19/02/2011

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests novelists Terence Blacker and Deborah Moggach and theatre writer David Benedict review the week's cultural highlights including Anna Nicole.

Anna Nicole is a new opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Richard Thomas, starring Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna Nicole Smith - the Texan waitress and Playboy pin-up who acheived fame and notoriety when she married an 89 year old oil billionaire.

Tim Pears' novel Disputed Land is narrated by Theo, looking back on a childhood Christmas when his entire family was summoned to his grandparents' house in Shropshire for reasons which were not immediately obvious.

The jumping off point for Enda Walsh's play Penelope is the fate of the suitors who were vying for the hand of Odysseus's wife in Homer's epic poem. Here there are four of them remaining, with expanding waistlines and receding hairlines, occupying an empty swimming pool ouside Penelope's house and wooing her via CCTV.

Robert Popper's new comedy on Channel 4 - Friday