Once again, nothing will happen twice after it was announced that Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart will revive the West End production of Waiting for Godot on Broadway this autumn.

The actors will also star in a new production of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land in an out-of-town tryout over the summer. Both productions will be directed by Sean Mathias.

Pinter's play has a track record for attracting theatrical knights. Its 1975 premiere starred John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, while John Wood and Michael Gambon have starred in recent revivals. McKellen will play Spooner, the dishevelled writer who stops off in Hampstead to visit the unnervingly reticent Hirst, to be played by Stewart.

In Waiting for Godot, which won critical acclaim in its 2009 London production, the pair will return to their original roles: McKellen as Estragon and Stewart as Vladimir. Further details, including casting, venues and performance dates, have not yet been announced.

Mathias, who is also reviving another of his Theatre Royal Haymarket productions, Breakfast at Tiffany's, on Broadway this year, told the Associated Press that the two plays sit well together: "Both plays play tricks with our memory, with time, with what time is. Both plays are dealing with a landscape of poetry, a landscape of psychology, a landscape that is both real and isn't real. So there are incredible reverberations and resonances."

In addition to their Hollywood credentials, both actors have strong track records on Broadway. Stewart was nominated for a Tony award as Macbeth in 2008 and McKellen won one for a 1980 production of Amadeus. They've worked together a few times over the years: first in Tom Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves a Favour at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977 and, more recently, playing Magneto and Professor Xavier in the X-Men film franchise.

However, Stewart said he would happily take second billing to McKellen. "For me there's no question," he said. "Ian was a star actor while I was still working in regional theatre. To be absolutely frank, I was in awe of him and his work before I knew him."