Watch out for . .

MARGARET ATWOOD, the novelist with a rockstar following, who will give the keynote speech at the flipside festival at Snape Maltings in Suffolk next friday. Atwood has been writing for half a century, but the phenomenal critical (and ratings) success of the television version of her 1985 dystopian novel The handmaid’s Tale has made her more celebrated than ever. (She was at the Emmys when the drama took top honours.) I hope festival audience members get to ask her about Sarah Polley’s six-part Netflix TV adaptation of her 1996 murder mystery Alias Grace. If that takes off, Atwood will be speaking at stadiums next.

RACHEL LUMBERG, Alison Fitzjohn, Emily Joyce, Jayne McKenna and the lads from Five To Five who lead Tim Firth’s new musical The Band, with the music of Take That, on a UK tour that opened at the Opera House, Manchester, this week. The show has generated ticket sal far for the tour that next year. It doesn’t Sondheim — it’s just entertainment. It sh business on the road believe its audience prices if it moves to

MARTIN fREEM Greig (who had j

les of £15 million so will stretch into t pretend to be a joyous piece of hould do terrific d, but I don’t e will pay the high the West End.

MaN and tamsin just two and a half weeks to learn her lines), who are on brilliant comic form in James graham’s new play Labour of Love, which the Michael grandage company and Headlong are staging at the Noel coward theatre. graham contrasts old and new Labour in a traditional mining constituency; and was still shaping and trimming his piece when i caught the first preview on Wednesday night. He told me he wanted to feed in some lines from Jeremy corbyn’s party conference speech in time for next week’s official first night.