Modernism is us. Today. For the past two decades plays by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter – which once upon a time bewildered their audiences and gave critics apoplexy – have become big West End hits. The avant-garde is now commercial. The incomprehensible is our reality.

Iconic is a word the meaning of which is moving from the religious world into popular culture – win a reality TV show dressed as a teapot, and you can be sure that your 15 minutes of fame will be labelled iconic across social media. Not quite what Andrei Rublev had in mind 600 years ago.

British theatre has a proud heritage of science plays. From 1990s classics such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1993) and Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998) to more recent examples such as Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes (2017) and Marek Horn’s Octopolis (2023), the trick lies in balancing intellectual material about often complex scientific subjects with dramatic flair.

We meet Joe first at the keys, singing a pretty good song, but we can hear the pain in the voice – but is that the person or the performance? When Ellie walks in, he leaps up like a cat on a hot tin roof, nervous as a kitten, and we know – it was the person.

Platonic love should be simple – basically you’re best mates. And without the complications of sex, what could go wrong? Waleed Akhtar, whose big hit The P Word was also performed here at the Bush, takes this idea and complicates it – by making it about a gay boy and a straight girl.

The latest Greatest Hit to land at the Lyric is Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 award-winning play about a performance of Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer by British convicts in a New South Wales penal colony. 

Going to the theatre can be a little like going to church. One communes on the individual level, one’s faith in the stories underpinned by a psychological connection, but also on the collective level, belief rising on a tide of shared emotions. Those complementary sensations, in an ever more individualised, screen-and-earplugs world, are rare – and an example of why people pay big bucks for Glastonbury, Taylor Swift and Oasis.

One of the Finborough Theatre’s Artistic Director, Neil McPherson’s, gifts is an uncanny ability to find long-forgotten plays that work, right here, right now. He’s struck gold again with The Silver Cord, presenting its first London production for over 95 years. 

For men, navigating through life whilst maintaining strong friendships is not easy (I’m sure the same can be said for women, but Yasmina Reza’s multi-award winning play, revived on its 30th anniversary, is most definitely about men). What brings blokes together – work, sports, pubs – is seldom founded on deep emotional connections, though it can be and sometimes does morph into that.

When it was first produced in 1982, The Real Thing was a turning point for Tom Stoppard, the play that added to the existing perception of him as an immensely witty, intelligent, very theatrical crafter of dazzling conceits, albeit perhaps a little cold, as someone who could also touch people’s emotions: clever, still, but cutting to the heart. 

The difference was simple, really: Stoppard had always been driven by the desire to explore ideas; this time his idea was love.