What a performance

Don't get left in the wings—plan your viewing schedule early, with our guide to the best plays hitting the boards this summer

There is, as ever, a huge variety of theatrical entertainment to be sampled this summer. From the West End of London to the Edinburgh Festival, from the lawns of Chichester to the Highland hills of Inverness, there are star actors in masterpieces of drama, and hotshot young writers and directors carving a reputation with the latest in innovatory stage experiences.

Assuming that this summer won't see the non-stop downpours of its immediate predecessor, a night of the Bard en plein air makes an attractive proposition. Londoners are spoilt for choice. The Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park has a new artistic director, Timothy Sheader, and his first programme includes productions of Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night.

On the south bank of the Thames, Shakespeare's Globe is offering a strong programme, including King Lear and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The latter is directed by Christopher Luscombe, whose production of The Comedy of Errors was a definite crowd-pleaser at the same venue two years ago.

Upriver, the National Theatre has some eye-catching fare. A new play by Michael Frayn is always an event, and with his new play Afterlife, he is reunited with actor Roger Allam, the star of Frayn's Democracy, and the veteran director Michael Blakemore. The piece concerns the life of the German stage and screen director Max Reinhardt, with Allam in the title role.

Meanwhile, Rory Kinnear, son of the late comedy actor Roy Kinnear, has been a regular player on the National's stages recently, and he grabs his chance for stardom in a rare production of the Jacobean gorefest The Revenger's Tragedy. The Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre has also decided to stage this Thomas Middleton play and has tempted TV favourite Stephen Tompkinson back to the boards as Vindice, the revenger referred to in the title.

At Stratford, home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, all eyes will be on David Tennant, returning to the stage after a lengthy absence to play Hamlet. Long before he picked up the keys to the Tardis as Doctor Who, Tennant proved himself to be a consummate classical actor, playing Romeo, Touchstone in As You Like It and Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors for the company. Hamlet represents his greatest test, however, and he will be joined in the cast by Patrick Stewart as Claudius. Hamlet is a part that every young leading actor feels he must measure himself against and Tennant has all the right equipment to make the prince his own. Doctor Who fans will be pleased to learn that Tennant will also be playing Berowne for the company this autumn, the hero of Shakespeare's less familiar Love's Labour's Lost.

Back in London, there is another new musical to add to the 20 or so currently playing in the West End. But Marguerite at the Haymarket has a better pedigree than most. Its creative team includes the Oscar-winning Michel Legrand, as well as Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, the duo behind Les Misérables and Miss Saigon. Marguerite, with West End favourite Ruthie Henshall playing the title role, is a clever reworking of Dumas's La Dame aux Camélias, transposing the action to Paris under the Nazis. Verdi used the story as the basis for La Traviata, and Greta Garbo gave one of her greatest performances as the title role in the movie Camille (1936), so the source material has more than proved itself.

Elsewhere in the West End, audacious producer Sonia Friedman brings British playwright Polly Stenham's That Face to the Duke of York's from the Royal Court Theatre. Ice-cool beauty Lindsay Duncan reprises her role as the feckless mother of a dysfunctional family in a powerful drama that has already earned its young writer a stack of awards.

There is also a rare chance to see The Chalk Garden by Enid Bagnold, which opens at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in June. The play is unusual in that the central roles are written for two mature women. At the time of its first London production in 1956, Dames Edith Evans and Peggy Ashcroft took on the roles, ensuring that The Chalk Garden was the hottest ticket in town. It will be fascinating to see if the play still works its magic. The Covent Garden venue's artistic director Michael Grandage, riding high after the runaway success of his production of Othello, will no doubt be able to prove that there are still fresh blooms in The Chalk Garden, especially with such skilled actors as Penelope Wilton and Margaret Tyzack as the protagonists.

In its relatively short existence, the National Theatre of Scotland has quickly proved itself to be a powerhouse of creativity. There's another chance to see its first major success when Black Watch makes its London debut at the Barbican Theatre in June. The show, which was the sensation of the 2006 Edinburgh Festival, is the result of playwright Gregory Burke's interviews with former members of the eponymous Scottish regiment, newly returned from service in Iraq. This depiction of a soldier's life is a thrilling and wholly engaging spectacle. Black Watch will also play the Lowry in Salford and the Ebbw Vale Community Centre in South Wales.

The company is also mounting a brief revival of its 2007 Edinburgh Festival hit, The Bacchae by Euripides, with local boy Alan Cumming repeating his role as the glam-rock god Dionysus. The show visits Aberdeen and Inverness before heading for Cumming's adopted city of New York.

For this year's Edinburgh Festival, the National Theatre of Scotland has a new play, somewhat obscurely titled 365 by Scottish writer David Harrower. It is joined in the festival by theatre companies from Palestine, Bosnia and Iran, and dancer and choreographer Matthew Bourne will also be premiering his new show. It will be interesting to see if Dorian Gray, Bourne's take on the Oscar Wilde story, finds as much favour as Bourne's other pieces, such as Car Man, his version of Bizet's Carmen, and his all-male Swan Lake.

Chichester Festival Theatre, under its artistic director Jonathan Church, is firing on all cylinders again. Among several goodies promised for the 2008 season is Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard with Diana Rigg, Maureen Lipman and Jemma Redgrave heading the cast, and Aristo, a new play by Martin Sherman about the Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis, with Robert Lindsay in the title role. Elsewhere in the festival, there are revivals of two 1960s Broadway musicals: Funny Girl and The Music Man, the latter starring comedian Brian Conley. In Calendar Girls, writer Tim Firth has adapted his own screenplay for a stage version of the hit British film that had a cast of formidable women baring all for charity. Presumably the actresses in the Chichester version will not be required to appear in their birthday suits in a theatre where, until relatively recently, the National Anthem was still loyally played at the start of the performance.

On tour to various venues around the country this summer, including the Richmond Theatre and the Theatre Royal Bath, are a number of other promising productions to look out for. Patricia Routledge stars as Queen Mary in the abdication drama Crown Matrimonial; Nigel Havers plays first Guy Burgess and then Anthony Blunt in Alan Bennett's double bill Single Spies; Peter Bowles and Angela Thorne, co-stars in the BBC sitcom To the Manor Born, are reunited for a welcome revival of Alan Ayckbourn's first commercial success, Relatively Speaking; and Alison Steadman stars in a revival of Bennett's. Enjoy.

Al Senter