\nBy Clemence Poesy the Harry Potter star, has been picked to play Richard II\u2019s Queen in an epic film based on Shakespeare\u2019s historical play about the battle for the English crown.<\/p>\n Ben Whishaw, who performed a landmark Hamlet for Trevor Nunn at the Old Vic, will play the monarch who believes he has the divine right to be King.<\/p>\n Clemence, who has appeared in Harry Potter films as Fleur Delacour and who will be seen again in that role in the final Potter screen instalment The Deathly Hallows 2, is in the final stages of negotiations to play Isabella, Richard\u2019s French-born Queen.<\/p>\n A regal pose: Clemence has been picked to play Richard II’s Queen Isabella in an epic film based on Shakespeare’s play about the battle for the English crown<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Director Rupert Goold, making his first major film, will shoot the BBC TV project in June and July.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Goold made a screen version of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart, based on the production he directed at Chichester, and then in the West End and on Broadway, but that was very much a play that was filmed.<\/p>\n His Richard II, though, will be opened out and shot like a proper movie. The drama will boast scale and grandeur. To that end, Andrew McAlpine, who designed An Education and Made In Dagenham, has been contracted as production designer and he, along with Goold and producers Ben Stephenson and Rupert Ryle-Hodges for the BBC, and Sam Mendes and Pippa Harris for Neal Street Productions, are considering using locations such as St David\u2019s Cathedral in Pembrokeshire and Ely Cathedral in Cambridge.<\/p>\n Rory Kinnear, who received a best actor nomination for his acclaimed Hamlet at the National Theatre, has been chosen to play the ambitious aristocratic warrior Bolingbroke, who ruthlessly seizes the throne from Richard.<\/p>\n Kinnear\u2019s on tour with\u00a0 Hamlet in Luxembourg tonight and the production, directed by Nicholas Hytner, returns to the National \u2014 this time to the Lyttelton \u2014 for a short final run from April 12.<\/p>\n Whishaw, a brilliant Shakepearean thespian, comes directly from shooting another BBC drama, The Hour, set in the world of Fifties TV, with Dominic West and Romola Garai. <\/p>\n Clemence, by the way, has made several films here and in Europe. The best, though, was Martin McDonagh\u2019s\u00a0 delicious black comedy In Bruges\u00a0 with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes.<\/p>\n The BBC will also make films for BBC2 about Richard II\u2019s successors, Henry IV \u2014 Parts 1 and 2 \u2014 and Henry V.<\/p>\n Richard Eyre will direct the Henry IV films, with Simon Russell Beale, an associate producer of all four pictures, as the larger-than-life Jack Falstaff.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jane Asher wants to pay tribute to the woman who changed the taste of British cookery<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jane Asher has been poring over Elizabeth\u00a0 David\u2019s cookbooks, looking for a dish to recreate on stage.<\/p>\n The actress and party-cake entrepreneur plans to portray the famous food writer who, in the post-war years until she died in 1992, helped to change the flavour of British cooking, with books that covered everything from Mediterranean cuisine to ice cream (Harvest Of The Cold Months).<\/p>\n Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Hugh Whitemore is writing the stage play, which he has titled Some Rather Special Dinner Parties. A director and producing partners are being approached and the hope is that the show will begin performances by the end of the autumn.<\/p>\n Jane had thought it might be a one-woman piece, but she told me Whitemore has written a two-act drama for four, possibly even five, actors and the production will include a functioning kitchen.<\/p>\n \u2018I\u2019ll be looking through some of her recipes and I want the smell of olive oil and garlic wafting along the stage,\u2019 the actress, who founded the Party Cakes shop in Chelsea, told me.<\/p>\n \u2022 Sarah Lancashire, Reece Shearsmith and Adrian Scarborough (fresh from his win at the MasterCard Olivier Awards, where he won for After The Dance), who begin preview performances\u00a0 tomorrow night at the Novello Theatre in Betty Blue Eyes, a musical adaptation of the Alan Bennett and Malcolm Mowbray film A Private Function.<\/p>\n Who’s a pretty porker then? Jack Edwards and the shows most protected star Betty in Betty Blue Eyes <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The story, directed by Richard Eyre, is set in 1947 as the country is about to celebrate the nuptials of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. <\/p>\n My goodness \u2014 I\u2019ve forgotten to mention the show\u2019s porcine star Betty. Cameron Mackintosh has become most protective of his leading lady, even though she\u2019s a bit of a sow.<\/p>\n George Stiles and Anthony Drewe have written the score and lyrics with a book by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman. I\u2019ve heard some songs and I\u2019m aware I\u2019ve been humming the title number all day! <\/p>\n \u2022\u2009Marcus Brigstocke, the comic actor\u00a0 from TV\u2019s The Savages and Vacant Possession, who will play stationmaster Perks when stage show The Railway Children chugs back into Waterloo Station from June 18.<\/span><\/p>\n The production opened last year, alongside real train track, and became an instant success.\u00a0 Last Sunday it won the Olivier Award for best entertainment. Call 0871 297 0740 for ticket info.<\/p>\n \u2022\u2009Daniel Kaluuya, the hot young actor who was in Roy Williams\u2019s play Sucker Punch at the Royal Court and is in the much-anticipated movie Johnny\u00a0 English Reborn. He is in talks to star with Iain De Caestecker (from TV\u2019s Lip Service and Coronation Street) in BBC3 series The Fades, which someone described as like The Misfits, but set in the afterworld. The producers of the six-part comedy drama are saying the show deals with \u2018humans and their dead\u2019, \u2018racial intolerance\u2019 and \u2018enviromental evolution\u2019. Well, it\u2019s written by Jack Thorne, who penned The Scouting Book For Boys (one of last year\u2019s best movies) and Skins, and who just won a Royal Television Society Award, along with Shane Meadows, for Channel 4\u2019s This Is England \u201986, so it won\u2019t be dull.<\/p>\n On the up: Tuppence Middleton is an up-and-coming actress to watch out for<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2022\u2009Tuppence Middleton, who will star with Alexandra Roach in Iain Softley\u2019s new film Trap For Cinderella, which begins shooting next month. Both Tuppence and Alexandra are fast-rising young actresses. Tuppence was in the film Tormented, while Alexandra has been portraying the young Margaret Thatcher opposite Meryl Streep, who plays the former Prime Minister in and out of high office in The Iron Lady. Dixie Linder and Robert Jones are producing the movie about a woman (Tuppence) who wakes from a coma needing to discover what has happened to her friend Do. Their stories are then told in flashback.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2022 Peter Land, who I\u2019ve seen in everything from Noel And Gertie, Life Of Galileo, Cabaret and Phantom Of The Opera. Peter will star in his new cabaret show Now Or Never, directed by choreographer-director Gillian Lynne at the King\u2019s Head Theatre, North London, on Sunday and the following three Sundays to April 10. New Zealand-born Land will use Now Or Never as a fundraising benefit for the victims of the Christchurch earthquake.<\/p>\n \u2022 Joshua McGuire, who will play Hamlet at Shakespeare\u2019s Globe Theatre for director Dominic Dromgoole from April 23. Joshua was one of the ensemble who appeared in the Royal Court\u2019s controversial play, Posh, last year. That drama was the actor\u2019s London debut and he has gone from strength to strength since then. Playing Hamlet is a pretty good sign that you\u2019ve arrived.<\/span><\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
\nBaz Bamigboye<\/a>
Last updated at 1:12 AM on 18th March 2011<\/p>\nJane’s cookery role takes the cake<\/h2>\n
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