The actor will go direct from the award-winning play Jerusalem into The Recruiting Officer, portraying Sgt Kite in Josie Rourke's first production as artistic chief of the Donmar Warehouse.

She replaces Michael Grandage, who steps down on January 1 after an acclaimed tenure at the theatre.

Ms Rourke, who told me there was something 'completely celebratory' about opening her run at the Donmar with a play that combines romance and comedy, has cast George Farquhar's famous 1706 play with top-flight theatre stars, including Nancy Carroll, who won the best actress Olivier award for her breathtaking performance in After The Dance at the National.

The director noted that the role of Silvia, who has to disguise herself as a soldier, will allow Nancy to show off her 'extraordinary comic skill and dexterity'.

The play charts the shenanigans Sgt Kite and his superior officer Captain Plume (to be played by Tobias Menzies) get up to as they try to sign up men in Shrewsbury to fight foreign wars.

At the same time, the men and their friends want a few flings with the local women — though both sexes, at one point or another, get up to no good.

Mark Gatiss, Rachael Stirling and Gawn Grainger are also part of the company.

Rourke said there would be lustiness and battles in and out of the bedroom.

Restoration plays are usually performed in larger theatres, but the Donmar's compact size will allow her to focus on the story's intimacy and romance.

Rehearsals will begin early in the New Year while Mackenzie is still appearing in Jerusalem.

The Recruiting Officer begins on February 9 after Grandage's final production, Richard II starring Eddie Redmayne, ends its run.

Cast includes Nancy Carroll (Silvia), Mackenzie Crook (Sergeant Kite), Mark Gatiss (Captain Brazen), Gawn Grainger (Mr Balance), Tobias Menzies (Captain Plume), Rachael Stirling (Melinda).

Directed by Josie Rourke, sound by Emma Laxton, lighting by James Farncombe, design by Lucy Osborne, composer Michael Bruce, produced by Donmar Warehouse.

Nancy Carroll's theatre credits include House of Games, Waste (Almeida Theatre), Twelfth Night (RSC), Arcadia (Duke of York's Theatre), The Enchantment, Man of Mode, The Voysey Inheritance (National Theatre) and See How They Run (Duchess Theatre).

Mackenzie Crook's credits include Jerusalem (Royal Court, Apollo Theatre and Music Box Theatre, New York), The Seagull (Royal Court and Walter Kerr Theatre, New York), The Exonerated (Riverside Studios) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Edinburgh Festival and Gielgud Theatre).

Mark Gatiss's work includes Season's Greetings (National Theatre), All About My Mother (Old Vic), The League of Gentlemen (Edinburgh Festival and tour) and Art (Whitehall Theatre). For television, The Crimson Petal and The White, Sherlock, Dr Who and The League of Gentlemen.

It's with the promise of money, glory and adventure that Captain Plume is recruiting the men of Shrewsbury for the King's army. He's also determined to make a conquest of Sylvia, but as she's now an heiress she can afford to put him to the test. All the while, the scheming Melinda is toying with the affections of Captain Brazen and the gentleman Mr Worthy.

From military manoeuvring to sexual strategies, Farquhar's triumphant The Recruiting Officer, written in 1706, is an unashamed celebration of love, lustiness and victory in battle and in the bedroom.

The production of George Farquhar's 18th-century military and marital comedy, which ushers in the tenure of incoming a.d. Josie Rourke, also stars Mark Gatiss, Tobias Menzies and Rachael Stirling. Rourke's production runs Feb. 9 – April 14, with a Feb. 14 press night.

The Donmar also announced the purchase of a 19th-century warehouse close to the theater to be converted into rehearsal, education and office space on a 112-year lease. It will take up residence in 2014. (In 2008 the theater purchased its Covent Garden home from its current landlord, Ambassador Theater Group.)

Michael Grandage said Thursday, "In today's marketplace, it isn't quite enough to hand over a theater with a strong reputation; it needs to have security as well. I am delighted that after nearly a decade at the helm, I leave the Donmar financially confident. From owning nothing, the Donmar now looks to the future with its own theater, rehearsal space, education space and office space occupying these two prime sites in Covent Garden."

Soon to grace our cinema screens in the romantic comedy Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, Dame Diana Rigg's talented daughter Rachael Stirling has less happy news in her love life.

For Rachael, 33, whose engagement to fellow actor Oliver Chris was revealed here last February, is single again.

