WATCH OUT FOR
NICOLE KIDMAN, Stephen Campbell Moore, Will Attenborough, Edward Bennett, Patrick Kennedy and Joshua Silver — the cast of Anna Ziegler’s play Photograph 51, who will give a special performance of the play, about DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin, at the Noel Coward Theatre on November 19. The play, directed by Michael Grandage opened a month ago and marked Ms Kidman’s return to the stage after an absence of 17 years. The drama has been a triumph for Kidman, Grandage and company. The special gala will raise funds for charities connected with King’s College, where Franklin worked, and Grandage’s production company. King’s will donate to the Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital, while Grandage and partner James Bierman will fund education work through MGC futures. lucy BRiGGS-Owen, Rob Brydon, nikki Patel, Brian Vernal, Ben lloyd-Hughes and Joshua Maguire, who are part of the large cast of Tamsin Oglesby’s play Future conditional which i have just caught up with at the Old Vic as it comes to the end of its run. it’s directed by Matthew warchus, the Old Vic’s new artistic director. it’s set in the world of British education, which sounds dry but it’s done with wit and spark. i was particularly rly taken with Ms Briggs-Owen’s spot-on portrait of a mother caught up in the nightmare of having to find the perfect schools for her perfect children. CARLY BAWDEN (below) who will play the ‘virtual’ Alice in the musical wonder.land by Damon Albarn and Moira Buffini, at the National Theatre from November 23. Director Rufus Norris cast her after Rosalie Craig, who played Alice in an early version of the show at the Manchester International Festival, withdrew to play Rosalind in As You Like It at the NT. Ms Bawden, who starred in Assassins at the Menier Chocolate Factory and My Fair Lady in Sheffield, joins a cast that includes Lois Chimimba, Anna Francolini, Golda Rosheuvel and Paul Hilton. SiMOn RuSSell Beale, who gives a wonderfully comic performance as Samuel Foote in ian Kelly’s play Mr Foote’s Other leg, directed by Richard eyre. it will transfer from Hampstead Theatre to the Theatre Royal Haymarket next month. The cast includes Dervla Kirwan, Jenny Galloway and Frank Barber. Beale portrays Foote, a one-legged actor and writer who raised hell in Georgian london.