National Theatre Season to Feature Musical by Tori Amos and Return of Simon Russell Beale, Alex Jennings | Playbill

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News National Theatre Season to Feature Musical by Tori Amos and Return of Simon Russell Beale, Alex Jennings National Theatre artistic director Nicholas Hytner has announced plans for the theatre for 2011-12, including a new musical by Tori Amos, to open in the Cottesloe in April 2012 under the direction of Marianne Elliott, and a new play by John Hodge called Collaborators, starring Alex Jennings as playwright Mikhail Bulgakov and Simon Russell Beale as Joseph Stalin that will open in the Cottesloe in October 2011, directed by Hytner.

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Tori Amos

Other newly announced plans include a new play written and directed by Conor McPherson, to open in the Lyttelton in October 2011, and a new production of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, to be directed by Howard Davies and starring Sinead Cusack and Ciaran Hinds, in a co-production with Dublin's Abbey Theatre where it will premiere in September, before transferring to the Lyttelton Theatre in November 2011.

Also, Mike Leigh will return to the National, as previously announced, with a new as yet untitled play, to open in the Cottesloe in September, with a cast that includes Ruby Bentall and Lesley Manville. It will tour to Bath and Cambridge in the autumn, following its London run.

Further casting and details have also been announced for the annual Travelex season in the Olivier Theatre, now the Travelex £12 season, with almost half the tickets for every performance at £12. It will open May 17, 2011, with Howard Davies directing Zoe Wanamaker as Madame Ranevyskaya in Andrew Upton's version of The Cherry Orchard. The cast will also include Conleth Hill as Lopakhin, as well as Claudie Blakley, Mark Bonnar, Pip Carter, Gerald Kyd, James Laurenson, Tim McMullan, Emily Taaffe, Charity Wakefield and Sarah Woodward.

Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean will follow, opening June 15, with Jonathan Kent directing a cast that reunites him with Ian McDiarmid, with whom he used to run the Almeida,  as well as Andrew Scott, Jamie Ballard, John Heffernan, Genevieve O'Reilly and Prasanna Puwanarajah.

The Travelex season will also include a new play, as yet untitled, to be directed by Thea Sharrock in September, and will conclude with a new production of Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen, to be directed by Bijan Sheibani in October. Also in the Olivier, Jonathan Miller will direct  nine performances of his staging of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, in collaboration with Southbank Sinfonia, as part of a season celebrating the 400th anniversary celebrations for the King James Bible that will also include readings from the Old and New Testaments, to be performed by leading actors from the National's last 25 years.

The Christmas show in the Olivier will be a new production of The Comedy of Errors, to be directed by Dominic Cooke in his National Theatre directing debut.

In the Lyttelton, Hytner will reunite with James Corden, one of the original stars of his London and Broadway production of Bennett's The History Boys, to star in Richard Bean's One Man, Two Guvnors, a new play based on Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters, opening in May and to tour subsequently from October. Katie Mitchell will direct Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness, opening in July.

In the Cottesloe, Rufus Norris will direct London Road, a new documentary musical with book and lyrics by Alecky Blythe and music and lyrics by Adam Cork, to open April 14. The cast will include Rosalie Craig, Kate Fleetwood, Nick Holder, Claire Moore, Michael Shaeffer and Paul Thornley. Four one-hour plays by emerging writers, aged under 30, will be presented in alternating double bills, to be directed by Polly Findlay and Lynsey Turner, to open in July.

 
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