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Christine Baranski says West End debut is a 'dream come true'

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US actress Christine Baranski has said it will be a "dream come true" to make her West End debut later this year, in a new production of Noel Coward's comedy Hay Fever.

The star, best known for Mamma Mia! and legal drama The Good Wife, will appear in the new adaptation opposite Richard E Grant, producers announced on Friday.

Baranski, 73, told BBC News it felt "extraordinary" to be coming to the West End at this stage of her career.

"It's been on my bucket list for years," she said. "It's going to be just wonderful, I can't tell you how excited I am. Believe me, I'm already studying the role, learning my lines, and working to polish an English accent."

The show will run for 12 weeks at the Wyndham's Theatre in London from 22 September.

Speaking to the BBC from New York, Baranski said she had been pining to return to her theatre roots for some time.

"The problem has always been my filming schedule," she explained, "which has not allowed me to carve out enough time to do a play, but if ever there was a play for me to do, it would be this one.

"The skill set involved is so to my liking – dusting off my light comedy skills and doing it with an ensemble cast of actors who are keen to revive Coward in that way."

Grant said he was "delighted" to be returning to the West End after a two-decade gap, and described his co-star Baranski as "sensational".

"Hay Fever premiered in the West End 101 years ago (but who's counting?)," he joked in a statement. "I love the theatre and am thrilled to return to it."

Despite being better known in recent years for Abba musicals and TV dramas, Baranski noted she started out as "predominantly a theatre actress" and initially had "no desire to be a television actor".

But, she recalled, her career "took something of a U-turn" in her early 40s when she was cast in US 1990s sitcom Cybill, starring Cybill Shepherd.

"That really transformed my career, and suddenly I was offered wonderful movie roles," Baranski said. "So to my astonishment, the latter part of my career has been film and mostly television."

The actress received six Emmy Award nominations for her role as Diane Lockhart in The Good Wife, and went on to star in spin-off The Good Fight.

She has also appeared in Chicago, Nine Perfect Strangers, Frasier, The Big Bang Theory, and is currently in HBO period drama The Gilded Age.

"This is the first opportunity where it's clear I have an opening where I will finish The Gilded Age in mid-August, and go into rehearsal for Hay Fever a few days later," she said.

Hay Fever is one of Coward's most enduring comedies, and follows the self-centred Bliss family – retired actress Judith, her novelist husband David, and their children Sorel and Simon.

All four separately invite a guest to stay for the weekend without telling the other family members, setting the scene for a weekend of chaos.

The lead female character has often been played by a British actress – Felicity Kendal took on the role for the show's last West End incarnation in 2015.

It's more unusual for a US actress to play the part, but Coward actually based the character on an American he'd met at a dinner party in 1921.

The playwright was fascinated by Broadway star Laurette Taylor and her abrupt manner with house guests, and based Hay Fever on her family.

"It's the most delightful story," said Baranski of the Taylor connection. "She had a husband named Hartley Manners, and they were so bohemian and so rude.

"Laurette Taylor was a famous and brilliant American actress, and Noel Coward renamed them Hardly Manners," she laughed.

"He was captivated by their rudeness, and he called this play a comedy of appalling manners."

Taylor, who died in 1946, somewhat distanced herself from the portrayal when she saw the show, famously remarking: "None of us is ever unintentionally rude."

Baranski has previously appeared in several other Coward plays, such as Fumed Oak, Private Lives and Blithe Spirit. "So I'm something of a Cowardian," she joked.

"I just love the quicksilver delivery and suave flamboyance of Coward, it's delightful to play."

The actress suggested the enduring popularity of classical plays in the West End and Broadway is down to the dialogue, something she "loves sinking my teeth into".

"Classical plays give you language, the ability to speak it and to give a kind of spin to a sentence that you don't have with modern playwriting," she said.

Grant shot to fame in 1987's Withnail & I, and has more recently appeared in Saltburn, Nuremberg and The Thursday Murder Club.

He and Baranski don't know each other well, but recently met via Zoom. "I was utterly captivated by him," Baranski said. "He's whip smart, wickedly funny."

Emily Burns will direct the new adaptation of Hay Fever, which is being produced by Wessex Grove and Gavin Kalin Productions.

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Dog walker beaten with hockey stick by top horse trainer says his jail term is too soft

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A man who was beaten with a hockey stick by a Grand National trainer while walking a dog on his land has described the sentence as "unduly lenient" and said he was challenging it through official channels.

Martin Dandridge, 72, was repeatedly struck during the night-time assault in Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan, by Richard Evan Rhys Williams, 54, known as Evan Williams.

Dandridge's arm was broken during the attack in December 2024, leaving him with "ongoing pain" in his forearm.

Williams was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday, but Dandridge said he had "challenged the leniency" through a scheme overseen by the Attorney General's office.

