Stage Whisper: star cast for London's theatre season

Theatre lovers will be thrilled to hear of new London appearances by star performers Kevin Spacey and Ralph Fiennes, as well as new plays in preparation from Tom Stoppard and David Hare. In his final appearance after 10 years at the Old Vic , Spacey will play Clarence Darrow in a one-man play about the celebrated civil rights lawyer of the same name, in an in-the-round performance opening on 28 May. The Old Vic has also announced the appearance of Kristin Scott Thomas as Electra in Sophocles’ harrowing tragedy about a family in a lethal internal dispute, which begins on 20 September. 

Ralph Fiennes will take the lead in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman at the National Theatre, London, in a new production directed by Simon Godwin, opening in February 2015. The play follows the actions of Jack Tanner, a contemporary version of the story of the sexual adventurer Don Juan. David Hare returns to the National with an intriguing new play, Behind the Beautiful Forevers , an adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Katherine Boo’s touching and empathetic account of the community living in Annawadi, a slum at the end of the runway at Mumbai airport. Meanwhile, there’s an exciting Tom Stoppard première - title and theme still be revealed - at the Dorfman Theatre (the redeveloped and re-named Cottesloe, due to open in September) in January 2015. It will be a poignant occasion: it’s Stoppard’s first completely new work since Rock ‘n’Roll in 2006, and the last production directed by Nicholas Hytner before he stands down to make way for Rufus Norris. 

Fans of political theatre, meanwhile, will want to catch Scottish playwright Rona Morris’ three plays about James I, II and III of Scotland, part of the Travelex season, and timed just before and after the Scottish independence referendum. In a pioneering three-way co-production between the National Theatre, the National Theatre of Scotland and the Edinburgh International Festival, they will play in the Olivier Theatre from September, after a première at the Edinburgh Festival.  

Enthusiasts for innovative temporary theatrical spaces like the Shed Theatre, the red wooden castle squatting temporarily on the South Bank, which has hosted acclaimed new writing like Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum Dreams (showing until 5 April), will be delighted to hear that planning permission is being sought to extend its use until 2017. 

In other Theatreland News, slightly further North-East - it has been claimed that Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet will be staged August 2015 at the Barbican. It will be directed by the prolific Lyndsey Turner, who has just returned from NYC after a run of Machinal starring Rebecca Hall: there's no shortage of tip-top talent here. We're still asking, though: what can Cumberbatch really do for Hamlet? Tickets will sell out in seconds, but little of that will be due to people’s desire to see one of Shakespeare’s longest and most difficult works; if David Tennant’s RSC production is anything to go by, a significant portion of the audience will be made up of people slightly confused that Sherlock is speaking in iambic pentameter and wondering where Martin Freeman is. Perhaps it will be a triumph, but there's a risk that he will just be added to the list of attractive young men who did a pretty good job.

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