Memories are notoriously treacherous — this we know. I remember seeing Shelagh Stephenson’s contemporary classic at the Hampstead, when this venue was a prefab, and enjoying Terry Johnson’s racy staging, which starred Jane Booker, Hadyn Gwynne and Matilda Ziegler as the trio of bickering sisters, and then being blown away by his West End version, in which comedy heavyweight Alison Steadman partnered Samantha Bond and Julia Sawalha (with Margot Leicester thrown in for good measure).

Get to Swiss Cottage early because Bob Bailey’s set for Tom Wells's new Hampstead Downstairs play Big Big Sky is a feast for the eyes. Angie’s cafe has the scrapey chairs, the tables you know will wobble a little if you get that one (and you will) and a blackboard menu that just needs a misplaced apostrophe or two to be truly authentic.

It’s the trivia question no one ever thought to ask: where was the only Tennessee Williams play premiered outside America first performed?

Thirty years on, Alex and Jason meet at a university reunion and cab it back to Jason’s old student house where Alex is thinking “probably…” and Jason is thinking “probably not…”  - each, it turns out, with good reason. We look on as the clumsy fumblings of youth get replaced with the anxious fumblings of middle age, two temporal spaces coming together in one room. 

This blistering, fearless play about an 18-year-old black entrepreneur on the King’s Road raises a myriad of uncomfortable questions that resonate profoundly with the Black Lives Matter debate.

Add the Hampstead Theatre to the swelling ranks of playhouses opening its doors this month, in this case with a revival well into rehearsal last spring when the first lockdown struck.

Time is moving in mysterious ways at the moment. It's been possible over the last month or so to mark out the beginning of each week with the arrival online of a different production streaming from the Hampstead Theatre archives.

London’s Hampstead Theatre has recently been very successful in bringing some of its best shows to a wider public – despite coronavirus. This week, it’s the turn of Howard Brenton’s #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, which was first staged at this venue in April 2013, and in the intervening years it has gained in resonance and relevance.

As lockdown continues, so does the ability of the theatre community to find new ways to tantalise and entertain. The urge to create and perform surely isn't going to be reined-in by a virus, which explains the explosion of creatives lending their gifts to song cycles, readings, or even the odd quiz night. At the same time, venues and theatre companies the world over continue to unlock cupboards full of goodies, almost too many to absorb.

If ever there was a “play for today”, it’s surely this.