Watch out for

CLAIRE van Kampen, who is adapting her stage play Farinelli And The King, which starred her husband Mark Rylance, into a film. Ms van Kampen (pictured with Rylance) told me that Steven Spielberg saw the play and ‘he’s mentoring me on the screenplay’. She added that she would love to see the movie version made within the next two to three years. She met the film-maker on the set of The BFG, where Spielberg was directing the movie in which Rylance plays the main character. Ms van Kampen says the stage play of Farinelli, which originated at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe, would be opening in New York in November, with Rylance again playing the Spanish king Philippe V who cannot

sleep until he is ‘soothed’ by the voice of castrato Carlo Broschi, who was known as Farinelli. GARY BARLOW, who will join the cast of The Girls musical at the Lowry Theatre in Salford for the show’s final performance on January 30. Barlow, who wrote songs for The Girls with Tim Firth, is currently working in the U.S. but will return for the last night at the Lowry, where he will sing Dare — one of my favourite songs from the production. The Girls is based on the Calendar Girls’ story of how members of the Rylstone Women’s Institute raised funds for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research by posing nude for a calendar. Producers David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers will continue to work on it until they deem it ready to transfer to the West End.