From hardcore Pinter to big-league musicals, madcap comedy to brave new work, it’s all happening in theatreland in 2012. Steve Wright flicks through his diary.

Bristol’s trio of new theatres all begin 2012 in fine health. After its opening production, Rescue Me (16-26 Jan – see News on p.61), the Bierkeller Theatre (pictured above) welcomes hosts French outfit La Compagnie du Cèdre (31 Jan-9 Feb), with a double bill of shorts: Gift to the Future, about John Heminges, Shakespeare's friend and editor of the first Folio, and The Lover, The Wife, about how a man’s wife and mistress form an unlikely alliance to plot his downfall. And in early April, Bristol’s Darkstuff Productions (they of ‘Outside’, ‘Scrooge at the Farm’ and the ‘Eddie King’ walkabout series) stage a promenade performance of Moby Dick, transforming the Bierkeller into a 19th-century ale house, Captain Ahab's ill-fated ship and, of course, a whale’s belly.

Plans at the brilliant Wardrobe Theatre, above Kingsdown’s White Bear pub, include another week of Itch (April), scratch performance pieces from some of Bristol's best theatre makers. And last but not least, Redland’s bijou and beautiful Little Black Box Theatre welcomes Bristol’s Sh*t Happens Productions with Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter (12-17 Mar); Unsinkable (10-14 Apr) by residents Fragile Theatre, a play drawing on transcripts of conversations as the Titanic went down; and, in May, a week of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues.

Bristol’s Stepping Out are the country’s leading mental health theatre group – and, just as significantly for Bristol theatregoers’ eyes, purveyors of fine, madcap comedies penned by their director Steve Hennessy. And they return with Madhampton.co.uk (The Brewery, 4-5 and 10-14 Apr), about a group of online friends who have met through a therapy website – a virtual English village with an array of larger-than-life characters. Madhampton appears to offer sanctuary for troubled minds – but when they meet for real, the friends discover that relating is rather more complicated. After an excellent January (see elsewhere in this section), The Brewery also hosts nonpareil puppeteers Blind Summit, who bring The Table to town from 21-25 Feb.

A busy May at Bristol Hippodrome includes a new production of The Phantom of the Opera (22 May-30 June), starring John Owen-Jones (Jean Valjean in ‘Les Misérables’) as the titular phantasm. Lovers of colourful contemporary dance and indeed anyone in search of a visceral live spectacle should book for The Nutcracker (17-21 Apr) by contemporary dance’s big name, Matthew Bourne (who started out in Bristol, you know), and those in need of another dose of mentalism and mindwarpery should snaffle tickets for Derren Brown (17-19 May).

Among a raft of fledgling and growing companies, one to catch our eye last year was Bristol’s Roughhouse, who gave us a superb Shakespeare double bill at Arnos Vale Cemetery. And they’ll be back this autumn, with a Much Ado About Nothing/Macbeth rep pairing at the Cemetery (3-22 Sept). RoughHouse are also on the bill at Shakespeare Unplugged (11 Feb-4 Mar), Theatre Royal Bath’s festival of fresh takes on the Bard in the egg and Ustinov theatres. Highlights include The Judgement of Macbeth, a unique collaboration between the egg and Cirque Bijou’s trapeze artists; Gerard Logan’s acclaimed performance of Shakespeare’s brutal narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece; and a double bill of Shakespeare’s History Cycle (five reigns in 60 minutes) and The Tempest served up with supper by local companies Hammerpuzzle, New Old Friends and our friends Roughhouse.

And, of course, some of the finest Bardistry you’ll see this year, in Bristol or indeed anywhere, will as ever come from Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, whose thirteenth Tob Fac season opens with King Lear (9 Feb-24 Mar), with John Shrapnel in the title role supported by Simon Armstrong, Chris Bianchi, Julia Hills, Roland Oliver, Saskia Portway – and Dudley ‘Tinker’ Sutton as Lear’s Fool. After that, SATTF venture once more away from the Bard with Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard (29 Mar-5 May).

Back at the Theatre Royal, other highlights include a version of Long’s Day Journey Into Night (19-24 Mar), Eugene O’Neill’s compelling portrait of a family facing explosive revelations over the course of 24 hours. David Suchet stars. The Royal Shakespeare Company bring their Taming of the Shrew to Bath (27-31 Mar), direct from Stratford’s winter season, and there’s a joint TRB/Menier Chocolate Factory production of Mike Leigh’s brilliantly uncomfortable portrait of 1970s suburbia, Abigail’s Party (23-28 Apr).

