Lyn Gardner

It’s the early 1990s and China is changing.

A tweak here, a few lines added there, a shift of location. It is fascinating how a well-known play can be changed with minimal intervention.

Think of Amsterdam and you conjure pretty canals and bridges, Anne Frank in hiding, and a tolerant society whose city motto is “valiant, steadfast, compassionate.”

In Chiaroscuro (Bush) Yomi’s great grandmother was born without a tongue. She had to find different ways to speak. So too have Britain’s female playwrights.

In November 2006 Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB & KGB officer and a fierce critic of Putin turned up at Barnet General Hospital complaining of feeling severely unwell.

If you want to see a masterclass in fine actors falling on dialogue like starving tigers spotting raw meat, then Hansard is for you.

Parents often sooth their children by telling them that everything is going to be alright. Even when they have no evidence that it will be.

This year’s Edinburgh Fringe is over: the venues are being dismantled and the city is reverting to normal. But if you were looking enviously at what was happening in the North, have no fear as a great many shows are already London-bound. More are sure to follow.

The Kiln’s air conditioning will ensure you are cool as a cucumber; it’s the performers on stage who generate the heat in Blues in the Night

When Wes (Tyrone Huntley), a gay, insecure, New York influencer and would-be fashion designer buys an abandoned New Orleans building to showcase his work, he doesn’t know that it comes with a dark history.

I still recall the pleasure of stumbling across Hot Brown Honey at the Edinburgh fringe in 2016.

Enough to make you want to swear to celibacy and become a hermit, Games for Lovers is an exhausting four-hander about a group of millennials in search of love.

With the iguana—destined for the cooking pot—desperately scratching away under the veranda, it’s a long old night for the troubled residents of the rackety Costa Verde hotel on the West Coast of Mexico in 1940.

When Mary’s son, Lysander, was a baby, policemen in the street would look at her strangely, perhaps suspecting her of kidnapping. That’s because while she was black, Lysander was white as “a pearl.”

The title may be lumpy, and sometimes the plotting is too, but Lunatic 19’s: A Deportational Road Trip (Finborough) is a steely first play with a tender heart.

Kelly is 27 and never been kissed. But then she meets geeky, gentle Neil who works in the arcades on the Skegness seafront she so loves.

Punishingly long –and yet oddly sketchy– David Hare’s updated version of Ibsen’s 1867 poetic drama Peer Gynt (NT, Olivier) stars James McArdle as Peter, the serial fantasist who becomes trapped by his own fabulations and a fatal lack of self-knowledge.

OMG. How do you put the internet on stage?

The End of History at the Royal Court reunites director John Tiffany and playwright Jack Thorne who worked together on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

You couldn’t hope for a more exciting line-up of contemporary playwrights than those assembled by the Unicorn for these modern takes on Aesop’s Fables.

In the waiting room of a station where the trains no longer stop, situated in a dying town somewhere in the middle Europe, Katia (Natalia Tena) and her father Sava (Kevork Malikyan) sit and wait.

Everyone knows that it must be serious because Othello has been spotted in Nandos with Desi. And you don’t take a girl to Nando’s unless you are “banging her.”

When six-year-old Clara (Taya Tower) gives her kindergarten teacher, Lucas (Tobias Menzies), a heart-shaped lollipop and he rejects the gift she accuses him of inappropriate touching.

When we first glimpse Andrew Scott’s self-obsessed actor Garry Essendine in this revelatory revival of Present Laughter (Old Vic) he is dressed like a dishevelled Captain Hook. His one-night stand, the love-struck Daphne (Kitty Archer) is sporting fairy wings, a mascara-stained Tinkerbell.

Mai’s parents fled Vietnam after the war ended and her father (Kwong Loke) was released from a re-education camp run by the Communist government. They joined their son, Anh (Michael Phong Le), who had been sent on ahead as an 11-year-old and who was settled in England.

If you have been lucky enough to catch the work of Irish company Malaprop—and you still can because 'Everything not Saved' is at New Diorama next week as part of the excellent Incoming Festival—you will be familiar with the pellucid writing of Dylan Coburn Gray.

Handing on the baton is crucial to the artistic health and vibrancy of British theatre.

I have seen the future and its not quite working. At least Little Bulb’s version of it isn’t. Or not yet it isn’t.

Music is woven through Apphia Campbell’s 'Woke' (BAC) like a river. The river is made from the gospel songs of slaves, the blues of Bessie Smith and others, but also from the blood of those who came before, whose names are lost to history. Do you remember the name of Michael Brown? I didn’t.

For a play which is so blatantly full frontal, Afterglow (Southwark Playhouse) is almost entirely unrevealing and emotionally coy.

The delicious Wilton’s Music Hall in the East End, one of London’s most atmospheric venues, may well have hosted boxing bouts in the 19th century.

