16/06/2012

Tom Sutcliffe and his guests novelists Linda Grant and Adam Mars Jones and writer Bidisha review the week's cultural highlights including David Cronenberg's film Cosmopolis.

GATZ is Elevator Repair Service's stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby in which every word of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel is read and acted by the occupants of a drab American office. Scott Shepherd plays a man who, arriving at his desk and finding his computer unresponsive, picks up a paperback copy of the book and starts reading it aloud.

David Cronenberg's film Cosmopolis is an adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2003 novel and stars Robert Pattinson as Eric Packer - a billionaire financial whiz-kid who is travelling across Manhattan to get a haircut in the stretch limo he uses as an office. However, a presidential visit to the city, a rapper's funeral and a threat to Packer's life mean that the journey is far from straightforward.

Indelible Ink by Australian author Fiona McGregor is a novel about Marie King - a 59 year old divorcee facing large changes in her life, including having to sell her beautiful Sydney Harbour home and the garden she has spent years creating. One afternoon, on a drunken impulse, she gets a tattoo and - despite the disapproval of her three children - she goes on to have her skin covered in more and more elaborate designs.

Invisible: Art about the Unseen 1957 - 2012 at the Hayward Gallery in London explores the rich history of intangible art including film of Yves Klein showing the viewer around the blank walls of an empty gallery, Andy Warhol's Invisible Sculpture (comprising a plinth that he once stood next to) and Air by Teresa Margolles - a space cooled by two air-conditioners filled with water previously used to wash murder victims in a Mexican morgue.

Dominic Savage's new drama series for BBC1 - True Love - consists of five short films, all of them set in Margate and all of them created by a process of improvisation. Among the actors creating their own dialogue are David Tennant, Ashley Walters, Billie Piper and David Morrissey.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.