National treasure

Alan Bennett's new drama tops a glittering autumn calendar as theatres defy the downturn, writes Al Senter

It is now more than five years since Alan Bennett's last play, The History Boys, opened at the National Theatre. It would go on to experience extraordinary success on the South Bank, in the West End and on Broadway before transferring to the screen and boosting the careers of such leading young actors as Dominic Cooper, James Corden and Russell Tovey.

Bennett returns to the National this month to unveil his new play, The Habit of Art, an opening that is bound to be the theatrical event of the autumn. Frances de la Tour, whose deadpan comic timing added enormously to the appeal of The History Boys, is involved once again, together with Richard Griffiths as the poet, WH Auden, and Alex Jennings as the composer, Benjamin Britten.

The play is described as being "as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music" and there are also meditations on the ageing process, on the morality of biography and on the habit of art itself. It sounds like another stimulating feast of wit and ideas, served up by a master playwright.

Elsewhere in London and on tour around the country, there is a rich choice of entertainment. Somewhat surprisingly, the theatre has so far escaped relatively unscathed from the impact of the recession, with booming audience figures, a galaxy of star names on display and a plethora of hot tickets.

Financial constraints in television have hit drama particularly hard and so a limited run on stage has suddenly become a more attractive proposition for actors and their agents. Those one-time neighbours in The Good Life, Felicity Kendal and Penelope Keith, for example, can both be seen on tour this autumn; Kendal in a revival of Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession and Keith as a vicar's widow in a new play, Entertaining Angels. Neil Morrissey has also taken to the road, playing the idiot savant in a stage version of Oscar-winning film Rain Man. And Richard Wilson makes a relatively rare stage appearance when he joins the RSC to play Malvolio in Twelfth Night.

It's rare for Wilson to be turning his attention to the Bard since he's expressed his lack of interest in doing the classics and, as a busy theatre director, he's best known for his passionate attachment to new plays. But Wilson was surely born to play Malvolio, the self-important and self-deluding jobsworth in whose humiliating fall, the character attains a kind of tragic status. Twelfth Night opens in Stratford before arriving at the Duke of York's Theatre in time for Christmas.

James Earl Jones is another charismatic performer on stage next month. This distinguished African-American actor, whose sonorous tones brought the sinister figure of Darth Vader to such life in the Star Wars epics, comes to London to play Big Daddy in an all-black production of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Novello Theatre. Jones is joined in the Anglo-American cast by British actor Adrian Lester, best-known to television audiences as the chief con artist in Hustle.

Alfred Molina was once a familiar figure on British stages and screens. Moving to Los Angeles in the 1990s, he has built up a thriving career as a character actor in scores of Hollywood movies. Now he returns to London and to the theatre to play the artist, Mark Rothko, in Red, a new play by Gladiator screenwriter John Logan. For this Donmar Warehouse two-hander, Molina is joined by Eddie Redmayne, who co-starred with Jonathan Pryce in Albee's The Goat.

In recent years, the Lyric Theatre in west London's Hammersmith has not always found it easy to forge a recognisable identity of its own. But the appointment of Sean Holmes as its new artistic director has raised hopes that the venue will at last realise its potential. He has chosen to revive Comedians, the modern classic by Trevor Griffiths, in which a night class of aspiring funnymen is put through its paces by their teacher, a veteran comic. David Dawson and Matthew Kelly are featured in a strong cast.

The Menier Chocolate Factory near London Bridge has rapidly become an essential part of the capital's theatrical landscape. A series of its small-scale revivals of classic Broadway musicals has graduated to the West End. Among them, La Cage aux Folles continues to thrive at the Playhouse while A Little Night Music will open on Broadway in December, headed by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury.

The Royal Court continues to champion the new play and the venue is on a high at the moment, with both Enron and Jerusalem moving into the West End in the new year. Perhaps The Priory by Michael Wynne will follow in their footsteps. It's a story of a group of well heeled thirtysomethings celebrating New Year's Eve in a country retreat. The cast includes Jessica Hynes, star of TV's cult sitcom Spaced, and Rachael Stirling, who's inherited all of the beauty and poise of her mother, Diana Rigg.

Around the country there is plenty to enjoy. For lovers of Jane Austen, there's a touring adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, with Susan Hampshire as the fluttery mother of all the Bennett girls, while star director Rupert Goold's inventive take on Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author is also on the road. The National Theatre of Scotland's main autumn show is The House of Bernarda Alba but rather than in sun-baked Andalucía, Lorca's study of female sexual repression is played out on the mean streets of gangland Glasgow.
Other touring productions include Molière's The Hypochondriac in a hilarious new version by poet Roger McGough; Frederick Knott's stalwart thriller Dial M For Murder; and the evergreen favourite, The Rocky Horror Show.

Lee Hall is probably best known for his screenplay for Billy Elliot, now a wildly successful stage musical. But his latest play, The Pitmen Painters, is equally popular. Based on a true story, the drama is set in a mining village in Northumberland in the 1930s and follows a group of working-class men eager to improve themselves, who discover self-expression through artistic creativity. Indeed, they develop "the habit of art", which takes us precisely back to Alan Bennett's eagerly anticipated new play.