Setting the stage

If one man could be said to have dominated 2005, it was the Donmar's Michael Grandage. As well as being responsible for the year's surprise hit, Schiller's Don Carlos, he also oversaw the West End transfer of Mary Stuart; the first time the West End had played host to two dramas by the late 18th-century German Romantic playwright. He then knocked off a star-studded production of Guys And Dolls before finishing off 2005 with a pitch-perfect production of Ibsen's The Wild Duck.

Happily, under his directorship, the Donmar looks set to continue to punch above its weight this year. Some enticing casting lights up its first three productions. Ian McKellen sheds his pantomime frocks to play a man living a double life in Mark Ravenhill's dark new play The Cut (opens Feb 28.
Tel: 0870 060 6624). Clare Higgins, so excellent in Death Of A Salesman, plays the lead in a new version of Phaedra by Frank McGuinness (opens Apr 11), while those who loved Derek Jacobi in Don Carlos may want to catch him in John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father, directed by Thea Sharrock (opens Jun 13).

Meanwhile, two major anniversaries will dominate theatre in 2006. In association with Dublin's Gate Theatre, the Barbican's Beckett Centenary Festival will devote six weeks and the entire Barbican complex to all things Beckettian, with a programme that includes film, visual art, poetry, music and talks as well as theatre. Highlights among the latter include John Hurt
reprising his hugely acclaimed role in Krapp's Last Tape (opens Apr 26. Tel: 0845 120 7550) and the London transfer of Walter Asmus's Waiting For Godot (opens Apr 5).

At the Royal Court, Ian Rickson bids goodbye after seven years at the top but not before overseeing an extended party celebrating the Court's 50th birthday. The programme includes 50 one-off readings of Royal Court plays, kicking off with David Hare directing Robert Lindsay in John Osborne's The Entertainer (opens Jan 16. Tel: 020 7565 5000), three fully staged revivals of Savages, The Changing Room and Top Girls, plus new plays by Tom Stoppard and Terry Johnson among the big draws of the season.

All eyes will also be on Shakespeare's Globe this year, and more specifically its new artistic director Dominic Dromgoole, who announces his inaugural season on January 11 (Tel: 020 7401 9919). Over on the South Bank, continuity is the name of the game with a third Travelex season at the National, in which one-third of the tickets for the Olivier stage are only a tenner. Trevor Nunn directs the first production - Peter Shaffer's bloody The Royal Hunt Of The Sun (opens Apr 12. Tel: 020 7452 3000).

At the Lyric Hammersmith, Tom Morris collaborates with Kneehigh Theatre in an adaptation of Angela Carter's Nights At The Circus, starring the hugely promising young actress Natalia Tena (opens Jan 25. Tel: 0870 050 0511). Across the road, the Riverside plays host to The Exonerated - a docu-drama based on the testimonies of six innocent people sentenced to the death penalty (opens Feb 23. Tel: 020 8237 1111).

Equally significant is one of two promising productions at the Old Vic: a new version of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale, a collaboration involving English and Iraqi actors (opens Jan 30. Tel: 0870 060 6628). It's followed by a second theatrical coup: Robert Altman directing the British premiere of Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues (opens Mar 2). Meanwhile, the Albery has Peter Stein's production of David Harrower's Blackbird, about two people who fall in love via the Internet, one of whom is underage (opens Feb 13. Tel: 0870 060 6621).

With all this, who needs American superstars? None of us, unless, of course, they should be Kathleen Turner, who stars in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, transferring from Broadway to the Apollo (opens Jan 31.
Tel: 0870 890 1101).