If talks progress and a deal can be concluded, Nicole would star in After The Dance as Rattigan’s tragic character Joan Scott-Fowler in a production on Broadway in either the spring or autumn of next year.
An award-winning production of the play ran at the National Theatre in 2010 with Nancy Carroll, who gave a spectacular performance as Joan, and Benedict Cumberbatch as her novelist husband David.
Hitting the stage: Could Nicole Kidman soon be treading the boards again?
After The Dance charts how the Scott-Fowlers married for the hell of it during the rollicking Twenties. Their passions were ruled by their hedonistic lifestyle, not love.
But years later, love does enter the picture and the play becomes a heartbreaking exploration of repressed emotion.
A young, and rather irritating woman decides to take David away from Joan, and Joan is unable to tell her husband how deeply she cares for him.
The NT production, directed by Thea Sharrock, won much acclaim and took four Olivier awards, including best revival and best actress for the luminous Ms Carroll.
Nicole Kidman at the 2012 Australian Academy of Cinema And Television Arts Awards in Los Angeles in January
There has been much discussion about taking it to New York, but Broadway producers don’t want to take a chance on Nancy — which is a scandal.
Although she is one of our best actresses, she is unknown across the pond and producers are scared of mounting plays without the safety net of a big name.
Nicole has been keen to find another theatrical project since Sweet Bird Of Youth, in which she was to play Alexandra Del Lago (aka Princess Kosmonopolis) opposite James Franco, was postponed.
It would be the first time she has been on stage since making her stunning debut, at the Donmar and on Broadway in David Hare’s The Blue Room, directed by Sam Mendes, back in 1998.
Nicole will continue to talk to Ms Sharrock and others involved in the play and firm decisions are expected to be made in the coming months.
First, though, she will join Colin Firth and Jeremy Irvine on the film The Railway Man, as this column exclusively revealed last week.
Nicole and Colin are expected to be at the Cannes Film Festival in May to talk to distributors about The Railway Man and other projects.
Danielle attended the recent opening night of the musical 'Singin' in the Rain'
Danielle Hope sang On My Own from the musical Les Miserables on a TV talent show, little daring to hope that she would end up singing it for real in the West End.
The young singer, who won Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Over The Rainbow series to find a Dorothy for The Wizard Of Oz, will play Eponine in Les Miserables from June 18 at the Queen’s Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue — which means she’ll be able to sing On My Own eight times a week for the next year.
The cast change will also bring in Geronimo Rauch to play Jean Valjean, with Tam Mutu as his nemesis Inspector Javert.
Danielle, 19, wasn’t even born when Les Miserables was staged by Trevor Nunn and John Caird under Cameron Mackintosh’s eagle-eye at the Barbican 26 years ago.
‘Les Miserables is like a training ground,’ Danielle told me. ‘If you want to be in musical theatre, then you have to do Les Miserables. It’s a great way to train.’
The young star said she was particularly taken by Eponine’s tale of unrequited love, which is what makes On My Own so moving.
She said she learnt a lot working opposite Michael Crawford in The Wizard Of Oz at the London Palladium. Sadly, the Palladium box office has plummeted to red-for-danger levels since she and Crawford left the show last month.
Danielle starts rehearsals on May 14 and is looking forward to being in Les Miz during the Olympic season in London.
Cameron Mackintosh said she is the third actress he’d chosen to play Eponine to have come out of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s TV star-search programmes. The others are Nancy Sullivan and Samantha Barks, who were in the Oliver! show I’d Do Anything.
Ms Barks is playing Eponine in the film of Les Miserables, which started shooting on locations in southern France yesterday.
Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alain Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer have written a new song for the movie called Suddenly.
The Sundance London Film festival runs at the O2 from April 26 to 29, and of the 14 movies to be screened, I’ve particularly enjoyed Liberal Arts, with Josh Radnor as a professor who returns to his old college and can’t resist becoming friends with the fabulous Elizabeth Olsen.
