4.48 PSYCHOSIS

Young Vic Theatre (Maria Studio)

by Sarah Kane

Brutal and poetic exploration of a mind preparing to shut itself down.Spiked with gallows humour,the play charts the journey of a mind and body fromdarkness into light, from pain into love, from life into death.

(from 21 Jul 09 to 8 Aug 09)

ARCADIA

Duke of York's Theatre

by Tom Stoppard

April 1809, a stately home in Derbyshire.. Thomasina, a gifted pupil, proposes a startling theory, beyond her comprehension. All around her, the adults, including her tutor Septimus, are preoccupied with secret desires, illicit passions and professional rivalries.Two hundred years later, academic adversaries Hannah and Bernard, are piecing together puzzling clues, curiously recalling those events of 1809, in their quest for an increasingly elusive truth.

(from 27 May 09 to 12 Sep 09)

AUTHOR, THE

Royal Court Theatre Upstairs

By Tim Crouch

About the abuse carried out in the name of the spectator.

(from 23 Sep 09 to 24 Oct 09)

BLACK ALBUM, THE

Cottesloe, National Theatre

adapted by Hanif Kureishi from his own novel

Considers how the events of 1989 have shaped today's world, where fundamentalism battles liberalism.

(from 14 Jul 09 to 7 Oct 09)

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S

Haymarket, Theatre Royal

by Truman Capote, adapted by Samuel Adamson

New York City, 1943. William 'Fred' Parsons, a young writer from Louisiana, meets Miss Holly Golightly, a charming, vivacious and utterly elusive good-time girl. Everyone falls in love with Holly, including William - but he is poor, and Holly needs rich.

(from 9 Sep 09 to 9 Jan 10)

BRILLIANT

Young Vic Theatre (Clare Studio)

by Fevered Sleep/Polka

(from 15 Jul 09 to 18 Jul 09)

CALENDAR GIRLS

Noel Coward Theatre (formerly Albery)

Stage play by Tim Firth, adapted from his own screenplay for the 2003 film

At First Glance it should look like your classic WI Calendar. Jams, cakes, sewing and all that. Except for one tiny thing.the ladies aren't naked, they're nude.

(from 4 Apr 09 to 23 Jan 10)

CARRIE'S WAR

Apollo Theatre

by Nina Bawden, adapted by Emma Reeves

When the Second World War air raids threaten their saftey in the city, Carrie and her brother are evacuated to a small Welsh village.

(from 18 Jun 09 to 12 Sep 09)

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

Novello Theatre

by Tennessee Williams

Hypocrisy, greed and secret passions threaten to tear apart a wealthy but dysfunctional Mississippi family . Cat on a Hot Tin Roof portrays the larger-than-life characters of Maggie, her alcoholic husband, Brick, and the dominating family

(from 21 Nov 09 to 10 Apr 10)

CHERRY ORCHARD, THE (Part of Bridge Project)

Old Vic Theatre

By Anton Chekhov, new version by Tom Stoppard

(from 23 May 09 to 15 Aug 09)

COCK

Royal Court Theatre Upstairs

By Mike Bartlett

When John takes a break from his boyfriend, he accidentally meets the girl of his dreams. Filled with guilt and indecision, he decides there is only one way to straighten this out...

(from 13 Nov 09 to 19 Dec 09)

COLLABORATION

Duchess Theatre

by Ronald Harwood

The play opens in 1931 in a spirit of optimism as composer Richard Strauss and writer Stephan Zweig embark on an invigorating artistic partnership. But Zweig is a Jew and the Nazis are on the march. Is it possible to keep artistic aspiration and political action separate? How fine is the line between collaboration and betrayal?

(from 22 May 09 to 29 Aug 09)

DOLL'S HOUSE, A

Donmar Warehouse

by Henrik Ibsen, in a new version by Zinnie Harris

Nora loves her husband above all else. But when she risks her reputation in order to save his, she begins to question her devotion and finds herself fighting for her own life.

(from 14 May 09 to 18 Jul 09)

DORIAN GRAY

Leicester Square Theatre Basement (formerly The Venue)

by Oscar Wilde, music by Joe Evans

The show has a theatrical format of glamour, music, decadence and drama. . Victorian London. Away from the opera houses, the salons and the gentlemen's clubs; there lies a darker, murkier underbelly: tawdry theatres, burlesque bars, cabaret clubs and opium dens.

