New Old Vic season features Daniel Radcliffe, Alan Cumming, Claire Foy and Matt Smith

Matthew Warchus has announced his fifth season as artistic director at The Old Vic, which will feature The Crown actors Matt Smith and Claire Foy making their Old Vic debuts, plus a double-bill starring Alan Cumming and Daniel Radcliffe.

The season begins in August as dates are confirmed for the previously announced Lucy Prebble play A Very Expensive Poison. Based on the book by Luke Harding, the play tells the story of the events leading to the death of Russian spy Alexander Litvineko. Directed by John Crowley, the play runs from 19^th August, with a press night on 5^th September.

With exact dates to be announced, Claire Foy and Matt Smith will star in Duncan Macmillan's Lungs, directed by Warchus. The actors, who starred opposite each other as Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in the Netflix series The Crown, will make their Old Vic debuts in the play about a couple wrestling with the moral dilemmas of climate change, such as whether to bring a baby into the world.

Jack Thorne's version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol will return to the Old Vic from 23^rd November. Warchus' production premiered in 2017 starring Rhys Ifans as Scrooge, and it was revived last year starring Steven Tompkinson. Casting for the 2019 production is to be announced.

In the new year, Alan Cumming and Daniel Radcliffe will star in a double-bill of Samuel Beckett's Endgame and the short play Rough for Theatre II. Directed by Richard Jones. Endgame pits an old blind tyrant named Hamm in a stalemate with his servant Clov. The production runs from 27^th January, with an official opening on 4^th February.

The season concludes with the London premiere of the musical Local Hero. Based on the film by Bill Forsyth, with a book by David Greig and music and lyrics y Mark Knopfler, it is about an oil executive Mac Macintyre who arrives in a small Scottish village with plans to replace it with an oil refinery. John Crowley directs the musical, which is currently recieving its world premiere in Edinburgh before running at the Old Vic from 18^th June.

The theatre has also announced that it has commissioned Ella Hickson for a new version of  Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Simon Stephens for a new version of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, and a new play about the NHS written by Paul Unwin and directed by Sarah Franckom. Priya Parmar and Kate Prince's Sylvia, which received a work-in-progress run last year, is also in development.

_{Photo credits: Matt Smith and Daniel Radcliffe (Gage Skidmore: flickr/flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0), Clare Foy (NASA, flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), Alan Cumming (DeShaun Craddockm, flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)}