If you’re into experimental and brand new theatre, make sure you check out this summer’s Almeida Festival, running from 9 July to 3 August. It’s a really eclectic programme, including international theatre companies, new collaborations and award-winning artists. Look out for Bryony Kimming’s new show, Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model; Lost Dogs’ new show Rabbits; and Dante or Die’s I Do, a site-specific piece that takes place in six hotel rooms 10 minutes before a wedding is due to start. For the full line-up, see almeida.co.uk/festival-2013.

The line-up for this year’s Kids Week has also been announced. Running for the whole of August in 2013, there are 34 top London shows offering free tickets to children aged 16 and under with every adult ticket bought. As well as top musicals, drama and dance shows, there are also workshops for kids interested in trying ballet, learning pop songs with the cast of Let It Be and tap dancing with Top Hat. Tickets go on sale on 18 June from kidsweek.co.uk.

The latest news from the National Theatre is that Rufus Norris will direct a new stage adaptation of the acclaimed novel Behind The Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death And Hope In A Mumbai Undercity next year. The novel by Katherine Boo is being adapted by playwright David Hare, and is a non-fiction account of life in the slums of Annawadi. If the adaptation of Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time is anything to go by, the National could have another hit on their hands.

London Theatre Cast News

• Olivier Award-winning actor Julian Glover will star in the UK premiere of The Scottsboro Boys when it opens at the Young Vic later this year
• Joanna Lumley and Andrew Scott will star in two short plays by Harold Pinter as part of a programme of platform events at the Trafalgar Studios
• Maureen Lipman stars in the world premiere of Oliver Cotton’s Daytona at the Park Theatre from 10 July
• Danny Webb joins Imelda Staunton and Toby Jones in the UK premiere of Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation, part of the Royal Court’s Theatre Local project later this year
• Olivier Award winner Gawn Grainger and The Lord Of The Rings star Billy Boyd have joined the cast of Macbeth at Shakespeare’s Globe

At the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, West End stars including Richard Blackwood and Carly Stenson (from Shrek), Tom Chambers (Top Hat), Bonnie Langford (Spamalot) and the boys from Thriller Live, gave an audience of super-chirpy children a taste of all the excitement to come this summer.

This year, theatregoers will be able to book for hit musicals including Billy Elliot, The Lion King, Jersey Boys, Les Misérables, Singin’ In The Rain and We Will Rock You, comedies like The 39 Steps, One Man, Two Guvnors and Yes, Prime Minister, dramas Chariots Of Fire, The Doctor’s Dilemma and The Woman In Black, and colourful children’s shows such as Dora The Explorer and The Tiger Who Came To Tea. Kids Week offers you a free child’s ticket for every adult ticket purchased to one of the participating shows, plus the opportunity to purchase up to two more children’s tickets half-price.

As well as the shows, Kids Week gives children the chance to take part in singing workshops, Q&As, dance classes and puppet workshops, backstage demonstrations and more. You can take part in a Tigerlympics Tea Party, become a Munchkin in the Wizard of Oz or learn about the Terrible Tudors in a Horrible Histories workshop.

Go to www.kidsweek.co.uk for a full line-up of shows and activities on offer. Tickets go on sale on the website at 10am tomorrow or you can call the Kids Week 24 hour booking hotline on 0844 248 5151. You can also keep up-to-date with Kids Week on their facebook and twitter pages. www.facebook.com/kidsweeklondon and www.twitter.com/kidsweek

• Long runners extending their booking periods include:
  Wicked, Jersey Boys, Les Mis, Phantom, and We Will Rock You
• New blockbusters getting in on the forward planning include:
  The Wizard of Oz, Shrek, Ghost

For a full list of shows that have extended their booking into 2012, check out the Official London Theatre website.

Edward Hall’s all-male theatre company Propeller have also announced their 2012 plans. They’ll perform their Shakespearean pairing of Henry V and The Winter’s Tale at the Hampstead Theatre from 4 to 21 July.

