DERBY Playhouse (01332 363275) the lives of people erecting a tent The Contractor Feb 8-24; Schnitzler’s love duos The Blue Room Mar 16-Apr 7; Playhouse Youth Theatre in Pete Meakin’s The Tales of Hans Andersen Apr 11-14; Alan Lyddiard’s version of 1984 Apr 19-May 5; cab ride in a taxi war Taxi Jam May 31-Jun 2; torments of a screen writer in Danny Bouncing Jun 8-30; a look at Education, Education, Education Jul 11-14; Tour: On A Night Like This LEICESTER Haymarket (0116 253 9797) musical Rent Feb 9-24; Asian comedy East Is East Mar 8-24; Haymarket Youth Theatre in The Winter’s Tale Apr 5-8; Sondheim’s musical comedy of Ingmar Bergman A Little Night Music Apr 20-May 19; Haymarket Youth companies: Aaj Kal Ke Bacche! (Kids Today!) Feb 8-10, about British Asian youth and Spider’s in Disguises Feb 13-14, the GhanaianCaribbean Anancy tales, Heroes Mar 27-31, explores hopes of two young people. Adolescents seeking sexual partners in New Boy Apr 2-7; Tours: Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco, Little White Lies.

NORTHAMPTON Royal (01604 624811) comedy about family infidelity The Circle Feb 5-24; Billie Holliday session with Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill Feb 27-Mar 3; Miller’s Broken Glass Mar 9-31; Neil Simon’s comedy Barefoot in the Park Apr 27-May 19; What the Butler Saw May 25-Jun 16; Ayckbourn’s linked plays House and Garden Jun 29-Jul 14; Tours: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, On A Night Like This.

NOTTINGHAM Playhouse (0115 941 9419) Giles Havergal’s four-man Greene voyage Travels With My Aunt Feb 12-Mar 3; documents of apartheid and after, in double-bill A Woman in Waiting and The Story I’m About to Tell; late 19th-century tales from the Viennese world of seduction Anatol Apr 6-28; community production of Paul Doust’s version of Cold Comfort Farm May 17-19; anti-semitism and slaughter in medieval Lincoln Ritual in Blood May 25-Jun 16; childhood fiction come to life The Boy Who Fell Into A Book Jun 21-Jul 7; Tour: George’s Marvellous Medicine.

* NORTH WEST

BOLTON Octagon (01204 520661) attempts to bring about pregnancy in Misconceptions to February 17, Arthur Miller’s family drama The Price March 1-24; Liverpudlian comedy romance in a seaside Bamp;B, Kissing Sid James Mar 29-Apr 21; the mystery of a northern family running a pit turned garden centre in All of You Mine May 3-26; Ayckbourn’s fantasy comedy Woman in Mind June 7-30. Tours: Dick Barton Special Agent, The Mother.

CHESTER Gateway (01244 340392) Marnie Feb-Mar 3 is Sean O’Connor‘s version rather than the more famous Hitchcock film. Tours: Bedroom Farce, King JohnMerry Wives, On A Night Like This, Trouble Under Foot.

KESWICK Theatre by the Lake (017687 74411) Twelfth Night Mar 23-Apr 14.

Tour: The Tempest.

LANCASTER Dukes (01524 66645) David Hare’s tussle of public and private sector moralities Skylight Feb 16-Mar 10; Les Smith adapts Defoe’s Moll Flanders March 14-14;Apr 10-21, and if you like your theatre in the open air, try the promenade shows in Williamson Park Arabian Nights, Jul 5-Aug 11. Tour: Trouble Under Foot.

LIVERPOOL Playhouse (0151 709 4776) Twelfth Night Feb 1-17. Tours: Feelgood, The Mill on the Floss.

Everyman. Fifth Column - 18th century slave turned British businessman Olaudah Equiano Feb 15-17; The Kaos Volpone Mar 5-7; Tours: Bewilderness, The Mother, A Woman in Waiting, Yerma.

MANCHESTER Library Theatre (0161 236 7110) Death of A Salesman Feb 2-Mar 10; Lancaster Duke’s bring Moll Flanders Mar 27-Apr 7; a blind woman regaining some sight Molly Sweeney Apr 27-May 19; an unusual The Importance of Being Earnest May 25-Jun 9. Tours: Feelgood, Passports to the Promised Land. Royal Exchange (0161 833 9833) the tribulations of tenant farmers in Twenties’ Connecticut, A Moon for the Misbegotten to Feb 24; The Taming of the Shrew Feb 28-Apr 14; Les Blancs Apr18-May 12, is by the black US writer and civil rights activist Lorraine Hansberry, farce from Orton - Loot May 16-Jun 23 - and Feydeau Tit for Tat! Jun 27-Aug11.