When bad things happen you often armour yourself against the world. Fifteen years ago, while still a teenager, Sam (Michelle Fox) was abducted and held prisoner in her small American hometown where she now lives with her husband John (Mark Quartley).

Okwui Okpokwasili stands in the corner of the white draped stage and her lower torso shakes. Her legs twitch and jerk incessantly. It is as if her body has been struck by an internal earthquake. It throws a shadow that looms over her.

You only have until tonight to see Anne meets Jeffrey at Battersea Arts Centre, but you should. Not least because to see is to bear witness.

There has been some criticism of programming at the NT, and the lack of diverse female voices.

Theatre, of course, is a mirage. It makes you believe in something that doesn’t exist. Money operates in a similar way. Like Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy it only works if you believe in it. There is nothing holding it up.

10 reasons why you should see SplitLip’s Operation Mincemeat at the New Diorama.

“That’s the way to do it!” screeches the vicious Mr Punch at the end of Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and Other Love Songs) which arrives at the Lyric Hammersmith as part of a national tour.

Despite its reputation as a hoary old warhorse—it's a play that's regularly staged by American high schools—Thornton Wilder’s meta theatre play about small town American comings and goings is rich both in its depiction of everyday life and theatrical possibilities.

East Berlin 1968. In their brand-new flat Anna (Phoebe Fox) and her husband Hans (Paul Bazely) are in high spirits.

Vicky Featherstone’s thrilling exploration of what new writing can be continues at the Royal Court with White Pearl.

When Bella Heesom’s teenage self loses her virginity without any real pleasure, her Clitoris (Sara Alexander) is not at all happy. “I need to be included. Why didn’t you invite me?” she wails.

You may think that you want to live forever, but you won’t after seeing Die! Die! Die! Old People Die! (Battersea Arts Centre), the latest show from Ridiculusmus.

It is fascinating what a difference small shifts can make. Turn Bobby into Bobbie and suddenly 'Company' doesn’t seem fusty but a sharply contemporary look at the pressures, both biological and social, faced by modern women.

Eamonn (Dan Mullane) is a storyteller. He claims that he was a foundling discovered in the arms of a statute of the Virgin Mary in the church in the Irish village where he was born.

“Some kinds of loss are very hard to name,” says the woman on stage at the start of Julia Leigh’s memoir Avalanche which plays the Barbican until next weekend as part of its Fertility Fest.

You can wait a long time to see a play that puts queer women centre stage and then two come along in the same week. It’s clear that theatre and the stories it tells are slowly evolving, just like society itself.

What a strange play this is. Written between the Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler, but much more rarely performed than either, Ibsen’s 1886 play Rosmersholm (Duke of York’s) is an odd mixture of political debate and personal anguish.

When Nigerian Modupe is born on the banks of the river she is so beautiful her mother knows she must be protected from men.

It’s clear right from the start of Jeremy Herrin’s revival of All My Sons that this is an America in denial.

Promising Scottish playwright Libby (Neve McIntosh) moved to London. But now Libby is in her forties, her once auspicious career is on the rocks and she’s back in Edinburgh standing on Salisbury Crags thinking of stepping out into the void.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet we last see the doomed Ophelia handing out flowers. These flowers have meaning. Rosemary is for remembrance. Pansies are for thoughts.

Rebecca Frecknall’s staging of Three Sisters at the Almeida begins a year before Chekhov’s play normally begins. It opens with the funeral of the siblings’ father, the late General, who brought them to the provincial Russian garrison town where they are now stranded far from their beloved Moscow.

Some of my best friends think theatre is boring. There are plenty of nights in the theatre when I think they might have a point. Then I see something brilliant and I fall in love with theatre all over again and leave the theatre giddy with excitement.

Prejudice, privilege and provocation — how Admissions is pressing people's buttons

Twenty years ago, Ursula Martinez made a revelatory show, A Family Outing, in which she unpicked family life, myths and relationships with the help of her mum and dad who appeared alongside her on stage.

There is a touch of Disco Pigs and something of Blood Brothers about Wolfie at Theatre 503.

There is a bit of a VAULT Festival takeover on the London fringe at the moment.

“Search for this and you won’t find it,” is one of the refrains of Emilia, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s gloriously enjoyable comedy which celebrates the late Elizabethan poet Emilia Bassano.

Richard Eyre has talked about the way that theatre creates empathy, arguing that the arts "enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings." Bruce Norris' latest play, Downstate, is an exercise in empathy, a test of our humanity.

Naked lightbulbs glow in the haze hanging over the stage in Battersea Arts Centre’s Grand Hall. From out of the shadows emerge sounds like the rumbling of thunder or the rustle of leaves or the coo of doves. Voices soar in lament, tongues click, and the stage shimmers with sound and emotion.

