The Girl on The Train, Travesties, Picasso Portraits, Nicotine, Divorce

The Girl on The Train starring British actress Emily Blunt is based on Paula Hawkins's best selling thriller which has sold more than 10 million copies world wide. The film is set in New York, rather than London, and explores the voyeuristic obsessions of its alcoholic central character as she observes her former neighbourhood from a train window on her daily commute. Tom Stoppard wrote Travesties in 1974, inspired by the true story of James Joyce's involvement in a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest in Zurich in 1917. A revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory is directed by Patrick Marber and stars Tom Hollander as Henry Carr the British consular official who played Algernon and fell out with Joyce during the production. A major exhibition of portraits by Pablo Picasso opens at the National Portrait Gallery, with over 80 portraits by the artist in all media including the Cubist portrait from 1910 of the German art dealer and early champion of Picasso's work Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. In Nicotine by Nell Zing - whose work is admired by Jonathan Franzen - the author sets her third novel in a house in New Jersey inhabited by a group of anarchist smokers, united in defense of their right to smoke. When Penny Baker inherits the house from her father she becomes enmeshed in the political fervor and commitment of her fellow squatters. And in Divorce, a new Sky Atlantic TV drama written by Sharon Horgan, Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Frances, a woman who suddenly begins to reassess her life and her marriage, and finds that making a clean break and a fresh start is harder than she thought. Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Kamila Shamsie, Tim Lott and Charlotte Mullins. The producer was Hilary Dunn.