Mad Men meets Hitchcock - it will go down a storm! Mark Strong and Hope Davis to star in the Red Barn 

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A new play by David Hare, described as Mad Men meets Alfred Hitchcock, has attracted two top-flight actors.

Mark Strong, who won awards for his towering performance in A View From The Bridge at the Young Vic and on Broadway, will star with American actress Hope Davis in The Red Barn - Hare’s adaptation of Georges Simenon’s novel La Main.

Strong spent 12 years concentrating on film and TV projects before being tempted back to the stage two years ago by the role of Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller’s tragedy.

Mark Strong (left) will star with American actress Hope Davis (right)  in The Red Barn a new play by David Hare

Davis, who portrayed Hillary Clinton in the TV drama The Special Relationship, is one of America’s most talented thespians. 

She told me she’s packing up her family (husband, two children and dog) and moving them from their home on the East Coast to South London, so she can be in the play, which will run at the National Theatre from October 6.

When Hare was developing the drama — about two couples who get lost in a blizzard in Connecticut after their car breaks down — he and producer Scott Rudin asked Davis to read the text so they could see how it played.

‘It reminded me of an Alfred Hitchcock film,’ she told me yesterday. ‘And I wrote to David and said I couldn’t stop thinking about it.’ 

She agreed with the play’s director Robert Icke, that the psychological thriller also had a Mad Men vibe. 

Icke joked: ‘In the Sixties, upper-middle class Americans were drunk all the time — just like Jon Hamm’s character in Mad Men.’ Davis concurred. 

The Red Barn will be directed by Robert Icke (pictured, at the Evening Standard awards)

‘It was set at that time when everyone — except the character I play, who tries to keep it all together — just drank and smoked all day.’

She said Simenon wrote his book, La Main, after living in the U.S.; and the sense of paranoia prevalent at the time of the Cold War was woven into the tale using Hitchcock’s key elements.

Davis will be making her British stage debut with The Red Barn. However she’s no stranger to British theatre. She spent several months in London as a student, and managed to see 50 productions, including Hare’s classic political satire Pravda. 

It was during that trip that she decided that she wanted to be an actress. ‘But I wanted to be an English actress, in England!’ she said.

Icke, who will also be directing forthcoming productions of Mary Stuart and Hamlet (with Andrew Scott) at the Almeida, said it was difficult to discuss The Red Barn without giving too much away. Though he did allow that when the four people walk into the blizzard, one of them vanishes.

‘The thing Simenon said was that it only takes one small thing to go wrong for your whole life to fall apart. Everyone’s emotional life is fragile,’ he said, intriguingly.

Hare has added more twists and turns to Simenon’s blueprint, to ramp up the tension.

The run at the National’s Lyttelton could be followed by a season in the West End, and on Broadway, if it works on the South Bank.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX LOVE AND... CHEATING

Ruta Gedmintas was chatting about relationships, betrayal — and propositioning an older married man.

It was an innocent conversation, about a play by Owen McCafferty called Unfaithful, in which she will appear with Matthew Lewis, Niamh Cusack and Sean Campion. However, Ruta was about to board a flight to the U.S., so I hope any fellow passengers who overheard her didn’t get the wrong idea.

The actress, whose breakthrough role came in Guillermo Del Toro’s vampire TV series The Strain, explained that McCafferty’s intricate play is about two couples: one in their 20s; the other in their 50s.

Ruta Gedmintas will appear with Matthew Lewis (both pictured) in an Owen McCafferty play called Unfaithful at the Found111 theatre in London

‘Both have trouble with the mundanities of modern life. They haven’t got access to opportunities that could provide them with extra excitement,’ she said, carefully.

So Tara (Ruta’s character), who is mightily fed up with her job at a supermarket, thinks cheating on her boyfriend will make her happier. ‘It’s heart-wrenching,’ said Ruta of the play, which will run from August 26 at the off-West End theatre Found111 (the old Central St Martins School of Art in Soho).

Meanwhile, Lewis plays a young man who has a liaison with an older woman. The actor, who played loyal Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films, suggested that Unfaithful could also be seen as a meditation on sex. ‘What does it mean to different people?’ he said.

Lewis said that because his first acting experience involved playing one role: Neville — for a decade — he likes to take on as many characters as possible. Which is why he did Ripper Street for just two seasons; appeared in the last series of the BBC’s brilliant Happy Valley; and enjoyed a few days on a new film, Terminal, with Margot Robbie.

But it’s clear the Harry Potter film cast is still very much a family. Lewis said that after Emma Watson saw Harry Potter And The Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre, she texted him, telling him he must see the play. And so he should.