henshall - a man who has to go to great lengths to prevent his two employers from meeting. Ann Patchett's novel State of Wonder has echoes of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Marina Singh, working for a US pharmaceutical company, is sent into the Amazonian jungle to track down a rogue researcher and find out what happened to her colleague who was previously assigned the same mission. Heartbeats is French-Canadian director Xavier Dolan's second film. With a nod to the Nouvelle Vague it revolves around Marie and Francis - a pair of twentysomething friends living in Montreal - - whose lives and friendship are disrupted when the attractive but callous Nico appears on the scene. Rockstar - the games developer behind the hugely successful Grand Theft Auto franchise - have brought gaming to the mean streets of postwar Los Angeles with LA Noire. The player rises through the police ranks as Cole Phelps (voiced by Mad Men actor Aaron Staton), investigating a series of murders and unearthing the corruption at the heart of the booming city. Richard Long has been practicing his idiosyncratic style of land art for more than four decades. His latest show - Human Nature at the Haunch of Venison in London - comprises work which has taken him to China, South Africa and his own home turf of Dartmoor. It appears alongside an exhibition by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone whose work also explores the relationship between man and nature Producer: Torquil MacLeod.