(from 23 Jun 09 to 2 Aug 09)

DUET FOR ONE

Vaudeville Theatre

by Tom Kempinski

Celebrated concert violinist Stephanie Abrahams is forced to rethink her career and her life after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. On the advice of her husband, a successful composer she consults psychiatrist Dr Feldmann, whose probing questions delve deep into her complex personality. For the first time, Stephanie is forced to consider a future without music.

(from 7 May 09 to 1 Aug 09)

EIGHT

Trafalgar Studios 2 Theatre(formerly Whitehall Theatre)

by Ella Hickson

You chose your company; select four from eight captivating monologues that offer a group-portrait of Britain's youth. From high-class hookers and 7/7 survivors, to squaddies making friends in morgues

(from 6 Jul 09 to 25 Jul 09)

ENRON

Royal Court Theatre Downstairs

by Lucy Prebble

Based on real life and using music, movement and video, Enron explores one of the most infamous scandals in financial history, reviewing the tumultuous 1990s and casting a new light on the financial turmoil in which the world finds itself in 2009.

(from 17 Sep 09 to 7 Nov 09)

EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FAVOUR

Olivier, National Theatre

by Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn

A play for actors and orchestra: A dissident is locked up in an asylum. If he accepts that he was ill, has been treated and is now cured, he will be released. He refuses. Sharing his cell is a real lunatic who believes himself to be surrounded by an orchestra. As the dissident's son begs his father to free himself with a lie, this provocative play asks if denying the truth is a price worth paying for liberty.

(from 9 Jan 10 to 17 Feb 10)

GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, THE

Young Vic Theatre (Main House)

by Alecky Blythe

Tessa has set up a business; a brothel by the sea where mature women specialise in the Girlfriend Experience, a surprisingly caring and sympathetic service.

(from 24 Jul 09 to 15 Aug 09)

HAMLET

Wyndham's Theatre

By William Shakespeare

(from 29 May 09 to 22 Aug 09)

HELEN

Shakespeare's Globe

by Euripides in a new version by Frank McGuinness

Seven years have passed since the end of the Trojan War and Menelaus, King of Sparta and husband to Helen, is making his slow and painful way home. When his ship is wrecked on the coast of Egypt he stumbles upon what seems to be his wife lingering outside the royal palace. But if this is the real Helen, who was the beautiful woman stolen by Paris, for whom all Greece took up arms? Did Troy fall for nothing? Has it all been some god's idea of a joke?

(from 2 Aug 09 to 23 Aug 09)

INHERIT THE WIND

Old Vic Theatre

By Jerome Lawrence & Robert E Lee

Loosely based on a true story of the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial, which resulted in schoolteacher John T Scopes' conviction for teaching Darwin's evolution theory to a high school science class.

(from 18 Sep 09 to 20 Dec 09)

INSPECTOR CALLS, AN

Novello Theatre

by J. B. Priestley

The story begins with the mysterious Inspector Goole arriving unexpectedly at the prosperous Birling family home. Their peaceful dinner party is shattered by his investigations into their involvement in the death of a young woman whom each of them in turn has exploited.

(from 22 Sep 09 to 14 Nov 09)

JUDGMENT DAY

Almeida Theatre (Off West End)

by Odon von Horvath, new version by Christopher Hampton

Written and set in 1937 in a small village in Austria, diligent station master Thomas Hudetz is a well respected member of his local community. That is until the charms of flirtatious young Anna distract him momentarily from the operation of the signals. There are no survivors from Express Train 405. The small town seeks a culprit but it seems only Anna knows the truth about the conscientious station master.

(from 4 Sep 09 to 17 Oct 09)

LIFE IS A DREAM

Donmar Warehouse

by Pedro Calderon de la Barca, in a new version by Helen Edmundson

To protect the country from the horrors prophesied, Segismundo is condemned for all eternity. Banished to a secret world high in the mountains and cut off from the sun, he can only dream of a life reversed; of palaces, empires, freedom and revenge.

(from 8 Oct 09 to 28 Nov 09)

LOLITA

Lyttelton, National Theatre

by Vladimir Nabokov, edited by Richard Nelson

A 90-minute monologue. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of thwarted adolescent love. He becomes obsessed and involved with 12-year-old Dolores Haze; but first he must deal with the mother.

(from 7 Sep 09 to 21 Sep 09)

MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN

Olivier, National Theatre

by Bertolt Brecht, in a translation by Tony Kushner

Mother Courage drags her cart across the battlefields, profiteering from a war that destroys her children, one by one.

