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Steven Hawking's love affair is timeless: Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones have explosive chemistry in new biopic

Published: 16:30 EST, 4 September 2014 | Updated: 19:19 EST, 4 September 2014

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Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones have chemistry with a capital ‘C’ when they appear on screen together in a film about Stephen Hawking and his relationship with his first wife.

Scientists have explored time and space for evidence of black holes.

Film studios have spent billions searching for the right combinations of actors for the big screen.

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Science of love: Eddie Redmayne sizzles on screen with Felicity Jones in a Steven Hawkings biopic

Such experiments are rarely successful. But there’s a powerful reaction when they do work.

The coupling of Redmayne and Jones is such an example. You believe from the minute they dance together — to Martha Reeves And The Vandellas singing Heatwave — that this couple are really in love.

And even when the relationship goes wrong, there’s still a truth in the eyes of both actors.

The film, directed by James Marsh, explores Hawking’s genius, but the heart of the movie is the physics of love, and the mathematical probabilities of happiness.

The Theory Of Everything has its world premiere this weekend at the Toronto International Film festival, and opens in the UK early in the New Year.

I watched Redmayne and Jones on set last year, when they were shooting a scene in which Hawking tries to explain his own theory of evolution using vegetables on a dinner plate.

Even then, I could sense there was real movie magic going on. It wasn’t even the acting. It was about connecting, and ensuring that connection comes across on screen.

I wasn’t all that good at science at school but I do believe in the theory of love. Especially at the movies.

Eddie Redmayne is Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything

Doubles trouble with the City Of Angels' wicked women

Katherine Kelly has joined the show with two roles

I saw a great Fifties movie in Telluride called Wicked Woman and thought of Josie Rourke, artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse Theatre.

Only, I hasten to add, because she is preparing to direct the musical City Of Angels, which features villainous vamps and sultry sirens who would have been at home on the big screen.

Wicked Woman features forgotten star Beverly Michaels as a waitress who falls for a dashing bartender who’s married to the bar’s owner. Oh, dear. What fun.

City Of Angels, too, evokes movies of the Fifties (and Forties), with a screenwriter and a detective getting involved with women they shouldn’t.

The main leads play dual roles. Ms Rourke has cast Rosalie Craig (as Gabby and Bobbi), and Samantha Barks (as real bad girls Avril and Mallory). Now, Katherine Kelly has joined as Carla Haywood and Alaura Kingsley.

It’s Mrs Kingsley who first approaches the show’s Raymond Chandler-esque private eye to help find Mallory, her missing stepdaughter. But Mallory is not keen to be found, unless it’s in bed, with a man.

The show is powered by controlling women and wisecracking men.

City Of Angels was written by Larry Gelbart, one of the funniest men to have worked in tv and film (Tootsie was one of his gems). Cy Coleman wrote the score.

Both are dead now, so Rourke has been spending time with the show’s lyricist David Zippel. She’s also been reading up on her Chandler and Hammett, and viewing Gelbart’s screen output, such as M*A*S*H, to help get a feel for the material.

The women in City Of Angels are in the mould of Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell and Lauren Bacall (who died last month).

Are there any 21st-century equivalents? Scarlett Johansson and Rosario Dawson, Rourke noted instantly, adding that Eva Green ‘is giving fairly good femme fatale’ in Sin City 2.

Hadley Fraser, Tam Mutu and Peter Polycarpou are the leading men in the show, which opens to previews at the Donmar on December 5.

Paul Blake and Mike Bosnor, lead producers of hit Broadway musical Beautiful, based on the music of Carole King and Gerry Goffin, will open the show at the Aldwych Theatre with an all-British cast.

‘It’s not like we’re bringing Carol Channing to do Hello, Dolly,’ Blake told me.

Bosner said the show has made a star of Jessie Mueller, who created the King role on stage in New York. But she’s not known in the UK. ‘We’d like to find a young girl in England to portray Carole,’ Bosner explained.

The show, featuring all the songs associated with King, is strong enough on its own and doesn’t require a big star.

The producers and creative team will visit London this month to decide who to cast in the main role. I gather they have already seen a couple of contenders.

Previews begin on February 10 and the show opens on February 25.

THE UPCOMING FILMS AND EVENTS YOU'VE GOT TO WATCH OUT FOR...

Channing Tatum, who told me his knees will never be the same after the months he spent wrestling in Bennett Miller’s great movie Foxcatcher.

‘And I’ve got a wrestler’s neck, too,’ the actor added, indicating how the muscles had thickened.

Tatum plays Mark Schultz, an Olympic gold medal winner persuaded by ridiculously wealthy John du Pont (Steve Carell, who like Tatum gives the performance of his career) to join his stable of Olympians.

Mark Ruffalo is Mark’s more confident older brother, also a world-class wrestler.

The movie is about class, morality and family, and is a scorching piece of art. It is being shown at the BFI London Film Festival on October 16 and 17.

Channing Tatum headbutts mirror in trailer for Foxcatcher

Damian Szifron’s Wild Tales, one of the hits at the Telluride Film Festival. Szifron gives us six wildly disparate stories, each one featuring someone behaving deliciously badly — at times grossly so.

One segment has a chef lacing someone’s egg and chips with rat poison; another takes road rage to the lowest possible levels.

And there’s a wedding from hell.

The normally well-behaved Telluride Festival-goers clawed their way into the screening.

I see the BFI London Film Festival has just two showings, at small venues.They might want to put on some more. I just hope nobody dies. Laughing, that is.

George Maguire, James Lomas and Liam Mower, the original stage Billy Elliots, who will join the current Billys — Elliott Hanna, Bradley Perret, Matteo Zecca and Ollie Jochim — and 20 other lads who’ve played the role over the years, for a special ‘Mash-up’ finale of the award-winning musical at the Victoria Palace Theatre, London on Sunday, September 28.

Mower will also appear as ‘older’ Billy. Peter Darling, the celebrated choreographer, and director Stephen Daldry are working on a special scene, which will be beamed into cinemas by Universal.