In a victim impact statement, Dandridge, from Swindon, said he thought he was "going to die" during the attack.

"That moment is still vivid in my mind," he added.

Dandridge also said the assault has had a lasting physical and mental impact, and that he struggles with "the memory of feeling completely helpless and defenceless".

"Sadly, because of the assault and what has followed, I don't feel like the same person I was before," he said, adding that he still has problems with his left forearm and hand.

Last month, a jury at Cardiff Crown Court found Williams guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

Sentencing him on Tuesday, Recorder Angharad Price described it as an "appalling offence".

"You had a choice that night. You could have waited and let the police deal with the situation but instead you urgently raced to the paddock to deal with it yourself.

"It is never acceptable to take the law into your own hands."

Dandridge told the BBC he believes Williams's sentence was "unduly lenient given the aggravating features in the case", including the fact he had used as a weapon, and the injuries that were caused.

He said he would challenge it through the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme, which allows anyone to request a review of Crown Court sentences if they believe them to be too low.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General's Office said law officers have received a request for Richard Evan Rhys Williams's sentence to be considered under the scheme.

They have 28 days to decide if they think a case is too lenient, and if so can request the Court of Appeal to consider.

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Finance ministers and top bankers raise serious concerns about Mythos AI model

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Finance ministers, central bankers and financiers have expressed serious concerns about a powerful new AI model they fear could undermine the security of financial systems.

The development of the Claude Mythos model by Anthropic has led to crisis meetings, after it found vulnerabilities in many major operating systems.

Experts say it potentially has an unprecedented ability to identify and exploit cyber-security weaknesses – though others caution further testing is needed to properly understand its capabilities.

Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne told the BBC that Mythos had been discussed extensively at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington DC this week.

"Certainly it is serious enough to warrant the attention of all the finance ministers," he said.

"The difference is that the Strait of Hormuz – we know where it is and we know how large it is… the issue that we're facing with Anthropic is that it's the unknown, unknown."

"This is requiring a lot of attention so that we have safeguards, and we have processes in place to make sure that we ensure the resiliency of our financial systems," he added.

Mythos is one of Anthropic's latest models developed as part of its broader AI system called Claude, a rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

It was revealed by Anthropic earlier this month, when developers responsible for testing AI models and their performance of so-called "misaligned" tasks – which go against human values, goals and behaviour – said it was "strikingly capable at computer security tasks".

Citing concerns it could surface old software bugs or find ways to easily exploit system vulnerabilities, Anthropic has not released the model.

Instead it has made Mythos available to tech giants like Amazon Web Services, CrowdStrike, Microsoft and Nvidia as part of an initiative called Project Glasswing – which it calls an "effort to secure the world's most critical software".

On Thursday, Anthropic released a new version of an existing model, Claude Opus, saying it would allow Mythos' cyber capabilities to be tested in less powerful systems.

Concerns raised about Mythos may exceed chatter around previous AI models, but some cyber-security experts have questioned how justified they are – especially given the model has not been tested by the wider industry to see how capable it actually is.

The UK's AI Security Institute has been given access to a preview version of it, and has published the only independent report into the model's cyber-security skills.

Its researchers noted it was a powerful tool able to find many security holes in undefended environments, but suggested Mythos was not dramatically better than Claude's predecessor, Opus 4.

"Our testing shows that Mythos Preview can exploit systems with weak security posture, and it is likely that more models with these capabilities will be developed," the report authors said.

It is also not the first time an AI developer has claimed the capabilities of its models means they should not be released – something critics argue is a tactic to build hype.

In February 2019, OpenAI cited similar fears when it chose to stagger the release of GPT-2, an earlier version of its models which now power its biggest tool ChatGPT.

Top bankers are to be given access to the model in advance to test out their systems.

The chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, told the BBC: "It's serious enough that people have to worry.

"We have to understand it better, and we have to understand the vulnerabilities that are being exposed and fix them quickly."

He added that "this is what the new world is going to be" – referencing a much more connected financial system, with both opportunities and vulnerabilities.

While developer Anthropic has said the model has already exposed multiple security vulnerabilities in some critical operating systems, financial systems and web browsers, governments and banks are being offered access in advance of its public release to help protect their own systems.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey told the BBC the development had to be taken very seriously: "We are having to look very carefully now what this latest AI development could mean for the risk of cyber crime."

He added: "The consequence could be that there is a development of AI, of modelling, which makes it easier to detect existing vulnerabilities in sort of core IT systems, and then obviously cyber criminals – the bad actors – could seek to exploit them."

The US Treasury confirmed it had raised the issue with its major banks encouraging them to test out their systems, before any public release of Mythos by Anthropic.

Financial industry sources indicated that another prominent US AI company could soon release a similarly powerful model but without the same safeguards.

James Wise, a partner at Balderton Capital, is chair of the Sovereign AI unit, a venture capital fund that will invest in British AI companies, backed by £500m of government funding.

