22/01/2011

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests playwright Mark Ravenhill, critic and academic Maria Delgado and novelist Michael Arditti review the week's cultural highlights including Black Swan.

Natalie Portman stars as Nina - a timid but ambitious young ballerina - in Darren Aronofsky's film Black Swan. Cast as the lead in Swan Lake, her struggle to find the necessary sensuality to play Odile, the black swan, leads her into some very dark places indeed.

David Vann follows up his critically-acclaimed first book - Legend of a Suicide - with a novel: Caribou Island. Gary and Irene are a couple whose 30-year-long marriage is unravelling in the wilderness of Alaska as Gary pursues his dream of building a cabin on a remote island.

Nina Raine spent three months observing doctors and surgeons at work for her play Tiger Country, which has opened at Hampstead Theatre in London. Set in a hospital, it features a hard-bitten registrar who is forced to care more and a junior doctor who is trying to care less.