Front Row: Archive 2011 - Robin Hood at the RSC, Tracy Chevalier and Joanna Trollope

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The Heart of Robin Hood is the new family show at the RSC. But it's the Robin Hood story with a twist. The production is directed by Gisli Örn Gardarsson, who has a reputation for challenging staging. Andrew Dickson reviews.

Novelists Joanna Trollope and Tracy Chevalier discuss how a selection of Tudor portraits of unknown people at the National Portrait Gallery in London inspired them to invent fictional biographies for the mystery portrait sitters.

Professional double-bass player Andy Wood and percussion instrument maker Paul Jefferies discuss making music out of scrap, and perform with instruments including a boiler double bass and tea urn snare drum. The challenge, to be shown in a BBC4 documentary, was to build a Scrapheap Orchestra in 11 weeks and perform Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture at the 2011 Proms.

And John Wilson concludes his reports on the Turner-Prize-shortlisted artists when he meets painter George Shaw, whose landscapes feature the area of Coventry where he grew up.

Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Published on Friday, 2nd December 2011.

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