Music icon Sting stars in his critically acclaimed musical, The Last Ship, in a revised new production, coming to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane this autumn. Featuring original music by The Police frontman himself, The Last Ship is a heartfelt and empowering musical about the shipbuilding community in his home city of Newcastle, as it reached its breaking point in the 1980s. Debuting in Chicago in 2014, the musical has enjoyed runs on Broadway, the West End, and in Australia. Inspired by Sting's own childhood, The Last Ship features some of the Grammy winner's best-loved songs, including "Island of Souls", "All This Time" and "When We Dance".

Comedian and actor Andy Sandberg adds a few more strings to his bow as this new play, penned and directed by the SNL and Lonely Island star, enjoys its world premiere this autumn at Riverside Studios. Based on true events, Affluenza is a razor-sharp exploration of power, privilege and generational wealth, as evidenced by one of the most reviled American legal defences of recent times.

Suceeding Into the Woods this summer, The Bridge Theatre swaps fairytales for Greek Mythology in this new production of Aeschylus' dramatic tale of familial strife after the return of patriarch Agamemnon after the Greek victory at Troy. Simon Stone returns to the venue following The Lady From the Sea last year, promising to add his radical vision to the ages-old text, commenting: "as long as humankind wages wars and as long as families tear themselves apart, this story will remain painfully, cathartically relevant."

Wladyslaw Szpilman's harrowing yet hopeful 1946 memoir receives its world premiere stage adaptation in London. Adapted and directed by Thom Southerland (Titanic the Musical) and featuring the original compositions of Szpilman, who was hailed as "the Polish Gershwin", Andrew Lloyd-Webber collaborator Simon Lee provides the orchestrations for the production, which features an ensemble of actor-musicians capturing the artistic essence of pre-war Warsaw.

In From Cell to Civilisation Professor Alice Roberts explores the deep-time history of our species, moving beyond traditional philosophical questions to examine the cold hard evidence of our past. Taking insights from evolutionary biology and genetics, this fascinating show traces the biological lineage of humanity back to its molecular beginnings four billion years ago. With full use of the theatre's light, sound and visual possibilities to create an event that is a genuine spectacle, join Professor Roberts as she follows the physical and cultural expansion of our ancestors as they moved out of Africa and settled across the globe!

From Ryan Calais Cameron, the Sky Arts Award-winning writer of For Black Boys and Retrograde comes The Afronauts, telling the incredible, almost-forgotten story of Zambia's bold bid to conquer the final frontier; a space mission fuelled not by money or machinery, but by imagination and belief. Led by an idealistic schoolteacher with nothing to lose and everything to prove, a group of unlikely visionaries prepare to launch themselves into space travel history.