What to See on the London Stage in 2013 LONDON - With the new year come renewed theatrical hopes, which, in the case of London 2013, means having to equal the especially strong theater year just gone- both for the classics (Shakespeare especially) and for new plays (the 2012 place to be on that front was the Royal Court). All manner of anticipation is stirring for the prospect of better and more exciting musicals and a bracing array of star directors and star actresses, sometimes both at the same time. This week has already brought an example of that commingling, with the director Phyllida Lloyd ("The Iron Lady") guiding the actress Fiona Shaw in an audacious theatrical appropriation of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, performed alongside the young dancer Daniel Hay-Gordon in the bowels of the Old Vic Tunnels (in conjunction with the Young Vic Theatre). Ms. Shaw's delivery of Coleridge's epic "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" - an achievement both fascinating and florid- is on view through Jan. 13 within the atmospheric depths of a venue well beneath Waterloo Station. Following are five shows that have yet to start performances but that promise much; we live in hope. In order of their start of preview performances, they are: Old Times Kristin Scott Thomas has proven her stage mettle several times over in tandem with the director Ian Rickson, who guided her to a 2008 Olivier Award for "The Seagull" (subsequently seen on Broadway) before shifting from Chekhov over to Pinter for a 2011 West End revival of "Betrayal," in which Ms. Scott Thomas also shone. The two are teaming up again starting Jan. 12 on Pinter's 1971 play "Old Times," a shimmering, sensual piece that should be absolutely up Ms. Scott Thomas's street. The venue, aptly enough, is the Harold Pinter Theatre. Her co-stars are the erstwhile Tony nominees Lia Williams ("Skylight") and Rufus Sewell ("Rock 'n' Roll"), two thoroughbred colleagues by anyone's reckoning. Roll on the pauses - and, one assumes, the passion, too. The Audience There's life in the monarchy yet, and we don't just mean HRH appearing at the opening of the 2012 Olympics, her wit and sense of fun clearly intact. On this occasion, the reference is to Dame Helen Mirren, whose sly, smart performance in the film "The Queen" won the actress every award going several years back and who returns to the royal well, this time on stage, in Peter Morgan's play "The Audience," starting Feb. 15 at the Gielgud Theatre. The conceit on this occasion finds Ms. Mirren's Elizabeth II glimpsed through the decades as she welcomes Britain's successive Prime Ministers to a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace. Here's betting that the audience offstage is just as keen as the one that the production from the director Stephen Daldry ("Billy Elliot") delivers center-stage. Othello Where would London be without some high-voltage Shakespeare? That much is promised, and more, when the National Theatre's artistic director, Nicholas Hytner, directs his onetime Henry V, Adrian Lester, in the title role of "Othello," with the same director's previous Hamlet, Rory Kinnear, on hand as Iago. Previews start mid-April. The Weir Conor McPherson's 1997 play about ghostly specters and the power of storytelling enjoyed long runs in London and New York the first time around and seems ideally suited to the intimacy of the Donmar for its first London revival, starting performances there on April 18. Josie Rourke, artistic director of the 250-seat theater in Covent Garden, directs a cast still to be announced, but let's not forget that the original company included, as the bartender, Brendan Coyle, who has since gone on to fame as Bates, the valet, in "Downton Abbey." Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Every season needs a big new musical, and London has several on tap, even if at least two of the forthcoming titles (the 2011 and 2012 Tony-winners "The Book of Mormon" and "Once," both preparing West End debuts) are new only to U.K. audiences, not to those in New York and, in the case of "Mormon," elsewhere in the U.S. as well. But "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," beginning May 18 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is a juicy world premiere that brings together Tony and Oscar winners, Britons and Americans, in a large-scale extravaganza directed by Sam Mendes ("Skyfall") and starring Douglas Hodge ("La Cage aux Folles"), with a score by the "Hairspray" team of Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman. Oompa-loompas, anyone? What London shows are you most looking forward to?