The production, directed by a triumvirate made up of Gregory Doran, Rebecca Gatward and Jonathan Munby, opened at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Swan Theatre in December 2005 and is currently playing Washington’s Kennedy Center until May 7.

"It’s likely to go into the Gielgud in June or July as a Thelma Holt/Bill Kenwright production," said a spokesman for the RSC, "but it’s not yet confirmed."

Currently, the Gielgud is host to another RSC show – also presented in the West End by Holt and Kenwright – Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. That production, directed by Dominic Cooke and starring Iain Glenn, has received outstanding reviews from London’s critics. But Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, adapted by Mike Poulton into two parts, is an altogether riskier proposition requiring audiences to pay twice to see the whole production.

Producers will, however, be buoyed by the memory of the RSC’s triumphant 1980 production of another epic literary classic that was staged in two parts in the West End, Nicholas Nickleby.

David Edgar’s amended adaptation of that Dickens classic is to be revived as the cornerstone of the Chichester Festival Theatre’s 2006 season, running from June 24–Sept 2.