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Sean Hayes, from Will & Grace, on his Tony Award-winning stage show Good Night, Oscar

Sean Hayes' play opens in London and how composer Shostakovich survived Stalin's purges.

Tom Sutcliffe speaks to Sean Hayes, best known for his role as Jack in Will and Grace. Now he's playing pianist Oscar Levant in Broadway hit Good Night Oscar, which has just opened at the Barbican in London.

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No 5 under massive pressure, having been denounced by Stalin the year before during the great purge of 1936. The success of Symphony No 5 saved his career, and now it's being performed from memory by the Aurora Orchestra for the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Proms. Nicholas Collon, Conductor of the Aurora Orchestra and Professor Marina Frolovo-Walker discuss.

K-Pop Demon Hunters has just become the most successful animation ever on Netflix, and the show’s music, by a fictional band, has made it to number one in charts both sides of the Atlantic. The ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½'s Julie Yoonnyung Lee tells us about the surprising trend of 2025.

Two playwrights on the Edinburgh fringe are putting white supremacy under the spotlight: Priyanka Shetty’s #Charlottesville, and Gabriel Jason Dean’s play Rift. Both draw on the personal experiences of their writers. Priyanka and Gabriel join us on the line from Edinburgh.

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43 minutes

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  • Tue 5 Aug 2025 19:15

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