Studio. A spine-chilling adaptation of the Fifties’ horror show The Fly May 10-12; Eliza’s House 6-23, daytimes and evenings, is Brendan Murray’s play for 9-13s about Manchester past and future colliding in a present-day house sale. Tours: Bill’s New Frock, Frankenstein, The Ghost Downstairs, Into the Mystic, Wild Girl, Wild Boy.OLDHAM Coliseum (0161 624 2829) Misery February 8-March 3; two generations of women searching out suitable and unsuitable lovers in Mr Wonderful March 8-31; Kenneth Alan Taylor and John Morton have put together the hits of their musical shows as Simply the Best April 6-28; Peter Shaffer’s psychoprobe with its undertone of barely concealed menace Equus May 11-June 2; Jimmy Chinn exposes a gay couple to family pressures in the aptly- titled Straight and Narrow June 7-30. Tour: King JohnMerry Wives.

* SOUTH EAST

BASINGSTOKE Haymarket (01206 465566) a comedy of old age asserting its independence in Rodney Clark’s Moving Susan Feb 23-Mar 17; three cult or classic-style one-act crime shows; comedy Everything I Know I Got from Tarantino, Hitchcock-soaked Prisoner Game and politico-sex drama Fatale in repertory April 18-28. Tours: George’s Marvellous Medicine, The Good Woman of Setzuan.

COLCHESTER (01206 573948) Andrew Taylor adapts Hitchcockian comedy spy tale The Lady Vanishes Feb 1-17; Shavian debunking of war romances Arms and the Man Feb 27-Mar 17; The Tempest Apr 20-May 12; Lorca’s poetic tragedy Blood Wedding May 31-Jun 16; Tours : Blood and Roses, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Little Violet and the Angel, Sweeney Todd.

HORNCHURCH Queen’s (01708 443333) The Importance of Being Earnest Feb 9-Mar 10; Orton’s What the Butler Saw Mar 16-Apr 14; Bob Carlton’s musical rewrite of the Alchemist , Face Apr 20-May 19; John Godber’s caravanning culture clash comedy Perfect Pitch May 24-June 16.

NEWBURY Watermill (01635 46044) Rose Rage Feb 3-Mar 17, adapts Shakespeare’s three Henry VI plays into two parts, with an all-male cast and a Victorian setting; Ade Morris’s Lone Flyer Mar 19-24 (plus regional tour) is about the flyer Amy Johnson; John Doyle sets Gilbert amp; Sullivan in a restaurant called The Gondoliers Mar 28-May 12; return of Doyle’s music theatre Carmen May 14-19; Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest May 30-July 21; Garrick and Colman’s 18th century comedy The Clandestine Marriage August 1-Sept 15.

SOUTHAMPTON Nuffield (023 8067 1771) Simon Day shows an unusual boy arriving to disrupt a fast lane car salesman’s life in Spike Feb 1-Mar 3; daytimes for 2-6s. Maisy’s Treasure Hunt March 30-April 14, is based on characters by Lucy Cousins; in The Shagaround Apr 26-May 19, Southamptoner Maggie Nevill looks at the battle of the sexes over pound;50. Tour: The Mother WATFORD Palace (01923 225671) satisfied longings, with young and old involved in cross-culture and cross-dressing in Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis to Feb 24, Tim Firth’s benighted business men’s bonding comedy Neville’s Island Mar 16-Apr 7. Elderly ladies and loutish youth in Hertfordshire, in Morning Glory Apr 20-May 12; New York newlyweds comedy Barefoot in the Park May 23-Jun 9; female comedy duo Lip Service join an unconventional The Importance of Being Earnest Jun 13-Jul 7.

WESTCLIFF-ON-SEA Palace (01702 342564) Macbeth Feb 7-24; relationships play Closer February 27-Mar 10; fan hell in version of Stephen King’s Misery Mar 27-Apr 7; Agatha Christie festival May 8-Jul 28, including a semi-staged outing with The Mousetrap’s London cast. Tours: Confusions, The Contractor, Trouble Under Foot.

