Bennett play tells of Britten and Auden row

Alan Bennett has written a new play that centres around a spat in later life between the poet WH Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten. Although the work has to to be given a title, Nicholas Hytner, the artistic director of the National Theatre, where the play will be staged, believes it could rival the success of Bennett's The History Boys, which as well as making £5 million from its four-year-run at the National became a blockbuster movie making stars of its young cast, among them Rob Corden and Dominic Cooper.

Hytner, speaking at the National on Wednesday, said that the new work by the 73-year-old playwright, which has a planned November opening, did not have the "high testosterone content" of The History Boys, but promised its two main characters were badly behaved.

While he would not reveal any more details, Britten, who met Auden when they worked for the GPO Film Unit before World War Two, is known to have had a fiery relationship with the poet. After Auden provided the libretto for one Britten work, Paul Bunyan, the pair never worked with one another again. They did, however, live together for a short time when Britten and his lover Peter Pears moved to New York in 1940.

A lot is riding on the work. The National Theatre's last annual report, noted: "The challenge for the NT in future will be to replace what has effectively been a boost in subsidy provided during the years of The History Boys."

Hytner also announced that Dame Helen Mirren will appear at 50 independent cinemas across Britain this summer – not in a film, but in the first of a series of plays beamed live from the National. The project, which copies an idea pioneered by the Metropolitan Opera in New York two years ago, will begin in June with the a production of Phedre . ·