Theatre highlights of 2015: From Benedict Cumberbatch to Bend it Like Beckham

Your guide to the unmissable plays opening this year

Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet opens in August (AFP/Getty )

The Hard Problem

The Hard Problem is consciousness in Tom Stoppard’s first new play for nine years. It’s set in a brain science institute and directed by Nicholas Hytner, who steps down at the National Theatre after a glorious reign, in April.

National Theatre, London, 21 January to 16 April

 

Farinelli and the King

Mark Rylance stars in this fascinating real-life story, dramatised by his wife Claire van Kampen, about Philippe V of Spain and the castrato whose voice cured him of insomnia and despair.

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, 11 February to 8 March

Antigone

The visionary Flemish director Ivo van Hove brings us Sophocles’s great tragedy in a modern version starring Juliette Binoche.

Barbican, London, 4 to 28 March; King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, 9 to 22 August

The Vote

James Graham aims for a media coup with his drama set in a fictional London polling booth in the last 90 minutes of Election Day 2015. The run culminates in a live broadcast on More4 on the day.

Donmar Warehouse, London, 24 April to 7 May

The Hook

To celebrate the Arthur Miller centenary, James Dacre directs a world premiere, adapted by Ron Hutchinson from Miller’s FBI-suppressed screenplay about mobsters in the dockyards of 1950s Brooklyn.

Royal & Derngate, Northampton, 5 to 27 June; Liverpool, Everyman, 1 to 25 July

Bend It like Beckham

Gurinder Chadha directs a musical adaptation of her film about a Sikh girl who defies her family for football, scored by Howard Goodall. We’re promised a celebratory state-of-the-nation comedy.

Phoenix Theatre, London, from 15 May

Hamlet

The advance sales broke records, but there will be 100 £10 tickets held back for each day’s performance of the most hotly anticipated classical production of the year: Benedict Cumberbatch as Shakespeare’s brainiest hero, directed by Lyndsey (Chimerica) Turner.

Barbican, London, 5 August to 31 October