He said Mythos is "the first of what will be many more powerful models" that can expose systems' vulnerabilities.

His unit is "investing in British AI companies that are tackling that – companies working in AI security and safety", he told the BBC's Today Programme.

"We hope the models that expose vulnerabilities are also the models which will fix them."

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Can Oli Sykes still scream? Bring Me The Horizon re-recording debut 2006 album

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Rock band Bring Me The Horizon are celebrating 20 years of their debut album by re-recording it – something that has got fans asking questions.

The four-piece from Sheffield started out in 2004 in the deathcore genre, a form of metal known for its heavy and aggressive sound.

Their 2006 debut record Count Your Blessings was very much in that style, but the group's following albums moved towards metalcore, pop and electronic rock.

Despite that, they've been a key part in heavier music breaking through into the mainstream – and last year headlined Reading and Leeds Festival.

Frontman and lead vocalist Oli Sykes told the BBC Radio 1 Rock Show earlier this week that going back to their roots was "a lot of fun" as they "got to remake the album how we wanted it to sound back then".

But some fans have questioned if the original lyrics, which have been described as misogynistic, are still appropriate today.

While others are wondering whether Sykes – now 39 – will be able to recreate the intense screaming vocals he previously recorded as a teenager.

Diehard fan Sash Vee tells BBC Newsbeat the announcement was a "very nice surprise" and it's good to see the group "appreciating their beginnings".

However, the 27-year-old, who became a fan following the release of their later albums, is in two minds about whether the lyrics should be kept the same.

Some of the band's earlier lyrics have been criticised for being aggressive towards woman, particularly Sykes' ex-partners.

Vee recognises controversial lyrics were part of the scene "back in the day" and wants the re-recording to be "similar to the original" as she thinks "it's sort of a time capsule".

"But things evolve and if you're going to have the opportunity to remaster something, then why not, let's update the lyrics as well," she says.

Sykes told Radio 1's Rock Show that after originally recording Count Your Blessings as a 19-year-old, he felt "really bummed out about how it sounded".

The singer said he could tell he was tired and they didn't have the right producer for the sound they wanted.

"There was no-one there helping us with BPMs [beats per minute] and tempos and all that. We had no clue what we were doing," he said.

Having improved and refined their technique, Sykes said the new record would be "way easier to listen to now because it sounds like a proper record".

Discussing whether the band have changed aspects of the songs, Sykes said if they went down that road "it just wouldn't be the record that people love".

"For better or for worse, we left it as it is."

Lorna Crowther, who has been a fan of the band for more than 15 years, is among those welcoming a return to their original music.

The 24-year-old tells Newsbeat she feels the group's early sound is a "masterpiece" because it "brings in these raw, disgustingly beautiful vocals".

Bring Me The Horizon began to evolve their approach from their second album, 2008's Suicide Season, moving towards a more accessible metalcore sound.

Their fourth record, Sempiternal, and fifth, That's The Spirit, pushed them further into the mainstream, with the albums peaking at number three and two in the Official Albums Chart respectively.

Crowther says the later album was "quite a big change" and left some fans questioning if the band's new sound was for them.

In the last two decades, Sykes' voice has also evolved and suffered an injury.

The band cancelled numerous shows of their US tour in 2019 after he ruptured a vocal cord and was warned that carrying on could lead to permanent damage.

This has left fans wondering whether the singer will be able to recreate the distinctive growls and screams which appear in Count Your Blessings.

Vocal coach and metal singer Jade Maris tells Newsbeat that producing harsh sounds can cause damage if done incorrectly, but says there are safer ways to do it.

"People definitely get a bit more scared than they need to," the 25-year-old says.

"As long as you're practicing safely, you're checking in, as long as you don't feel any pain or discomfort, then generally it's safe to continue."

However, she says back in the early 2000s there was less awareness on how to practice scream singing in a sustainable way.

Sykes told the Radio 1 Rock Show that when he was re-recording the album, it took him a while to tap into that style of singing.

"It was hard, I don't know how I used to do that voice. I can still do it but it took me a minute to remember the technical aspects of it," he said.

"Sometimes [it takes] that much to sound like a demonic gremlin that I'm like: 'What am I actually doing?'"

Sykes' attempt to rediscover his scream will also be tested outside the studio, with the band performing the full album in Manchester in July.

It's this style which some early fans love, and Crowther says it will be "nice to introduce that to the new audience".

While Vee says it will be "really interesting" to hear the screaming in Sykes' new voice.

"His voice has evolved and matured, I'm so excited to see how that then translates into the material."

The re-recorded version of Count Your Blessings will be released 10 July. The band will also play the album in full on 10 and 11 July in Manchester, with tickets on sale now.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

📰 மூல செய்தி (Source): https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79jjdqv3p9o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss

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