So what do we think? I know that Helen Mirren will be a big hit, hope so anyway. I last saw her at the NT in Ant and Cleo which is my top worst Shakespeare production ever. Please do not make her revolve on the Olivier stage. Oops, just seen it is on in the Lyttleton. Time and the Conways isn't a particularly good play. I wonder what made them choose this one. All's Well, a welcome outing for this neglected 'problem' play.

Yay! One of the Shakespeares I have yet to see, and two of my favourite directors! Should be swell!

I am actually excited by The Season for the first time in years. Especially Michael Grandage and Rupert Goold - yeah:).

You are not the only one to have said that. However I thought the production was quite reasonable, not great but certainly not awful - what did you particularly dislike about it ?

Re the season, Dantons Death can't possibly be as bad as it was last time they staged it (Peter Gill directed). Interested that Rupert Goold is directing for them, so soon after the RSC made a big deal about him joining them as an Associate (but not announcing when he would actually direct anything for them).

On another point, NH's annual report (in another news story) makes it clear that the NT are now streets ahead of the RSC on any basis of comparison you'd care to use.

Goold isn't due to take up his mantle as RSC associate director until 2010. I'd give it at least a year before they start announcing things.

Is Goold a very busy boy at the moment, or am I just noticing him more because I've finally got to that stage of theatre fandom where the director's name can be just as much of a draw as an actor/playwright/composer? 'Six Characters...', 'No Man's Land', 'King Lear', 'Oliver!'... And uh... considering how much I love his slightly crazed directing style for plays, is anyone else genuinely curious/concerned about how 'Oliver!' might turn out? I mean, he won't be able to do anything too weird, but at the same time... it's Rupert Goold. I don't quite see him just churning out the same old 'Oliver!' as everyone else...

Oliver ! has been announced as being "based on the original production by Sam Mendes" (the 1994 one they mean), which is hard to decypher exactly but must mean RG will be somewhat restricted in what he can do with it - plus the main casting is out of his hands. Just doing it for the money I suppose - good for him. I imagine that was part of the attraction of him doing No Man's Land also where he has really brought nothing novel to it (those £65 ticket prices must be going into someone pocket).

Some interesting stuff. Thankfully no mention of a David Hare play ...

Really glad to see Rufus Norris returning.

Not really a fan of Marlowe but I’ll see it for a tenner.

Hurrah to Helen Mirren even though I will have to sit a Hytner production. I thought No More after Rafta, Rose and Barbara

Very excited about Mother Courage.

Will All’s Well be part of next years Christmas line up?

I certainly am curious about the decision to direct Oliver! It's very strange for a top director to recreate someone else's production. Why not his own original production? Was he involved in the Palladium production as an associate or resident director? With regard to No Man's Land however surely all good directors want to direct classic plays. Having seen his production I think he was very wise not to innovate and just give a superb reading of the play. The acting from Bradley and Gambon is simply superlative.

Obviously he's restricted with what he could possibly do to 'Oliver!'... but I'm sure there've got to be other directors out there who could do the job and don't have the whole "well I'm award-winning now so could probably get more money, yay!" thing attached to them. I like to think They don't think the audience is so shallow as to go "wow, an award-winning director, it MUST be good!", just as I'm pretty certain I'm in a FRIGHTFULLY small minority of people who think "wow, Rupert Goold? I'll definitely have to go now!". So... why? *Especially* if he doesn't do anything innovative; why him?

I guess I'm thinking about it from the wrong perspective. Even directors probably welcome the occasional big gig to pay the bills for a few months so they can go back to doing the smaller stuff they really care for.

Worth a look if only because it may be the only production of this play in your lifetime - I can only recall one production of it in the last half century. Maybe the reason for this will become clear when we see it.

I think that's pretty much it- as a director, if you can get one or two long running West End musicals under your belt, you become financially secure and therefore able to do (as in, direct) whatever you like. Assuming Oliver! will run for a few years, he'll continue to get a trickle of royalties which can pay his gas bill, and he'll be free to do things for their artistic merit.

Well this is what Hynter did and then mostly turned his back on musicals upon arrival at the NT

I thought the days of paying directors of musicals via royalties were over, I seem to recall Adrian Noble saying that when he was criticised for abandoning the RSC to direct Mary Poppins and accused of just doing it for the money. Obviously Trevor Nunn was the big beneficiary of that payment method in the past.

Anyway, Oliver ! has plenty of artistic merit (but I would prefer to see him direct Blitz !)

Poppins was Eyre
Noble did Chitty and BOY it was bad

Correct. My mistake.

Eyre directing Poppins was somewhat incongruous.

Agree with reich - thank goodness there's no David Hare play scheduled. And let's hope we can be spared Pinter, Beckett, Arrthur Miller, Alan Ayckbourn and Michael Frayn too - and for a very long time.

yeah why on earth have we had so much Pinter there over the last 5 year?

The announced productions sound pretty good to me, and I'll be very interested to see Marlowe's Dido as that's one that that I've never seen performed. Very pleased to see that Marianne Elliot will be directing Shakespeare, and even more pleased not to see Katie Mitchell's name anywhere, though I don't doubt that she'll turn up somewhere, unfortunately.

Reich - Pinter won the Noble prize for Literature and was shamefully not in evidence on the British stage so they have made up for that.

Jan, sorry not to get back to you before on Ant and Cleo. I can't give you a list of specifics except a couple of things - it started off with the two actors on opposite sides of the stage shouting the dialogue which was supposed to be confidential comments about Mark Antony: lack of attention to the text. Antony looked and acted like he wanted to be somewhere else and they kept marching round the revolve quite moronically. Admittedly Helen Mirren perked it up a bit and did her best in the final scene; I seem to remember that Sam West looked embarrassed throughout. Really I should be asking you what you liked about it. But let's not dwell.

Just out of interest - any more women writers coming along next year, I haven't checked?

I too hated the Ant and Cleo and apart from most of the actors seeming to want to be somewhere else it was, for me, the best example of the worst Olivier acoustic that I can remember. Rickman in particular failed to project beyond the front five rows. I distinctly remember the whine of hearing aids being turned up every time he spoke. "Nay but this dotage of our general" still gives me shivers of anticipation being crushed.

Well, I think I was in the front 5 rows so at least I could hear. I am not making any great claims for the production, just that I have seen far far worse Shakespeare productions, two of which were in the same Olivier theatre: the Phyllida Lloyd "Pericles" and the David Hare "King Lear" - both really terrible productions unable to be rescued by the normally reliable Douglas Hodge in the former and Antony Hopkins in the lattter.

Nothing could beat the Lepage Dream for utter awfulness, not even the Lloyd Pericles which at least had some pretty costumes to look at.

Luckily I was away and missed that one - I heard bad things about it - pity as casting looked reasonable (Timothy Spall as Bottom ?)