Rory Kinnear will star in Simon Stephens’ new translation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera as part of Rufus Norris’s 2016 season at the National Theatre.
Norris will direct the double Olivier Award winner as Macheath from May in the Olivier Theatre as part of a programme that also includes new plays by Suhayla El-Bushra and Alexi Kaye Campbell, and Terence Rattigan, Sean O’Casey, Sarah Kane and Lorraine Hansberry revivals.
The Crucible’s Yaël Farber will direct Hansberry’s Les Blancs in the Olivier Theatre from March. It’s a double first for the National, marking both Farber’s NT debut and the first of the American playwright’s works to be staged at the iconic South Bank venue.
Three new productions have been announced for the Lyttelton Theatre’s stage, starting with El-Bushra’s contemporary Britain-set adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s The Suicide from April.
Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Carrie Cracknell, will follow from June, with Howard Davies’ production of O’Casey’s The Plough And The Stars completing the Lyttelton’s newly announced offerings from July.
An all-female playwright/director duo will kick off proceedings in the Dorfman Theatre, when Katie Mitchell directs Sarah Kane’s Cleansed, the first play by the English writer to be presented at the NT, from February.
It will be followed by Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Flick, which is directed by Tony Award-winning Fun Home director Sam Gold, in April and The Pride playwright Campbell’s NT debut Sunset At The Villa Thalia, which will be directed by Simon Godwin from May.
Offerings in the National Theatre’s Temporary Theatre include Gary Owen’s Iphigenia In Splott (27 January to 20 February). The production, which is directed by Rachel O’Riordan, will see Sophie Melville reprise her role as Effie following her critically acclaimed performances in Cardiff and Edinburgh.
Iphigenia In Splott is joined by another Edinburgh Festival success, Jack Thorne’s The Solid Life Of Sugar Water (26 February to 19 March). The Graeae Theatre Company and Theatre Royal Plymouth co-production sees Genevieve Barr and Arthur Hughes return to their roles in the Amit Sharma-directed production.
Completing the iconic red venue’s trio of offerings is Islington Community Theatre’s critically acclaimed Brainstorm, which returns from March following a sell-out run earlier this year.
The exciting new season announcement was joined by the sad news that the NT’s long-running West End production of War Horse will close on 12 March and casting for Dominic Cooke’s previously announced production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which plays in the Lyttelton Theatre from February.
The Amen Corner co-stars Lucian Msamati and Sharon D Clarke, who will also take to the stage in the Tricycle Theatre’s A Wolf In Snakeskin Shoes next month, will appear opposite O-T Fagbenle (Porgy And Bess, West End) and Giles Terera (Hamlet, NT) in the production.