Oliver presented her with a ruby engagement ring, which he designed himself, in her dressing room at the Vaudeville Theatre, where Rachael was appearing in An Ideal Husband. Alas, Oliver is now unlikely to fill that role.

Says a friend: 'It's unclear what went wrong, but it is all over. It's a shame because they seemed such a good match.'

Rachael, whose father is landowner Archie Stirling, was previously romanced by well-born DJ John Lycett-Green, grandson of the late Poet Laureate John Betjeman. She made her name in the raunchy TV adaptation of Sarah Waters's literary lesbian drama Tipping The Velvet

Perhaps Oliver isn't quite ready for matrimony, judging by his Twitter entries, which are peppered with four-letter words and puerile vulgarity. In one, he appears to suggest he once committed a lewd act at the top of the World Trade Centre in New York. Now, what girl wouldn't want to wed someone as charming as that?

I have misgivings about boarding schools, but this much I know is good: in an effort to engage easily bored young minds outside the academic syllabus, there is nothing my own alma mater — Wycombe Abbey — wouldn't do. There were concerts put on, plays staged, musicals sung, art trips to Florence and Duke of Edinburgh trips to China, or Stokenchurch, and of course there were lacrosse teams to join if you were that way inclined. (I was not, I might add; it is muddy and cold and awful, not to mention dangerous.)

I spent most of my time in the Lancaster Arts Centre or 'LAC' as it was called; a 1960s building that rises up from the edge of a lake just inside the wall of the school grounds. It is all concrete and breeze block and glass. By rights it should be hideous, yet somehow it is beautiful. It has a fully equipped 400-seat theatre, two floors of well-lit exhibition space and another big studio space with floor-to-ceiling windows, which looked out over the water. As a child I had spent a certain amount of time backstage, being the daughter of an actress, and like a homing pigeon I attached myself to that building. I took part in anything that meant I might spend more time in it. I suffered the grim pangs of homesickness terribly, and would go there and rehearse and forget myself for a while.

The plays we put on were not always brilliant. I remember a very painful house play which had something to do with Francis Drake. It is recalled by my family as Drake's Drum as it was particularly long and really, truly boring and featured yours truly in full Elizabethan pantaloons playing a random nobleman. My brothers skipped the second half and instead spent their time signing me up for all expeditions on the school notice board including the trip to China, as well as tryouts for every school lacrosse team. In our late teens we put on The Roses of Eyam, an intense piece set during a plague outbreak in which God's will was closely questioned as disease took hold of a rural community. One by one my classmates were covered in revolting putty buboes. I played the (serious and boring again) priest who didn't get the plague, but whose wife did. She had a brilliant death scene and wore flattering robes in rich dark colours while I sported a black cassock and tights, and preached a lot.

But some of the drama was awesome. At the end of the summer term, there was a school competition in which a few finalists would perform three or four pieces from any play or poem they chose, on a bare stage, to the rest of the school. I remember a girl proclaiming the Maya Angelou poem 'I rise' and by the end I was convinced that the skinny white scamp standing on that stage was a voluptuous African-American 'with diamonds at the meeting of her thighs'. My school believed in the power of our young imaginations, and in the ability of drama to engage them. It taught us to have confidence in our creative selves, not to be afraid of what we don't know. And it encouraged us to be curious all through life and keep learning as we went.

I saw the effect of drama on less privileged kids too. For a while, I went once a week to a local comprehensive to assist one of our teachers with her classes there. Over time, she encouraged them to improvise and you could clearly see beneficial effects that playing out scenes — real or imagined — had on these kids. Even if they laughed it off or refused to take part, the whole process challenged them in a positive way.

As an academic subject, however, drama was not always taken seriously, or rather not perceived to be serious enough by the governors at my school. When drama GCSE came up I remember an inter-staff battle on the question of its academic credibility. Our formidable drama staff soon won out. The syllabus included study of the theatre and its history. The Shakespeare of my English classes came alive to me then, and we were introduced to new writing, too: Death and The Maiden, Athol Fugard, Sharman Macdonald, alongside Webster, Euripides, Ibsen and Chekhov.

So I had a wonderful time, but then, I had a very expensive education, one which is, sadly, not on offer to the vast majority of British children. My own children, for instance, won't be going to private school — not on my acting wage. And I worry that it's easy for our state schools, with all their endless focus on exams and targets, to ignore the theatre. But the imagination of young people in Britain today is one of our most precious assets. We are good at the arts in this country. They are a major selling point. Let's hope academies of today learn how to nurture the creative spirits of tomorrow.