London has a brand new theatre opening in October – and Sir Nicholas Hytner, who is the driving force behind it, has announced what promises to be a stellar line-up for its premiere season.

The former artistic director of the National Theatre, together with Nick Starr, the National’s former executive director, is opening the Bridge Theatre – which, as its name suggests, is right by Tower Bridge, on London’s South Bank.

The entrée to this thespian menu is Young Marx, a brand new play about the founder of the Communist ideology as “a thirty-two-year-old revolutionary” living in Soho. Sir Nicholas will be directing the play – as well as a production of Julius Caesar later in the season, with David Calder as Caesar, Ben Whishaw as Brutus, Michelle Fairley (of Game of Thrones fame) as a female Cassius and David Morrissey as Mark Antony.

Other productions will include Always, by Harriet Lane, Flatpack, a new play by John Hodge, The Black Cloud, a new play by Sam Holcroft, and Carmen Havana, a version of Bizet’s opera.

Sir Nicholas, who was born in Manchester to Jewish parents, was at the National with Mr Starr, where they produced such hits as War Horse, The History Boys and One Man, Two Guvnors.

Describing the new venture, Sir Nicholas said: “We want to make bold popular theatre. We’ve commissioned ambitious plays that reach out to embrace the audience, and we’ve built an environment for them that is exciting, welcoming and flexible: a theatre that can be changed to suit the show. We reckon that London needs new theatres, designed for the shows that people make in the 21st century and the expectations that audiences have for a really good night out.”