So, to which Betrayal exactly does the title refer? There are many different kinds of betrayal in Harold Pinter’s 1978 play inspired by his own adulterous relationship with Joan Bakewell.

Like last year’s Edinburgh fringe, one of the things that the 2019 Vault Festival has proved is that, while more established theatres are still struggling to tell different and more diverse stories, those at the beginning of their careers are making it look as easy as drinking a glass of water.

Shows can look and feel very different depending on the seat from which you experience them.

Ultimo (Rochelle Rose) is in the dock in a Hamburg court on trial for piracy.

In 'A Hundred Words for Snow' at Trafalgar Studios 2, Rory’s geography teacher dad has been planning a trip for him and his teenage daughter to the North Pole.

In 'Dangerous Giant Animals' Christina Murdoch plays Claire, the middle and often overlooked sister in an American family.

Bloody hell, Medea at the Barbican is frighteningly good.

If you were Nicholas Hytner and over a 40-year career you had never directed a play by a woman Alys, Always seems a curious place to start.

Most of us think that we are experts on what it’s like to be in prison on the basis of having seen a few episodes of Orange is the New Black or Locked Up.

Wood is a smart, funny and seriously thoughtful show created by writer Adam Foster, director Grace Duggan and the cast: George Fletcher, Claire Cartwright, Phillipa Hogg and Nneka Okoye.

The maid in the hotel room is up to her elbows in blood. There is a dead body on the floor and a congealing rust-like puddle spreads out from beneath it. There follows a breathless story from the maid about how the hotel guest attacked her and how she killed in self-defence.

The real sleight of mind we perform upon ourselves is the way we live our lives pretending that we are immortal. But we are dying the moment we leave the womb.

Kandinsky’s Dinomania takes place in a theatre—the New Diorama—but in Joshua Gadsby and Naomi Kuyck-Cohen’s design it also looks as if it might be taking place in a particularly tasteful funeral parlour complete with a pianist (Zac Gvirtzman) performing throughout.

Barry McStay's Vespertilio couldn't have found a better home than at VAULT Festival. In Lucy Jane Atkinson's nifty production it transports us from the tunnels under Waterloo Station to another railway tunnel deep in the Sussex countryside.

Jon Ronson’s 'So, You’ve Been Publicly Shamed' has inspired Molly Taylor’s 'Cacophony', produced by the Almeida Young Company, and which is at the Yard until Saturday.

There is a power in naming. In Salem during its 17th century witch trials the accused were urged to name others who were also witches. In times of fear naming can be a kind of contagion.

I loved Pappyshow’s Boys at the New Diorama last year, a disarmingly charming and heart-felt physical theatre piece created by a group of young men exploring their individual identities and what it means to be a man.

I once read an article suggesting that only a few questions were required to discover if a couple were compatible.

Holly Robinson’s play is a debut and it is always thrilling to hear a distinctive new voice and see a first play of such startling assurance.

There are lots of smart shows at the Vault Festival but the conditions seldom lend themselves to work which is also slick. But Saturday night’s viewings brought forward two very neatly put together shows that both know exactly what they are doing and are both smart and slick.

You all know the Bechdel test, don’t you? It’s a measure of the representation of woman in plays, movies and novels that asks whether the work features two women talking to each other about something other than a man. But do you know about the sexy lamp test?

“Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts,” says the Chorus at the start of Henry V, adding, “Think when we talk of horses, that you see them/ Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth.

Most protest takes the form of theatre, a spectacle that disrupts the status quo. Inspired by their personal experiences of manning the barricades in Kiev's 2014 uprising, Mark and Marichka Marczyk's folk opera harnesses that idea.

When 15-year-old Cork resident, Naoise, wins the Under -16s European kick boxing championships her future seems assured.

To be honest I'm not a great one for horror. The last horror film I saw was the Shining and that finished me off. Comedy? I last had a really good laugh in about 2002.

When the boy was a child his father used to tell him stories of the Apollo moon landings and how the stars were in reach for all of us. The boy wanted to grow up to be an astronaut but now he is a man—nameless and just a statistic like so many of the homeless.

Rema (Raagni Sharma) and her mother Mariam (Yasmin Wilde) are preparing for Ramadan. Mariam says that the words of the Koran are like music but for Rema they stick like tar in her mouth. She is writing her own words to express how she feels and who she is.

Christopher Adams and Timothy Allsop are a couple in real-life. They say that they don’t work together because Orton and Halliwell were not the best role models. But in Open they are not just appearing together on stage they are excavating their own life as a couple.

The “teenage temptress” was a stock character of 20th century novels and movies. Her influence extended to the courts with lawyers arguing in rape trials that she led the defendant on because of her voluptuous figure and the way she dressed.