(from 9 Sep 09 to 11 Oct 09)

MOUSETRAP, THE

St Martin's Theatre

by Agatha Christie

A group of people gathered together in a remote part of the countryside discover there is a murderer in their midst. The question is which one of them is the guilty party.

(from 26 Mar 74 to 21 Nov 09)

MRS KLEIN

Almeida Theatre (Off West End)

by Nicholas Wright

London,1934. Melanie Klein is one of the most admired, yet controversial, psycho-analysts of her time, renowned for her unique insight into the secret world of childhood.

(from 22 Oct 09 to 5 Dec 09)

NATION

Olivier, National Theatre

based on a novel by Terry Pratchett, adapted by Mark Ravenhill

A parallel world, 1860. Two teenagers thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau's village and left Daphne shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home. One wears next to nothing, the other a long white dress; neither speaks the other's language; somehow they must learn to survive.

(from 11 Nov 09 to 5 Jan 10)

NEW WORLD, A

Shakespeare's Globe

by Trevor Griffiths

A play about the British revolutionary Thomas Paine.

(from 29 Aug 09 to 9 Oct 09)

OBSERVER, THE

Cottesloe, National Theatre

by Matt Charman

An international group of observers arrives in a West African country to oversee and rubber stamp its first democratic election. New voters queue in their thousands, but a senior member of the observation team find herself both horrified by the President's suppressive tactics and, for once, in a position to do something about it.

(from 13 May 09 to 3 Sep 09)

ORWELL - A CELEBRATION

Trafalgar Studios 2 Theatre(formerly Whitehall Theatre)

Adapted for the stage by Telegraph critic Dominic Cavendish

A theatrical celebration of George Orwell, marking the 60th and 70th anniversaries of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Coming Up For Air.

(from 8 Jun 09 to 4 Jul 09)

OTHELLO

Trafalgar Studios 1 Theatre(formerly Whitehall Theatre)

by William Shakespeare

Othello is noble, brave and victorious. Iago, passed over for a position in the army, fuels his diabolical revenge with hatred and snarling racism.

(from 11 Sep 09 to 12 Dec 09)

OUR CLASS

Cottesloe, National Theatre

by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, in a version by Ryan Craig

A group of schoolchildren, Jewish and Catholic, declare their ambitions: one to be a fireman, one a film star, one a pilot, another a doctor. They are learning the ABC. This is Poland, 1925.

(from 16 Sep 09 to 10 Oct 09)

PAINS OF YOUTH, THE

Cottesloe, National Theatre

by Ferdinand Bruckner

(from Oct 09 to )

PHEDRE

Lyttelton, National Theatre

by Racine, in a version by Ted Hughes

Consumed by an uncontrollable passion for her young stepson and believing Theseus, her absent husband, to be dead, Phedre confesses her darkest desires and enters the world of nightmare. When Theseus returns alive and well, Phedre fearing exposure, accuses her stepson of rape. The result is carnage.

(from 4 Jun 09 to 27 Aug 09)

PITMEN PAINTERS, THE

Lyttelton, National Theatre

by Lee Hall, inspired by a book by William Feaver

In 1934, a group of Ashington miners hired a professor to teach an art appreciation evening class. Rapidly abandoning theory in favour of practice, the pitmen began to paint. Within a few years the most avant-garde artists became their friends and their work was acquired by prestigious collections; but every day they worked, as before, down the mine.

(from 2 Sep 09 to 22 Sep 09)

POWER OF YES, THE : A dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis

Lyttelton, National Theatre

by David Hare

It is not so much a play as a jaw-dropping account of how, as the banks went bust, capitalism was replaced by a socialism that bailed out the rich alone.

(from 29 Sep 09 to 29 Oct 09)

PRICK UP YOUR EARS

Comedy Theatre

By Simon Bent, Inspired by The John Lahr Biography and The Diaries Of Joe Orton

A darkly funny and moving play imagines what really happened when, after years of creative collaboration, the door slammed shut and Kenneth was home alone. It tells the sensational story behind the domestic life of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, holed up in a tiny flat in Islington, trading well-trodden insults and hilarious put-downs like any old married couple.

(from 17 Sep 09 to 6 Dec 09)

RED

Donmar Warehouse

by John Logan

Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant and the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting. An account of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, whose struggle to accept his growing riches and praise became his ultimate undoing.

