\nBy Ralph Fiennes, who has used malevolent powers as the evil Lord Voldemort, will conjure up a more benign magic when he plays Shakespeare\u2019s Prospero on the London stage this autumn.<\/p>\n The award-winning star will play the good wizard in The Tempest\u00a0 for director Trevor Nunn at the Haymarket Theatre. (Nunn is in the\u00a0 process of casting other major parts in the play.)<\/p>\n Fiennes has been contracted to do a ten-week season, from August 27. The decision to return to the\u00a0 London stage for the first time in three years comes at a busy time for the 48-year-old actor.<\/p>\n Working round the clock: Vanessa Redgrave with Ralph Fiennes at the premiere of his movie Coriolanus <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ralph Fiennes<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He made a spectacular debut as a film director with a raw, incisive and thrilling adaptation of Coriolanus, set on a modern-day urban battlefield.<\/p>\n Fiennes also plays the title role, with Vanessa Redgrave giving a\u00a0 powerful performance as his mother Volumnia, and Gerard Butler the best he has been on screen in years as his rival, Tullus Aufidius. <\/p>\n The fast-rising young actress\u00a0 Jessica Chastain plays Fiennes\u2019s screen wife (she\u2019s also excellent in John Madden\u2019s film The Debt).<\/p>\n Almost as soon as he comes out of The Tempest, Fiennes will begin preparations for the new James\u00a0 Bond film, which begins shooting in December. T<\/p>\n his column was first to reveal that Fiennes had met with his old friend Sam Mendes, who is directing the latest 007 thriller (which has the working title Sam Mendes Bond 23), about starring with Daniel Craig in the picture.<\/p>\n The actor\u2019s last foray as Voldemort will be in Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2, which opens here on July 7.<\/p>\n Fiennes also plays a British Prime Minister in David Hare\u2019s BBC TV spy film Page Eight, which will be shown later this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Benedict Cumberbatch, star of Sherlock Holmes on TV, is in talks to make his Broadway debut.<\/p>\n The actor, who can be seen at the Olivier playing the creature and his creator in Danny Boyle\u2019s sold-out production of Frankenstein, has begun preliminary discussions with New York producer Stuart Thompson about leading Thea Sharrock\u2019s National Theatre production of Terence Rattigan\u2019s After The Dance to Manhattan next spring.<\/p>\n Negotiations have been described to me as being \u2018very serious\u2019, and Cumberbatch is keen to play on Broadway but wants his fellow performers Nancy Carroll and Adrian Scarborough \u2014 both of whom won Olivier Awards for their roles in After The Dance \u2014 to repeat their performances in New York, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n Heading for the bright lights? Benedict Cumberbatch, left, has been starring in Frankenstein with Jonny Lee Miller, but could be heading overseas<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Leading man: Cumberbatch won rave reviews for his Sherlock<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There hasn\u2019t been a Rattigan on Broadway since The Deep Blue Sea played there in 1998. And as far as I can tell, After The Dance has never been performed on the Great White Way.<\/p>\n Sharrock\u2019s exploration of Rattigan\u2019s story, about a married couple who can\u2019t find the words to say \u2018I love you\u2019 to each other, was heartbreaking and the three lead performances have stayed with me.<\/p>\n Cumberbatch and Carroll played writer David Scott-Fowler and his wife Joan, with Scarborough as their close friend, John Reid. The U.S. producers are seeking permission from American Equity for the three leads to perform, before casting can be officially announced.<\/p>\n A spokesman for one of the actors cautioned that \u2018it\u2019s by no means a done deal yet\u2019. Both pictures are expected to be among the next round of serious Oscar contenders. Betty Blue Eyes is a\u00a0 porcine marvel. She flutters her eyelashes and steals your heart.<\/p>\n How is this so when, really,\u00a0 Betty\u2019s just an animatronic animal? <\/p>\n It\u2019s because she has been given life, and heart, by Ron Cowen, Daniel Lipman, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe \u2014 the writers, composer and lyricist of Betty Blue Eyes, a musical adaptation of Alan Bennett\u2019s black comedy A Private Function, set during the post-war austerity years in an\u00a0 England still on rations.<\/p>\n Enchanting: Betty may be an animatronic but she’s stolen our hearts<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Betty, who is being reared illegally for a feast to celebrate the nuptials of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, isn\u2019t the show\u2019s only star.<\/p>\n Sarah Lancashire was a revelation to me as the snooty wife of Reece Shearsmith\u2019s\u00a0 chiropodist. And Ann Emery, as \u2018Mother Dear\u2019, almost steals the production from everyone, including the pig.<\/p>\n Director Richard Eyre and\u00a0 choreographer Stephen Mear are busy refining, adding and\u00a0 subtracting \u2014 all the things you do during previews.<\/p>\n Squeal: This adorable pig has won over her audience<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Adrian Scarborough is terrific as Wormwold, the Nazi-esque food inspector.<\/p>\n He has a song-and-dance number called Painting By Heart that, at Monday night\u2019s preview, included a chorus waving green light wands. The number was too much, I felt, and the wands seemed incongruous. But I\u2019m\u00a0 told they\u2019ve already been butchered.<\/p>\n The show, at the Novello\u00a0 Theatre, looks back fondly to a time when the country was still under the cosh and folks had to knuckle down. Cheap cuts of\u00a0 meat that we turn our noses up at nowadays were rare treats back then.<\/p>\n But there are plenty of similarities to today, too, with most of us having to tighten our belts and make a little go a long way.<\/p>\n Producer Cameron Mackintosh and his creative team are still shaping Betty (the play, not the pig), and by opening night it will be better than when I saw\u00a0it.<\/p>\n And I have a sense that if they don\u2019t muck it up, Betty Blue Eyes could be the King\u2019s Speech of London theatre. Because, frankly, it\u2019s adorable.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
\nBaz Bamigboye<\/a>
Last updated at 1:25 AM on 25th March 2011<\/p>\n![\"Working](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/5741cf2a149_468x315.jpg.jpg\")
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Cumberbatch, with on-screen colleague Martin Freeman, won rave reviews for the BBC Sherlock dramas when they were shown in the U.S., and by next March he should be even better known, thanks to his role in Steven\u00a0 Spielberg\u2019s War Horse and Tomas Alfredson\u2019s Tinker\u00a0 Tailor Soldier Spy movie. <\/p>\n
Cumberbatch and Freeman will film three more Sherlock episodes this year. Freeman has been allowed a break from playing Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson\u2019s mammoth two-part Hobbit project, which has\u00a0 just started filming in New Zealand, to shoot the shows.<\/p>\n![\"Enchanting:](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/7e8f83cb186_468x286.jpg.jpg\")
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