Theatre highlights of 2015: From Benedict Cumberbatch to Bend it Like Beckham

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. National Theatre, London, 21 January to 16 April Farinelli and the King Mark Rylance stars in this fascinating real-life story, dramatised by his wife Claire van Kampen, about Philippe V of Spain and the castrato whose voice cured him of insomnia and despair. Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, 11 February to 8 March Antigone The visionary Flemish director Ivo van Hove brings us Sophocles’s great tragedy in a modern version starring Juliette Binoche. Barbican, London, 4 to 28 March; King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, 9 to 22 August The Vote James Graham aims for a media coup with his drama set in a fictional London polling booth in the last 90 minutes of Election Day 2015. Phoenix Theatre, London, from 15 May Hamlet The advance sales broke records, but there will be 100 £10 tickets held back for each day’s performance of the most hotly anticipated classical production of the year: Benedict Cumberbatch as Shakespeare’s brainiest hero, directed by Lyndsey Turner.