Watch out for ...

DOMHNALL GLEESON, who will star as a smalltown doctor in director Lenny Abrahamson’s film version of Sarah Waters’ ghost story The Little Stranger. The novel, set in the late Forties, has been adapted by Lucinda Coxon, who wrote the screenplay for The Danish Girl, Tom Hooper’s brilliant film about a different kind of marriage. Abrahamson said he will make the picture in Britain next summer. ‘It’s an intelligent film that doesn’t have super-heroes or schlock,’ he told me. Abrahamson has a hit with the film Room, starring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. It was very successful at the recent Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Room will be shown at the BFI London Film Festival on October 11 to 13.

SALLY MESSHAM (above), who graduated from Rada this year and who makes a stunning professional stage debut as Nancy in Laura Wade’s adaptation of another Sarah Waters’ book, Tipping The Velvet. Ms Messham’s performance is a tour de force. She’s on stage throughout and transforms from the gauche daughter of an oyster farmer to music hall performer to street walker to rich woman’s plaything and, finally, to the stage, where she can work out what love means for her. The company includes Laura Rogers, Adelle Leonce, Amanda Hadingue, Sarah Vezmar and David Cardy, and they’re directed and choreographed by Lyndsey Turner and Alistair David. The play is in previews at the Lyric, Hammersmith, and following its West London run will transfer to the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, from October 28.

RICHARD FLEESHMAN (right), Janie dee, Jamie Parker, anne Reid, alistair Brammer, caroline sheen and laura Pitt-Pulford, who are part of the company celebrating the music of Jerry herman, stephen sondheim and Jule styne in a one-night only concert, Kings Of Broadway, being put together by conductor alex Parker and director alastair Knights at the Palace Theatre, london, on november 29. Tickets via 08444 829 676 and nimaxtheatres.com.

SARA STEWART, Shaun Dooley, Finty Williams and Hari Dhillon, who star in a revival of Donald Margulies’s 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Dinner With Friends, which Tom Attenborough will direct at the Park Theatre, Finsbury Park, North London, from October 27. I caught the original New York production of this ‘uncomfortable, but also funny’ (as Attenborough put it) comedy drama, about a couple (Stewart and Dooley) forced to re-examine their 12-year marriage when the relationship of friends (Dhillon and Williams) unravels and heads for divorce. Stewart and Dooley play food writers, and all their scenes contain commentary on what they’ve eaten (chicken tikka masala at some new hangout) or what they’re about to eat (the lemon, almond and polenta cake they’re preparing for dinner). Margulies’s play was ahead of its time in observing what would come to be known as food porn — posting photos and comments about your meals on social media. I hope Attenborough and his cast can capture the nuances of his work because, as the director told me, ‘it’s about making the most of one’s existence’.

DENISE GOUGH, who asks a question in the final scene of duncan macmillan’s scorching play People, Places and Things at the national’s dorfman Theatre. last Friday, the answer came not from a cast member but from someone in the audience, who shouted: ‘excellent!’ Turns out it was Gough’s mother, and she was shouting for all of us, because denise’s performance as an addict is dynamite. There are negotiations about director Jeremy herrin’s terrific production transferring to a key West end playhouse.