The phenomenal global success of Six began when two young writers decided to give voices to the wives of a powerful man, bringing them out of their silent tombs and energising them and, by extension, doing the same for the women of today.

We open on one of those suburban American families we know so well from Eighties and Nineties sitcoms - they’re not quite Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, but they’re not far off. As usual, we wonder how Americans have so much space, such big fridges and why they’re always shouting up the stairs.

There are many women whose outstanding science was attributed to men or simply devalued to the point of obscurity, but recent interest in the likes of DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin and NASA’s Katherine Johnson has given credit where credit is due. 

We open on one of those grim, grim training rooms that all offices have – the apologetic sofa, the single electric kettle, the instant coffee. The lighting is too harsh, the chairs too hard, the atmosphere already post-lunch on Wednesday and it’s only 10am on Monday. We’ve all been there – designer, Rosie Elnile certainly has. 

In September 2022 I had an email from my American friend Richard Nelson: "Would you like me to write you a play?" Such an offer probably comes the way of very few actors and I was bowled over by it. My astonished and grateful response was tempered with a little uncertainty.

It takes a talented comic to turn a horrible life experience into comedy, but Miles Jupp is nothing if not talented. Add in a bit of self-depreciation, a smidgen of philosophical musing and a dollop of ruderies about bodily functions and you have On I Bang, which charts the comic's diagnosis with – and, thankfully, recovery from – a benign brain tumour.

Real life is a helluva lot scarier right now than you might guess from the performative theatrics on display in the new West End version of An Enemy of the People, which updates Ibsen's 1882 play to our vexatious modern day.

In 2020, throughout the country, many people’s lives were affected adversely by an ever-present threat to our already fragile society. Though most got over it, many people still bear the cost every day, sapping them of energy, making them cough and splutter frequently, instilling a longing that it would just go away and stay away.

There’s an old-fashioned feel to the story at its outset: Young woman, guitar in hand, Northern accent announcing as much as it always did, who makes a new life in London, all the money going on a room in Camden. One recalls Georgy Girl or Darling, films that were very much of their time.

The Royal Court’s collaboration with Access All Areas (AAA) may not be theatre’s first explicit embrace of the neurodiverse community on stage: Chickenshed has five decades of extraordinary inclusive work behind them and Jellyfish, starring Sarah Gordy at the National Theatre, was one of my highlights of 2019.