The Royal Shakespeare Company’s season from September 2014 until March 2015 in Stratford will commemorate the start of World War I.
The programme will feature a mixture of Shakespeare plays, Jacobean drama from his contemporaries and new writing from Phil Porter and Tom Morton-Smith.
There will be a double bill of Love’s Labour’s Lost and Love’s Labour’s Won, also known as Much Ado About Nothing. Both will be directed by Christopher Luscombe and will be streamed free to schools as well as being broadcast live to cinemas.
Both productions will share a setting based on a country house just before and just after the war. Edward Bennett, who took over from David Tennant as Hamlet in 2008 and Michelle Terry will play the lovers in both productions.
They will run in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Love’s Labour’s Lost from 23 September and Love’s Labour’s Won from 3 October. They will end on 14 March 2015.
A new play by Phil Porter, The Christmas Truce draws on true stories of soldiers in the Warwickshire regiment and in particular the experiences of cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather.
He worked at the original Shakespeare Memorial Theatre as an electrical engineer. His comic creation Old Bill was hugely popular with the troops.
RSC deputy artistic director Erica Whyman will direct The Christmas Truce which will run in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre from 29 November until 31 January.
Eileen Atkins will return to the RSC in The Witch of Edmonton which will be directed by Gregory Doran in the Swan Theatre from 23 October until 29 November.
She will play the title role of Elizabeth Sawyer who is derided by her neighbours and accused of being a witch. She seeks revenge on those who have wronged her.
This new production of Rowley, Ford and Dekker’s domestic tragedy concludes the RSC’s Roaring Girls season and will play in repertoire with John Webster’s violent tragedy The White Devil.
The RSC will be producing for the first time The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Dekker’s festive city comedy written in 1599.
It “depicts a nation overshadowed by foreign wars and explores class, conflict and cobblers in love”.
Phillip Breen directs The Shoemaker’s Holiday which runs in the Swan from 11 December until 7 March, 2015.
Oppenheimer is Tom Morton-Smith’s play about J Robert Oppenheimer which will have its world première. It looks into the heart of the Manhattan Project to create the atom bomb.
Directed by Angus Jackson, Oppenheimer will run in the Swan from 15 January until 7 March 2015.