A total of 18 shows are Broadway-bound in the first half of the 2010-2011 season, but just a handful will bring a dewy freshness to the Great White Way. Only six of the shows are musicals, and the rest are either imports or revivals. All of the shows, however, fit into the same five categories that have defined the fall season for the last few years: Marquee Name Shows, British Prestige Plays, The Transplant, The American Original and The Misguided Revival. And, as now seems required, the season will also feature another David Mamet revival when Patrick Stewart and T.R. Knight bring A Life in the Theater (Oct. 12) back to Broadway.

Among the name brands being touted on stage this year, none is written bolder than Al Pacino, bringing his Shakespeare in the Park’s Shylock to paying audiences in The Merchant of Venice (Oct. 19). Also adding some star power will be David Hyde Pierce (joined by Absolutely Fabulous’ Joanna Lumley) in a revival of La Bete (Oct. 14), James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave in Driving Miss Daisy (Oct. 25), Dan Lauria as football coach Vince Lombardi in Lombardi (Oct. 21) and Paul Reubens in The Pee-Wee Herman Show (Nov. 11), a stage adaptation of the popular ’80s TV show.

For true theater fans, however, no name causes as much anticipation as that of Cherry Jones. Returning to the stage for the first time in four years, Jones will headline a revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (Oct. 3) for the Roundabout.

The Brits are being represented this year by the first two shows of the season: Brief Encounter (Sept. 28), seen last winter at St. Ann’s Warehouse, and a transfer of The Pitmen Painters (Sept. 30), which sold out at London’s National Theatre. The former is a much-lauded, highly theatrical adaptation of the classic tearjerker film by Noel Coward; the latter is a new play from Lee Hall, who contributed the book to Billy Elliot, about a group of British miners who become the eponymous artists. Between Pitmen Painters and Billy Elliot, Hall seems intent on carving out his own sub-category of Broadway shows.

Transplants are everywhere again this year. In addition to Merchant of Venice, Brief Encounter and The Pitmen Painters, Kander and Ebb’s skillful and biting musical The Scottsboro Boys is moving uptown from its much-extended run at The Vineyard; A Free Man of Color (Nov. 18), a “freewheeling epic” set in 1802 New Orleans about the titular Don Juan’s collision with history, comes to town from virtually everywhere else; Time Stands Still (Oct. 7) returns to Broadway with Christina Ricci joining Laura Linney, Brian d’Arcy James and Eric Bogosian in Donald Margulies’ play about the emotional life of a photojournalist; and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Oct. 13) gets a new life after its production at The Public, where the rock ‘n’ roll musical will continue mixing history with cheekiness, while star Benjamin Walker will continue rocking out in the Broadway’s tightest pair of jeans.

The American Originals this year are confined to three musicals adapted from films: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Nov. 4), based on Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 film and starring Patti Lupone; Elf (Nov. 14), the new singing and dancing version of the Will Ferrell film; and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (Dec. 21), which might as well count as a Misguided Revival since it’s been advertised on 42nd Street for over a year.

The sole official Misguided Revival entry for the season’s first half (discounting Driving Miss Daisy, which at least boasts La Redgrave’s return to the stage) is that staple of high school theater You Can’t Take It With You (Nov. 14), which has neither a cast nor a theater announced. The only show missing from these facile categories is Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles (Oct. 26), which is precisely where the show is bound to land by season’s end anyway.