(from 3 Dec 09 to 6 Feb 10)

ROMEO AND JULIET

Shakespeare's Globe

by William Shakespeare

(from 23 Apr 09 to 23 Aug 09)

ROPE

Almeida Theatre (Off West End)

by Patrick Hamilton

Said to be inspired by the real life murder of a young boy in 1920 by two University of Chicago students, Leopold and Loeb, Hamilton's thriller is set in a Mayfair apartment. Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo have murdered fellow student Ronald Kentley and deposited his body in a chest in their living room. Believing they are above common morality and suspicion they invite the student's father, his aunt and several of their friends over for tea, served on the chest.

(from 10 Dec 09 to 30 Jan 10)

SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE

Wyndham's Theatre

by Owen O'Neill and Dave Johns, based on the 1982 Stephen King novella 'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption'

Andy Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and sent to the notorious Shawshank Prison to serve two life sentences. Stripped of his life, family and freedom, Andy is forced to endure a spirit-crushing routine. But with his quiet strength and inner courage there is one thing that Andy never loses - hope.

(from 4 Sep 09 to 14 Feb 10)

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Old Vic Theatre

By John Guare

Based on the existential theory that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by a chain of no more than 6 people, this play is a look at fame, celebrity and opportunity. It makes you think - who's conning you?

(from 7 Jan 10 to 3 Apr 10)

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

Duke of York's Theatre

by Andrew Bovel

A missing person. A mysterious stiletto. Relationships in crisis.The seemingly random confessions of a group of strangers are pieced together into a powerful study of infidelity and interwoven lives, as Detective Leon Zat investigates the disappearance of a leading psychiatrist.

(from 18 Sep 09 to 12 Dec 09)

STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A

Donmar Warehouse

by Tennessee Williams

Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois unexpectedly appears at her sister's home in the stifling world of downtown New Orleans. With delusions of grandeur, Blanche stands in stark contrast to her new surroundings and her brother-in-law Stanley. His determination to reveal her secrets lead her to withdraw ever further away from reality, into a world of illusions.

(from 23 Jul 09 to 3 Oct 09)

TAKING SIDES

Duchess Theatre

by Ronald Harwood

Conductor Wilhelm Furtw„ngler, prized by Hitler as the cultural jewel in the crown of the Third Reich, became the perfect post-war target for interrogation as a Nazi sympathiser. Major Steve Arnold, who has witnessed the horrors of Belsen, is about to cross-examine him.

(from 20 May 09 to 29 Aug 09)

THREE MORE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

Lyttelton, National Theatre

by Caryl Churchill

A look at human interaction and relationships.

(from 30 Jul 09 to 27 Aug 09)

TIME AND THE CONWAYS

Lyttelton, National Theatre

by J B Priestley

The Conways, celebrating Kay's 21st birthday in 1919, seem a golden family - safe and well after the Great War, looking forward to future careers, marriages, and a brave new world.

(from 28 Apr 09 to 16 Aug 09)

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

Shakespeare's Globe

by William Shakespeare

(from 12 Jul 09 to 20 Sep 09)

WAITING FOR GODOT

Haymarket, Theatre Royal

by Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot follows two consecutive days in the lives of tramps, Vladimir and Estragon , who divert themselves by clowning around, joking and arguing, while waiting expectantly and unsuccessfully for the mysterious Godot.

(from 30 Apr 09 to 9 Aug 09)

WAR HORSE

New London

based on a novel by Michael Morpurgo, adapted by Nick Stafford

At the outbreak of World War One, Joey, young Albert's beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to find him and bring him home.

(from 28 Mar 09 to 12 Feb 10)

WE'RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT

Duchess Theatre

by Michael Rosen. Music by Benji Bowe, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

The story follows a family's excitement as they wade, splash and squelch through a variety of imaginative environments in search of a bear.

(from 8 Jul 09 to 16 Aug 09)

WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING

Almeida Theatre (Off West End)

by Andrew Bovell

When The Rain Stops Falling weaves together a series of interconnected stories, as seven people confront their mysteries of the past in order to understand their future, revealing how patterns of betrayal, love and abandonment are passed on, until finally, well into the future, as the desert is inundated with rain, one young man finds the courage to defy the legacy.

(from 14 May 09 to 4 Jul 09)

WINTER'S TALE, THE (Part of Bridge Project)

Old Vic Theatre

By William Shakespeare

(from 29 May 09 to 15 Aug 09)

WOMAN IN BLACK, THE

Fortune Theatre

by Stephen Mallatratt from the novel by Susan Hill

Arthur Kipps , a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the house's sole inhabitant, unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind the shuttered windows.

(from 7 Jun 89 to 30 Jan 10)