Dixon Studio the meaning of life XXY Feb 27-Mar 3; Boorskale, Mar 6-31; three Derbyshire village sisters; Christie’s Murder on the Nile various dates May 18-Jul 26; lovers quarrel in Jane Birkin’s Oh Sorry Were You Asleep? Jul 31-Aug 4.

* SOUTH WEST

BRISTOL Old Vic (01179877877) A Bitter Herb to Feb 24; Look Back In Anger Mar 2-24; co-production with Talawa of Kwame Dawes’ play with music based on Roger Mais’ novel Brother Man One Love Apr 6-28. New Vic Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Aeroplane Bones Apr 25-May 19 in a deserted airfield. Princes Wharf open-air play about Bristol dockers Up the Feeder, Down the Mouth and Back AgainJun 28-Jul 8.

EXETER Northcott (01392 493493) Shaw’s Arms and the Man Feb 8-24; two women, love and war TreehousesMar 15-24; Nitro Theatre’s musical Passports to the Promised Land Mar 27-31, Northcott Young Company in the story of Victorian street life Oliver! Apr 14-21. Tours: The Contractor, Hay Fever, Passports to the Promised Land.

SALISBURY Playhouse (01722 320333) David Hare’s moral exploration The Secret Rapture to Feb 10; Ayckbourn’s boarding-house full of uneasy romances Things We Do For Love Feb 15-Mar 10; Macbeth Mar 16-Apr 7; youth group Stage 65 in A Tale of Two Cities Apr 12,14; Moli re’s The Miser Apr 20-May 5.

Salberg Studio Youth in Salisbury with It Takes Ages To Be This Good Feb 8-10; mother-daughter twosome in The Beauty Queen of Leenane Mar 1-24; Tours: Little White Lies, MissingCrossing, Trouble Under Foot.

* WEST MIDLANDS

BIRMINGHAM Repertory Theatre (0121 245 2000) an unexpected neighbour The Lady in the Van Feb 7-Mar 10; a new version of Alan Bleasdale’s vasectomy clinic comedy Having A Ball Mar 16-Apr 7; Tamasha Theatre go Bollywood in Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral, The Door; Birmingham’s first boy band in Musical Youth Mar 19-31; love and its dangers in Small World Apr 25-May 9; up from Watford Sarah Daniels’ Morning Glory May 23-Jun 16. Tour: Sleep Tight.

COVENTRY Belgrade (024 76 553055) Blood Brothers to Feb 10; crime story Double Double Feb 27-Mar 10; Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox Apr 3-21, life and music in Seventies’ Coventry Three Minute Heroes May 2-12; cultural clashes Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner May 21-26; Charley’s Aunt May 28-Jun 2; The Roy Orbison Story Jun 4-9; Offbeat comedy The Dice House Jun 13-30. Tours: The 39 Steps, A View From the Bridge.

NEWCASTLE-UNDER-LYME New Vic (01782 717962) music and comedy at the butcher’s in Mark Chatterton’s Ham to Feb 17; Janys Chambers brings Victoria Wood’s secrets of American soap stars to stage in Pat and Margaret Feb 23-Mar 17; a filthily funny look at life in the thick of a 1948 army concert party in Malaya Privates on Parade Apr 20-May 12.

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON With emphasis on the actor-audience relationship, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stages Hamlet from Mar 31; Twelfth Night from Apr 13; Julius Caesar from Jul 13.

Swan In rep. Shakespeare’s King John from Mar 21; restoration comedy of amoral post-Great Fire London Love in A Wood from Apr 12, and new satire on Shakespeare celebrations and the theatrical personality cult Jubilee from Jul 12. Cold War conscience, post-war Berlin is explored in A Russian in the Woods from March 2; comedy about paramilitaries and cruelty to animals The Lieutenant of Inishmore from Apr 11, and David Edgar on conflict in East Europe with The Prisoner’s Dilemma from Jul 11.

WORCESTER Swan (01905 27322) Ayckbourn’s futuristic nightmare Henceforward Feb 22-Mar 17; three writers trace the history of a Worcester family from 1914 to 2000, in four plays over two nights as The Worcester Century Plays Apr 7-28; Tour: Roald Dahl’s fantastical tale with a twist George’s Marvellous Medicine.

* YORKSHIRE amp; N. EAST

HULL Hull Truck (01482 323638) Debbie Isitt’s The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband Feb 8-Mar 3; Hull Truck Youth Theatre offer Transformations Mar 27-31; Godber’s Big Trouble in the Little Bedroom Apr 19-May 5; Julius Caesar May 10-26; David Halliwell’s Sixties’ student revolutionary Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs Jun 4-16, Godber’s caravanning Perfect Pitch Jun 21-30 and a new John Godber play Jul 5-28.

