Multiculturalism, according to the Home Secretary, has failed, so where does that leave British Black and Asian communities? Well, certainly not silent. In Mohamed-Zain Dada’s vigorous 90-minute debut play, Blue Mist, the pronouncements of the person he calls Suella de Vil are greeted with all the contempt they deserve.

British theatre is getting a bit timid – is that right? Ahead of the opening of this revival of Martin McDonagh’s unforgettable 2003 masterpiece, The Pillowman, its director Matthew Dunster has spoken of the tendency of playwrights and theatres to self-censor nowadays for fear of giving offence. Everyone is getting a bit worried about being cancelled or trolled or attacked for unacceptable opinions. You can see his point: McDonagh is one of those 1990s playwrights whose best work glories in provocation.

Devoted fans may not learn anything that new about Noel Coward from Barnaby Thompson’s documentary Mad About the Boy, but they will doubtless see some new things. And those who know “the Master” only from his early plays, hardy perennials these days in British theatres, will marvel at the sheer range and volume of his output.

Men are bastards. Okay, not all of us, but enough to make the lives of millions of women a misery. This we know, but anyone who has any doubts might be educated by some of the horrific statistics of sexual assault and domestic violence in the programme of Deborah Bruce’s Dixon and Daughters, a new play at the Dorfman space of the National Theatre.

Is it possible to successfully challenge naturalism in British theatre today? At a time when audiences crave feelgood dramas, uplifting musicals and classic well-made plays, there is very little room for experimental writing.

Some plays are instantly forgettable, others leave a tender fold in the memory. I well remember seeing Zinnie Harris’s evocatively titled Further Than the Furthest Thing in 2000, and marveling at its strange beauty and linguistic flair. Now revived at the Young Vic, in a beautifully visual, if tonally uncertain, production by Jennifer Tang, one of the venue’s Genesis Fellows, this version confirms my initial impression of a haunting story told in a magical way.

The fictional world is our world, but at the same time it’s another place. We want our writers to invent interesting characters, gripping plots and to take us to unexpected places. We want them to delight us, and sometimes to fright us. We want to immerse ourselves in their inventions, lose ourselves in their fictions, and explore their newly created worlds. But are writers allowed to say anything they want? Is there a limit in our progressive and increasingly sensitive society on what they can invent?

Britain is a divided nation, but one of the divisions that we don’t hear that much about is that between Pakistani gay men. Written by Waleed Akhtar (who also stars in this impressively heartfelt two-hander), The P Word is about the differences in life experiences between one asylum seeker and one Londoner, and comes to the Bush Theatre in a production which has been supported by Micro Rainbow, the first safe house in the UK for LGBTQ asylum seekers and refugees.

Partition equals trauma. It cannot have escaped anyone’s attention that the British Empire’s solution to intractable problems in three of its most important colonies and mandates – namely Ireland, India and Palestine – was the divisive device of drawing boundaries which created local catastrophes.

The traditional, and much derided, well-made play is meant to have a beginning, middle and end. Although playwright David Eldridge often writes in opposition to these outdate forms, his trilogy about relationships, which started in 2017 with the hit show Beginning, now reaches its second part with Middle, which opened tonight at the National Theatre.