Before we get to that all-important Olympic year, there’s still exciting casting news to think about. This week’s announcements include:

• Hollywood star Thandie Newton, who’ll appear in Ariel Dorfman’s Death And The Maiden at the Comedy Theatre from October
• Doctor Who star Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) is making her professional stage debut in Inadmissible Evidence at the Donmar, also in October
• Another debut, this time from Hannah Spearritt (who you’ll know from Primeval, or if you’re my age, S Club 7!) in The Belle’s Stratagem at the Southwark Playhouse from September
• And finally, a real favourite of mine, David Suchet’s going to be back on the London stage in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, at the Apollo Theatre. You’ll have to wait til next April for that one, I’m afraid.

Last of all if you’re a fan of London theatre: don’t forget Kids Week, next month!

In other news this week, The Railway Children has announced an extension, and is now booking until 8 January 2012. The production, which won an Olivier Award for Best Entertainment earlier in the year, currently stars Marcus Brigstocke as station master Mr Perks.

Did you enjoy spotting some of London theatre’s regulars in BBC2’s The Hour on Tuesday? I certainly did. Abi Morgan, who wrote the series, is also in London’s theatrical news this week. She’s one of the many writers tackling an exciting Headlong theatre project about the legacy of 9/11, directed by Rupert Goold. The show, called Decade, will be staged in an atmospheric disused building in St Katherine Docks from 1 September. Other writers on the project include:

• Christopher Shinn (best-known for Now Or Later at the Royal Court in 2008)
• Lynn Nottage, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ruined, which was staged last year at the Almeida Theatre
• Samuel Adamson, who wrote Southwark Fair at the National Theatre
• Mike Bartlett, behind Earthquakes In London for Headlong, and Cock at the Royal Court
• Alecky Blythe, author of hit documentary-musical London Road at the National Theatre
• Columbia University historian Simon Schama, whose historical work Rough Crossings was adapted by Headlong for the stage in 2007

Three shows have released news of their casts this week. They are:

• The Lion in Winter by James Goldman will star Robert Lindsay and Joanna Lumley at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in November
• Cool Hand Luke: Lee Boardman from Corrie and Lisa Eichhorn join Marc Warren in this stage adaptation of the well-known film, coming the Aldwych theatre in September
• Nicholas Lyndhurst joins Ralph Fiennes in Trevor Nunn’s production of The Tempest at the Theatre Royal Haymarket from 27 August

Secondly, there’s a lot of excitement in my household over the news that Complicite’s A Disappearing Number is coming back to London. Book now to see the production’s original cast at the Novello Theatre for a limited run between 10 and 25 September.

Casting news this week includes

• Tom Burke (Alan Rickman’s godson, no less), Lisa Dillon (from the BBC’s Cranford) and Olivier-award winner Andrew Scott take on Noel Coward’s Design For Living at the Old Vic in September
• Ella Smith, who won a heap of awards for her performance in Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig in 2008 is back. She’ll play in Bedlam at Shakespeare’s Globe also from September
• Real life husband and wife Alexander Hanson and Samantha Bond will play husband and wife in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband at the Vaudeville Theatre from 4 November
• And Gina McKee, last seen on the London stage in the brilliant Ivanov, will star alongside Derek Jacobi in a star-laden King Lear at the Donmar Warehouse this Christmas

And finally for this week, Kids Week is going to have to rethink its name, following a hugely successful promotion in 2010. The project, which offers one free child’s ticket (aged 5 to 16) with every full paying adult for a whole load of London’s most popular shows, has now extended into a THIRD week. It’ll now run from 13 August to 3 September. Apparantly, they’ve sold more than 40,000 tickets for performances during its original fortnight (13 to 27 August) since booking opened on 13 July. Incredible!

More information about Kids Week, including travel, accommodation and restaurants, can be found at www.kidsweek.co.uk.