Lizzy the cross-country runner

• YahooTV now does list Ms Ehle among the cast of The Russell Girl and lists this brief synopsis:

A woman returns to her small home town to deal with the news that she has leukemia. Once home, she literally comes face-to-face with a unresolved trauma from her past in the form of her old neighbor. Together the two women must finally confront each other and face the tragedy from years ago in order to forge a healthy future.

• David Hinkley of the New York Daily News considers Jane Austen's appeal in the twenty-first century, praising the ability of her 'chaste' and 'proper' characters to "make Dora the Explorer look like Paris Hilton." Pride and Prejudice's Andrew Davies meanwhile emphasises the physical aspect of Austen:

These are stories about young men and women at a very crucial time in their lives, when they're boiling over with hormones ...[Elizabeth Bennet] runs everywhere... And I think that running everywhere in Jane Austen is a key for being highly sexed, not having enough to do with your body.

Hinkley also mentions that more than one Pride and Prejudice musical is in the works. Slightly worrying thought indeed!

• If you are in the vicinity of NYC, Playbill announces that Tom Stoppard will be taking part in a Times Talks event on October 26. The talk is entitled Can Art Change the World? and is coinciding with Rock 'n' Roll which is on its way to Broadway. The event is taking place at TheTimesCenter, 242 West 41st Street, Friday 26 October at 6pm. Go to ticketweb.com for tickets. Variety lists the play as one of four 'tentpoles' that it thinks will hold up Broadway's 'tent' this season. Lastly on the subject of Sir Tom, Variety's Sam Thielman reviews the three-in-one show Stoppard Goes Electric, the opening of which was so packed "that the house crew had to bring in extra folding chairs." This fact prompted Mr Thielman to advise 'genius Mad Tom' that if he "has written something that he doesn't want staged - a loan application, a grocery list - he should set fire to it, and soon." Sound advice.

• BroadwayWorld announces that casting for Cymbeline at Lincoln Center is now complete. The project is involving three ex-Utopians - Martha Plimpton, Brian MacDevitt and Adam Dannheisser. Previews begin November 1 at the Vivian Beaumont theater.



• Mr Crudup meanwhile will be taking part in 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, a benefit performance to be held on October 22 at the American Airlines Theater. See Broadway.com for fascinating details of the mammoth schedule. It sounds unbelievably daunting, although Utopia marathons were surely apt preparations!