13 December 2002

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This week the panel discussed:

Sophie's Choice at the Royal Opera House

It was a VHS of Meryl Streep's 1981 movie Sophie's Choice - adapted from William Styron's novel - which inspired the composer Nicholas Maw to write the work which opened this week at the Royal Opera House in London. Publicity for the production has focused on its high-profile conductor, Sir Simon Rattle.

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Dirty Pretty Things
Stephen Knight was one of the creators of the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? But - in his debut as a screenplay writer - Knight has examined an even more painful way of making money than putting up with Chris Tarrant's play-acting: selling your kidneys. Dirty Pretty Things is directed by Stephen Frears who had success in 1985 with the movie My Beautiful Laundrette.

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The Vortex at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in London

A revival of Noel Coward's play The Vortex. The play made the reputation of the then 25-year-old writer when it was staged in 1924 and - though Coward later became known for light comedy and cabaret songs - The Vortex was considered a dangerous play because of its depiction of sex and cocaine among the upper-classes.

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Wit
Emma Thomson plays an English professor - an expert on the poetry of John Donne - who is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. In this American TV version of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Thomson is directed again by Mike Nichols - with whom she worked on Primary Colors - as she plays a woman trying to force a mind trained in intellectual theory to face terrible reality. Wit will be screened 17 December at 9pm on BBC2.

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The panel were:

• Mark Lawson
• Ian Rankin
• Jeanette Winterson
• Phillip Hensher

Newsnight Review, BBC Two's weekly cultural round-up, follows Newsnight on Friday evenings at 2300 GMT.