Bodinetz will direct the opening play of the year, following last year’s acclaimed A Streetcar Named Desire, with Roger McGough’s adaptation of Molière’s The Misanthrope.  

After the huge successes of Tartuffe and The Hypochondriac, it will complete a trilogy of Molière adaptations with the tale of poet Alceste who embarks on a one-man crusade against the forked-tongues, frippery and fakery of high society. It will be followed by a nine-date national tour.  

Liverpool writer Jonathan Harvey, whose career began at the Playhouse 25 years ago before going on to write TV comedy Gimme Gimme Gimme and Coronation Street, will see a revival of his celebrated play Beautiful Thing on the theatre’s main stage as part of a UK tour culminating in the West End.  

Other visiting work includes Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills, presented by Northern Stage and directed by Psyche Stott, and Northern Broadsides’s production of Githa Sowerby's Rutherford and Son, directed by Beyond the Fringe’s Sir Jonathan Miller in his first work for the British stage in five years.  

Dance is also represented in the new season with the return of Leeds-based Phoenix Dance, performing new show Particle Velocity, and Northern Ballet’s family-friendly production of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling.  

Also for children will be a new adaptation of celebrated children’s author Phillip Pullman’s I Was A Rat! by Italian company Teatro Kismet; Complicite’s Lionboy, inspired by Zizou Corder's bestselling fantasy novels about a young boy who can talk to cats; and Spot the dog.  

The season will also feature three one night comedy performances from Roger McGough, Mark Thomas with Bravo Figaro! and John Shuttleworth’s Out Of Our Sheds.  

Meanwhile, February 2013 will see the fifth production by Young Everyman Playhouse – a site-specific piece devised by the scheme’s Young Writers and Young Actors.