Day 2 of VAULT festival

The VAULT Festival is effectively Edinburgh in London with about the same level of dampness and similar spiralling levels of excitement. It makes theatre an event. It makes it fun.

"There is no place like home," says Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. But for the young men coming back from war in The Unreturning (Stratford East), home turns out to be less welcoming than they remember.

A woman dressed like Princess Diana on her wedding day sits at a table covered in a Union Jack and eats.

Ishy Din's latest play is set in a Northern mini-cab office in the wake of Margaret Thatcher's death.

The 20th century musical is one of the most under-rated art forms, as if its commercial successes and the fact that audiences love it inevitably means that it's artistic creditability is sapped.

I've always thought it was odd that The Pleasance is such a major player in Edinburgh every fringe, but that its London venue never feels like a significant pin on the theatrical map.

We all know the story of Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds which, with its convincing simulated news bulletins, spread mass panic across the US leaving millions believing that America was being invaded by aliens. Right? Actually, no.

Here's the final part of my pre-festival guide, featuring the VAULT Festival shows that have caught my eye from weeks 6, 7 & 8.

I felt slightly doubtful about seeing five Pinter plays—albeit some of them short—in a single day. I reckon that a little Pinter often goes a long way.

History and experience tell us that the world shifts on its axis. Regimes crumble, industries disappear, jobs are lost, people die, power is lost or gained, and the regular monthly pay-check suddenly stops coming. The warning signs may be there but we refuse to heed them.

Continuing from last week’s article, here’s my guide to VAULT Festival from weeks 2 to 5. This is a mix of shows I've seen before and enjoyed – and new shows that have caught my eye.

VAULT Festival begins later this month, and I’m going to be trying to cover as much as I can of the eight-week festival which gives a London platform (albeit a subterranean one) to both emerging and established artists from the UK and abroad.

If you were to ask me about the great theatre companies of the last 30 years, I’d say that one of the very greatest has been Oily Cart.

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” begins LP Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go Between. But as Hartley’s anti-hero discovers we carry the past with us. There is no escaping it.

That Anthony Neilson is a sly one. Smart too. His latest piece, the Tell-Tale Heart at the National Theatre’s Dorfman space, takes Edgar Allan Poe’s creepy 1843 story of madness and murder and gives it a contemporary spin.

London is bursting to the brim with theatre from the West End to the NT on the South Bank to the boutique venues such as the Donmar to the Almeida.

In Natasha Gordon’s Nine Night at Trafalgar Studios, Gloria is dead. She came to England on the Windrush, leaving behind her first-born daughter Trudy in Jamaica. Now her clan is gathering for nine days of mourning at her home.

1. Like Emma Rice’s Wise Children, Little Bulb’s show within a show is a celebration of theatre itself in all its gaudy down-at-heel red velvet glory and tawdry illusions.

I came late to The Inheritance at the Duke of York’s, only catching up with it on World Aids Day.

Ellie Kendrick’s Hole at the Royal Court Upstairs operates like an all- female cosmic cabaret, and one whose rocket fuel is rage.

In Sondheim’s Into the Woods, Red Riding Hood tells the Baker that her mother has warned her never to stray from the path. To which he quite rightly points out that it’s already too late because “the path has strayed from you.”

“Nothing I have said is factual except the bits that sound like fiction,” declared Clive James in his Unreliable Memoirs.

We can tell from the fact that 4.5 million children live below the breadline, up by a million in less than a decade.

History is too serious to be left to the historians. Particularly personal histories. But it is these individual stories, the ones that never make it to the history books, which shed the greatest light. Yet so often they remain hidden from view.

The National has always had better luck with musicals the more off-beat they have been.

The value of a theatre lies not just in the work it does for itself — effectively, the shows that the team have a yen to produce — but in what it does for everybody else.

The Doomsday Clock stands at two minutes to midnight. Scientists have warned that we have 12 years to avert climate change disaster. But still we sleepwalk towards catastrophe, taking no responsibility. We assume, like children, that the grown-ups—the scientists and the policy-makers—will save us.

In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Estragon and Vladimir talk about “all the dead voices” which they hear. The dead, they say, make a noise like wings, like leaves, like sand.

How often do you see a pregnant woman on stage?

As Rufus Norris has discovered at the National Theatre, taking over as Artistic Director from a regime that has been seen as a huge success is not always a bowl of cherries. Mostly what audiences and critics want is more of the same.

"One of the beauties of Icke’s production is its ability to continually deceive and then flaunt the truth in front of us"

Nobody would dispute that it is an honour to be the theatre culture that produced the playwright who many agree is the greatest that the world has ever seen. But it can also be a bit of a burden.

Some claim that theatre criticism is in crisis but I reckon it is simply changing in response to the disruptions of recent years.