Sam Mendes, Tori Amos set for UK National Theatre

(AP) The return of director Sam Mendes and a long-awaited musical by Tori Amos are among productions slated for the 50th anniversary season at Britain's National Theatre.

Skyfall filmmaker Mendes will direct a production of Shakespeare's King Lear, starring Simon Russell Beale, opening next January. The 2013 season will see The Light Princess, a musical adaptation of a 19th-century fairytale by Amos and playwright Samuel Adamson. First announced two years ago, it will finally open in October.

Artistic director Nicholas Hytner said Wednesday that musicals just take a hell of a lot of writing and developing and testing out.

The season also includes two major American plays James Baldwin's The Amen Corner, set in a storefront church in Harlem, and Eugene O'Neill's monumental family drama Strange Interlude.