This week's new theatre

2011 ones to watch With panto season winding down, thoughts turn to the new theatre season. Particularly the transfer to Wyndhams of Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park and the Danny Boyle-directed Frankenstein at the NT. Hot on the heels of Tribes at the Royal Court, Nina Raine's Tiger Country should be claiming attention at the revitalised Hampstead Theatre, which also has a new Mike Leigh play, Ecstasy , in March. Hampstead's artistic director, Ed Hall, has been busy: his brilliant all-male ensemble, Propeller, goes out on tour with The Comedy Of Errors and Richard III , starting at Sheffield's Lyceum Theatre at the end of the month. Sheffield's David Hare season includes Thea Sharrock's revival of Plenty . Sharrock's busy this season: she's also directing Terence Rattigan's Cause Célèbre with Anne-Marie Duff at London's Old Vic, and Blithe Spirit with Alison Steadman at the Apollo in the West End. There are more stars in the West End with Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss in Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour , about scandal in a New England school at the Comedy. If you want more Rattigan, West Yorkshire Playhouse revives his great The Deep Blue Sea , in February. Later in the year, and already booking, Deborah Warner will direct School For Scandal at the Barbican, but before then there's Robert Lepage's The Blue Dragon and Dutch company Toneelgroep with The Antonioni Project , the follow-up to the extraordinary Roman Tragedies. There are plenty of UK companies with new work, too. Kneehigh premieres The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg at Leicester's Curve, and Cheek By Jowl's Russian Ensemble returns with The Tempest , touring from early March, beginning at Warwick Arts Centre. Birmingham says goodbye to the Rep while building takes place and goes peripatetic, starting with Kenny Baraka's The Rememberers at the AE Harris factory in early Feb. Schools are very much in focus, with the Bush's season beginning with John Donnelly's account of a failing school, The Knowledge , and the Royal Exchange in Manchester premiering Vivienne Franzmann's Mogadishu . Lyn Gardner A Doll's House, London The final production by Theatre Delicatessen in its current pop-up venue of the former offices of Uzbekistan Airways, director Frances Loy aims to transform the Picton Place premises into a giant doll's house. Loy, who oversaw a fine revival of Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur will be seeking to prove that Ibsen's 130-year-old play remains as pertinent as ever in a post-feminist era. The twist here is that Loy's cast will be an all-female one, so the gender contortions may well give this familiar play an edge in asking whether equality is a reality or simply a mirage which leaves 21st-century women as confined as Ibsen's 19th-century heroine, Nora. Picton Place, W1, Wed to 5 Feb Mark Cook The Secret Garden, Edinburgh Not to be confused with the home-grown musical currently playing at Birmingham Rep, this is the Scottish premiere of the 1991 Broadway version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic Edwardian children's story written by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon. It won three Tony awards in the US, and made a brief appearance here in the UK under the auspices of the RSC, but now gets a major revival with the brilliant Siobhan Redmond in the non-singing role of Mrs Medlock, the rather scary housekeeper in charge of the gloomy manor house on the windswept Yorkshire moors where the disagreeable orphaned Mary is sent to live. Norman Pace, Graham Bickley and Caspar Phillipson also feature in a story of hearts de-iced by the new growth of spring, it should make for a warming winter's story for the whole family. Edinburgh Festival Theatre, to 8 Jan LG Amphibians, London Who knew that the Bridewell Theatre had a Victorian swimming pool lurking under the floor? It's being opened up and used for the first time in years for Amphibians, a play written by the aptly named Steve Waters and directed by Cressida Brown as a site -specific production for Offstage Theatre. Brown came up with the original idea after interviewing Olympic swimmers, psycholoigists and coaches about their preparations and training for competition. The resulting piece takes in the pressure on young adolescent swimmers, the striving for perfection, and the price of giving up their lives for sporting success. With the 2012 Olympics fast approaching, and the cultural Olympiad too, this is highly topical, linking the games to the capital's past. Let's hope it makes a – ho ho! – big splash. Bridewell Theatre, EC4, Tues 4 to 28 Jan MC Jack And The Beanstalk, York Not only does the York Theatre Royal boast one of the greatest of modern dames in Berwick Kaler, but it frequently features among the small handful of pantomimes running right through to the end of January. Long after other theatres have put away the tinsel, the Theatre Royal is still raising the roof with cries of "he's behind you". It's a sign of the quality of the annual offering that audiences are still keen to see the show long after the festive season is over, and the credit card bills have begun to drop through the letter box.In the long haul towards spring, this beanstalk should offers some unexpected early shoots of joy and laughter. Theatre Royal, to 29 Jan LG The Potting Shed, London Cliff Richard's theatre appearances have been few. Many will remember the critical drubbing he got in the musical Heathcliff in 1996. Not quite so well known is the fact that, some 40 years ago, he appeared in Graham Greene's The Potting Shed. First staged in 1958 it originally starred Sir John Gielgud, but was revived some 13 years later at Sadler's Wells with the Peter Pan of pop in the lead role of James. As the patriarch of the family lies dying, there's a dark secret ready to be unearthed; something nasty that happened to James in the eponymous potting shed when he was 14 years old and led to his rejection by the silent family. With the help of a psychoanalyst he tries to find out precisely what happened. Finborough Theatre, SW10, Tue to 29 Jan MC