Raising the curtain, and raising their game

It will be anything but when the Crucible opens its doors again on February 11.

"You're lucky to have that miracle over there," said Ian McKellen at lunch a few weeks ago, pointing at the Crucible with his fork. Its re-opening will certainly force other theatres in the region to raise their game in 2010.

Daniel Evans, the new man in charge at Sheffield Theatres, is directing Sir Antony Sher in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People for his season opener. Evans has already been helping out the marketing team by explaining that the play – about a toxic secret in a spa town's public baths – inspired Spielberg's Jaws.

West Yorkshire Playhouse is hoping to attract theatregoers by bringing out the classics – The Count of Monte Cristo, Death of a Salesman, Noel Coward's Hay Fever and Alan Bennett's The History Boys.

Bennett's play was praised perhaps more than any other modern play in the last decade when it premiered at the National Theatre in 2004. Director Christopher Luscombe has met with Bennett, who has given his support to the new production, and the director has been successfully in charge of a number of the writer's plays.

But the most intriguing of the classics will be Alan Lane's The Count of Monte Cristo. Director Lane learnt his craft at the Playhouse and has become one of the country's most exciting young theatre practitioners. It will be fascinating to see what he comes up with. It will also be very exciting to have 80s Hollywood superstar Kelly McGillis at the Playhouse – she's in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune in February.

The Crucible's other highlights include a new play by Stephanie Street, a highly regarded playwright and actor. The world premiere of Sisters, about the life of Muslim women in Britain today, will be held at the Sheffield Studio in March.

The season will also include what is set to be a thrilling performance of True West, a Sam Shepherd two-hander where the two actors playing brothers on stage will swap parts each night. There is also a new version of Alice in Wonderland, set in Sheffield, and the regional premiere of That Face by Polly Stenham.

In 2009, Northern Broadsides scored one of the theatrical coups of the year when Barrie Rutter convinced Lenny Henry to play Othello. This year, the company is going less populist with its nationwide tour, when it presents Euripides's Greek tragedy Medea in a new translation by Tom Paulin. The play will open in Paulin's stomping ground, Oxford, in February, but will make its way north to the Georgian Theatre Royal in February, followed in March by the Viaduct in Halifax and the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough.

York Theatre Royal is having a quiet year. The theatre has lost its chief executive to Sheffield, and while Liz Wilson settles into the space left by the departure of Dan Bates, the theatre is only producing one show of its own – The Einstein Plan.

Written by the masterful Donald Freed, it is being performed by James Cromwell in Los Angeles and will be streamed live to a screen in York. If you're only going to produce one play, you might as well be ambitious with it.

But just because it's not making its own work, the theatre is not short-changing its audience, with what looks like a genuinely interesting season. Highlights will certainly include Anthony Minghella's Cigarettes and Chocolate by Old Bomb Theatre Company, and The Secret of Sherlock Holmes starring Philip Franks.

Hull Truck Theatre has enjoyed a successful first season in its new building on Ferensway. Because its season stretches into February, it is yet to announce full details of next year's programme, but it will be bringing back John Godber's Olivier-award winning comedy April in Paris in March. At the end of this month you should also try and catch Nick Lane's Me and Me Dad. A follow up to My Favourite Summer, Lane's writing and directing is so full of warmth that it's impossible to spend time in the company of his work and not feel a little better.

Wakefield Theatre Royal still struggles to compete with the region's big theatres, but it deserves a pat on the back for bringing the touring production of When Harry Met Sally to the venue, which should be a big hit.

In Bradford, theatre supremo Adam Renton brings The Rocky Horror Show, The 39 Steps, Alan Bennett's Enjoy, and Matthew Bourne's all-male Swan Lake to the city. Hairspray, which will be at the theatre in November,

is another example of Renton's ability to bring the big shows to the region.

TOP FIVE IN 2010

True West: Sheffield Crucible.

This Land – The Woody Guthrie Story: West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Medea: Northern Broadsides.

The Beauty of Queen Leenane: Lawrence Batley Theatre.

An Enemy of the People: Sheffield Crucible.