Front Row: Archive 2011

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.