National's New Season Includes Pinter, Gorky, New Plays

The National Theatre's artistic director Nicholas Hytner has announced a diverse new season of plays for 2007-2008.

Dates have been announced for a number of shows.  Joe Penhall's Landscape with Weapon, directed by Roger Michell, will begin previews at the theatre's Cottesloe stage on March 29th and open on April 5th. 

Tennessee Williams' drama The Rose Tattoo, starring the previously announced Zoe Wanamaker, begins March 19th, with Hytner directing (he replaced the original director, the late Stephen Pimlott).

Khan-Din's wedding comedy Rafta, Rafta..., adapted from All in Good Time by Bill Naughton, will begin on April 19th.  With TV star Meera Syal, the play is directed by Hytner and will run at the Lyttleton stage.

Based on the fantastical 1946 Powell and Pressburger movie, A Matter of Life and Death, adapted by Tom Morris and director Emma Rice, will begin previews May 3rd on the Oliver stage and open on May 10th.  It will star Douglas Hodge (Guys and Dolls). 

Directed by Howard Davies, Andrew Upton's translation of Gorky's Philistines will begin May 23rd and open on May 30th at the Lyttleton.  Rory Kinnear (The Man of Mode at the National) will headline the show.

Other upcoming productions include: Nick Stafford's Warhorse, based on the work by Morporgo, Harold Pinter's The Hothouse, Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, starring Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale, Matt Charman's The Five Wives of Maurice Pinder, the English premiere of The Enchantment, by 19th-century Swedish author Victoria Benedictsson, Noel Coward's Present Laughter, and Euripides' The Women of Troy, directed by Katie Mitchell.

Photo of Nicholas Hytner by Ben Strothmann