This summer, the Theatre Royal bids goodbye to the Peter Hall seasons that have lit up the theatre since 2003. There is a fine-looking summer season in their stead, though, comprising Sheridan’s witty and flirtatious Georgian comedy The School for Scandal (5-21 July); Hysteria (26 July-18 Aug), Terry Johnson’s witty farce starring Antony Sher as the good doctor Freud; and The Tempest (Aug 23-Sept 8) directed by Adrian Noble. The latter also directs a new stage version of last year’s blockbusting Britflick The King’s Speech (20-25 Feb).

Around the block, The Ustinov continues the new regime introduced by incoming artistic director Laurence Boswell: seasons of three UK premieres linked under a common theme. After the autumn’s season of European classics, spring at The Ustinov is given over to three intriguing modern American plays. Adam Rapp’s compelling, poetic and erotic drama Red Light Winter (1-31 Mar) was originally produced by Chicago’s legendary Steppenwolf Theater; In A Garden (4 Apr-5 May) is Howard Korder’s intriguing play about an American architect’s struggle to build a structure for the culture minister of a fictitious Middle Eastern country; and Sarah Ruhl’s award-winning play In The Next Room, or The Vibrator Play (10 May-9 June) is a provocative, funny and touching story about sex in the 19th century.

A welter of fine-looking all-ages shows at the egg, meanwhile, includes White (9-12 May), Catherine Wheels’ thrilling light and colour feast for ages 2 and above, and Best New Show winner at last year’s Theatre Awards UK. Bristol/Bath favourites Stuff and Nonsense visit with their adaptation of The Hare and the Tortoise (2-5 Feb); M6 Theatre present One Little Word (7-10 Mar), a moving story which features original music and just one spoken word; Hiccup Theatre present a puppet version of Edward Lear’s classic poem The Owl and the Pussycat for ages 3 and above (24 Mar); while the performance from Bristol musos Kid Carpet and the Noisy Animals (3-4 Apr) is billed as ‘Oliver Postgate meets The Beastie Boys’.

A nicely varied winter/spring at Bath’s Mission Theatre, meanwhile, includes another chance to catch The Decent Rogues (24-28 Jan), the comedy musical by local troupe Music is Life about a pair of Edwardian gentleman crooks. From 27-31 Mar, The Mission’s excellent residents Next Stage give us The Children’s Hour, Lillian Hellman’s tense drama in which a vindictive teenager wreaks havoc in 1930s small-town America. Elsewhere in non-pro land, Bristol community theatre troupe acta host the COAST International Festival of Community Theatre (26-29 Mar), created with migrant communities in Holland, Germany, Poland and the UK, at their Bedminster homestead.

Bristol Old Vic will re-open its Main House this summer. Exact dates, and programming post-reopening, are still to be confirmed – but until then, there are a few treats to be had in the Studio. Venue was moved to tears by Theatre Ad Infinitum’s extraordinary wordless play of music and masks, Translunar Paradise, which visits the Studio from 7-11 Feb. A journey of life, death, and enduring love, the show follows a widower who escapes to a paradise of fantasy and past memories, a place far from the reality of his grief – but who finally and touchingly manages to let go of those memories. Other hot BOV tickets include a visit from Bristol Jam favourites The Sacconi Quartet with the beguiling-sounding Death’s Cabaret (21-22 Feb) and a hugely tempting Pinter/Beckett double bill, A Kind of Alaska/Krapp’s Last Tape (5 Apr- 12 May), directed by Simon Godwin who gave us the sensational ‘Faith Healer’ last year. May will also see the return of Mayfest (dates tbc) and Bath Fringe (25 May-10 June.

Pinter is also on the menu at Bath’s Rondo Theatre, where European Arts Company tackle two of the great man’s one-act plays, The Dumb Waiter and The Lover (13-14 Apr). EAC are worth catching – their last visit to the Rondo, with some of Chekhov’s short comedies, bowled over one of our harder-to-please reviewers.

Other Rondo highlights include a return for Bristol’s brilliant, Goons-esque comic troupe Gonzo Moose with their French Revolution romp I'm an Aristocrat, Get Me Out of Here! (22-24 Mar), “Sheer joy from start to finish,” we pronounced of GM’s last outing ‘Grimm and Grimmer’. Elsewhere, Angel Exit Theatre adapt the magical and oft-dark children’s classic The Secret Garden (10-11 Feb), swiftly followed by a return from Rondo favourites Reform Theatre with Nick Lane’s nicely downbeat-sounding comedy My Favourite Summer (14 Feb).

And we also like the look of the Rondo Theatre Company’s own production of Blood and Ice (28-31 Mar), Liz Lochhead’s play set in summer 1816 at a house party on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Mary Shelley and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley, along with Mary's half-sister Claire and the infamous Lord Byron, take part in a challenge to see who can write the most horrifying story. It is Mary, of course, who goes on to create one of the most celebrated Gothic novels of all time: Lochhead’s play explores how the extraordinary monstrous Frankenstein could have emerged from the mind of a 21-year-old English woman.

Copyright Steve Wright 2011