As Patti LuPone arrives May 6 for the West End premiere of Master Class, other legit stars lighting the West End sky this summer include Felicity Kendal in her friend Tom Stoppard's new version of The Seagull for Peter Hall at the Old Vic; Mark Rylance as Henry V for the official opening of his Shakespeare Globe; and Judi Dench in the new David Hare, which marks Richard Eyre's farewell to the National.Also Alan Bates in the new Simon Gray directed by Pinter; Ben Kingsley and Alan Howard (again for Hall's Vic) as the tramps in Waiting For Godot, the play that Sir Peter first brought to Britain in l954; Alan Howard as King Lear; and Maggie Smith and Eileen Atkins in Albee's A Delicate Balance.

Meanwhile, the summer festival at Chichester offers a deluge of divas: Leslie Caron, Twiggy, Julie Christie, Maureen Lipman, Natalia Makarova and Zoe Wanamaker lead the small stage season there, while the main stage gives us among much else Kathleen Turner in a new solo about Tallulah Bankhead to add to the Sian Phillips Marlena Dietrich and LuPone's Callas in Master Class in a summer of great woman-centered shows.