Highlights include a new play by David Hare, Jonathan Kent directing Ralph Fiennes in a 2008 production of Oedipus, and a revival of Beckett’s Happy Days helmed by Deborah Warner and starring her long-time collaborator Fiona Shaw as Winnie.

Happy Days will open on the National’s Lyttelton stage in January 2007. Warner and Shaw last worked together at the National on The Powerbook (2002), adapted by Jeanette Winterson from her own novel.

The pairing of Kent and Fiennes follows the their collaboration on Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, seen at Broadway’s Booth Theatre earlier this year.

Hytner will direct George Etherege’s Restoration comedy Man of Mode (1676), which will open on the Olivier stage in February 2007.

Meanwhile The Reporter, a new play by Nicholas Wright (Vincent in Brixton, the adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials), will receive its world premiere on the Cottesloe stage starring stage (This is How it Goes, The Glass Menagerie) and screen ("Birthday Girl") actor Ben Chaplin. The Reporter will be directed by one of Hytner’s National Theatre predecessors, Richard Eyre.

No further details about the timing or the subject of the Hare play were given. However, news of the production represents a reconciliation between the playwright and Hytner following disagreements about the programming of Hare’s play Stuff Happens, which Hytner directed.