Party Of The Week: Actresses take the lead for the Almeida

The actresses Kim Cattrall, Fiona Shaw and Natascha McElhone attended the Almeida's fundraising gala, which this year raised £115,000 for the theatre.

With only one rehearsal under their belts, a star cast, including Sinead Cusack and Juliet Stevenson, performed a selection of the Bard's female roles in Shakespeare's Women, directed by Michael Attenborough, the artistic director of the Almeida.

Afterwards cast members and guests spilled out into the theatre's foyer and bar for the party and dinner, where fashion designer Pam Hogg acted as DJ for the night.

Director Rupert Goold came with his wife, Kate Fleetwood, who had earlier performed an extract from Macbeth with Patrick Stewart. Other cast members, including Clare Higgins, Derek Jacobi, Meera Syal, Tom Mison, and Harriet Walter, joined playwright and film director Christopher Hampton, film director John Boorman and actress Phoebe Nicholls, who played Cordelia Flyte in the original Brideshead Revisited, as well as Jessica de Rothschild and Lady Helen Taylor at the bash.

Cattrall, who is starring in Noël Coward's Private Lives in the West End, chatted to Attenborough about Coward, who also happens to be his godfather. Earlier, during the auction, Cattrall shouted, "I'll throw in some Jimmy Choos too" as people bid to see her in the West End show, followed by a dinner date with her and Boorman.

The evening went so well that the actors suggested to Attenborough that they take the show on tour. Naturally they were joking – but this one-off event certainly proved that anything is possible.