LEEDS West Yorkshire Playhouse (0113 213 7700) Quarry Theatre, Courtroom satire Naked Justice Jan 26-Feb 24.

Courtyard Theatre, Mister Heracles Feb 16-Mar 16, is by poet Simon Armitage out of Euripides.

NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE Newcastle Playhouse (0191 230 5151) 1984 Mar 21-Apr 7; the moon as seen by poets, scientists and astronauts Far Side of the Moon Apr 12-14 Tour: Yerma. Gulbenkian Studio Tours: Casanova, The Mother, Safe.

SHEFFIELD Crucible (0114 249 6000) Arthur Miller’s first play The Man Who Had All the Luck to Feb 24; Marlowe’s Edward II Mar 9-31; Andrea Dunbar’s dispatches from the frontline about the youth of Bradford in the Eighties The Arbor May 31-Jun 23.

Studio Tour: Medea YORK Theatre Royal (01904 623568) New Wolsey in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd Feb 28-Mar 10, a Kafkaesque interpretation of a modern insurance seller’s life Kafka’s Dick Mar 16-Apr 7. Tours: Big Trouble in the Little Bedroom, The Mother, On A Night Like This, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, magic, ghosts and time travel in Tom’s Midnight Garden.

* WALES

CARDIFF Sherman (029 2064 6900) greed threatens dinosaur and dodo in Paddy the Clown on Kakapo Island Feb 21-Mar 2; for 5-11s, Torch Theatre in Sean Mathias’s A Prayer for Wings Mar 9-10; human behaviour and survival in The Crime of the Twenty-First Century Mar 22-23; Tour: Pacific.

Studio Welsh College of Music and Drama’s The Taming of the Shrew Feb 14-17; post-1984 surveillance Big Brother Is Watching You Feb 28-Mar 3; Equinox Theatre examine marriage in Shakespeare’s Doublets Mar 7-10; Roger Williams goes clubbing in Saturday Night Forever Mar 15-17;27-31; Tour: Trouble Under Foot.

HARROGATE Theatre (01423 502116) A View From the Bridge to Feb 17.

Tours: The Borrowers, The Good Woman of Setzuan, On A Night Like This, Tom’s Midnight Garden.

MILFORD HAVEN Torch (01646 695267)escape from wheelchair-bound mother in A Prayer for Wings Feb 6-10 - Mar 13-17; Tour: Pacific.

MOLD Clwyd Theatr Cymru (01352 755114) Anthony Hopkins Theatre King Lear Feb 8-Mar 10; Tour: The Borrowers.

Emlyn Williams’ Theatre Theatre 21 in Edward Bond’s The Crime of the 21st Century February 15-16; Tours: Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco, Pacific, A Prayer for Wings.

* SCOTLAND

DUNDEE Rep Theatre (01382 223530) Dundee poet’s in The Land of Cakes Mar 3-24;The Winter’s Tale Mar 31-Apr 21, musical Mince? Apr 30-May 19, the Dundee company at Aberdeen’s His Majesty’s, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Feb 7-10 and Inverness’ Eden Court All My Sons Feb 14-17.

EDINBURGH Royal Lyceum (0131 248 4848) A View from the Bridge Feb 13-Mar 10; Guys and Dolls Mar 27-Apr 21; adaptation of Buchner’s Woyzeck May 1-19. Traverse (0131 228 1404) two plays about lovers in The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek Feb 16-Mar 18 (Traverse 1), Canada Heritage Mar 2-17 (Traverse 2).Tours: Marching On, Stroma.

GLASGOW Citizens (0141 429 0022) a play about a corrupt policeman, Filth Feb 6-24.

Circle Studio incest play The Mysterious Mother Feb 1-24.Stalls Studio Jon Pope adapts the story of Marianne Faithfull Jan 31-Feb 24.

MUSSELBURGH Brunton (0131 665 2240) Hamlet Feb 1-17; Prime Productions, Lewis Grassic Gibbons’ Sunset Song Mar 7-10; Benchtours How Many Miles to Babylon? Mar 23-24. Tours: Beethoven’s Brother, Frankenstein.

PERTH Theatre (01738 621031) Sleuth to Feb 10; Twelfth Night Feb 23-Mar 10; Sunset Song Mar 15-31. Tours: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Marching On.