TWO plays featuring salesmen, but set on opposite sides of the world as well as centuries apart, are among the highlights to look forward to in the 2015 programme just announced by the Royal Shakespeare Company with several big names scheduled to appear in upcoming productions.

One hundred years after American playwright Arthur Miller’s birth Antony Sher and Alex Hassell will play Willy Loman and his eldest son, Biff, in Death of a Salesman at the Stratford-upon-Avon theatre in March, and then it’s off to Italy for Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice which will take over in May.

This will be paired with Othello, as part of the Venice season, with Hugh Quarshie in the title role and Lucian Msamati as Iago.

While they occupy the main theatre three contemporary takes on classic plays will be featured in the Swan Theatre when the idea of the ‘outsider’ is explored as Trevor Nunn directs Henry Goodman in Volpone by Ben Jonson, Justin Audibert and Matthew Dunster make RSC directing debuts with The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe and Love’s Sacrifice by John Ford.

Gregory Doran will direct the summer opener, Death of a Salesman, which was Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer prize-winning play about failed dreams and thwarted ambition.

Antony Sher and Alex Hassell are currently appearing in Stratford together. Hassell is playing Prince Hal alongside Sher’s Falstaff in the RSC’s current productions of Henry IV Parts I & II.

Polly Findlay, currently directing one of the plays in ‘The Roaring Girls’ season - Arden of Faversham at the Swan, will be preparing for her first Shakespeare production for the RSC with the tragic tale of the merchant, while Othello will be in the experienced hands of Iqbal Khan, whose last production for the RSC was an acclaimed Much Ado About Nothing a couple of years ago, set in India.

After more than a decade working in film and television on projects from Star Wars to Holby City, Hugh Quarshie returns to the RSC to play the title role in this uncompromising tragedy.

He last appeared with the company in 1996 in Faust and Julius Caesar.

The Venice season crosses both houses and the themes of the main house Shakespeare productions are reflected in the Swan Theatre repertoire where Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta will open the season on March 18.

The play picks up the themes of racism and revenge seen in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, as it follows the Christian Governor of Malta’s attempts to buy off the invading Turkish fleet with money levied from the island’s Jewish population.

The title character, Barabas, complains bitterly and his entire fortune is seized. He plans swift and bloody vengeance that threatens to destroy the entire island as men of all faiths ruthlessly pursue their own interests.

John Ford’s Love’s Sacrifice is a rarely-performed play but is a thrilling revenge tragedy published in 1633, which echoes Othello as it explores the destructive power of jealousy.

The final production is Ben Jonson’s great satirical comedy Volpone, set in Venice, and which opens on July 3.

Former RSC artistic director Trevor Nunn directs, returning to the Swan Theatre for the first time, which he created and opened in 1986.

It will also see Henry Goodman returning to the company as the ‘Fox’ of the title. He was last with the RSC as Richard III in 2003 and has recently been at the National Theatre in The Holy Rosenbergs and as the eponymous Arturo Ui in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in the West End last year.

The performance dates for each production are – Death of Salesman March 26 to May 2, The Merchant of Venice May 14 to September 2 and Othello June 4 to August 28 at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and The Jew of Malta March 18 to September 8, Love’s Sacrifice April 11 to June 24 and Volpone July 3 to September 12 at the Swan Theatre.