{"id":39682,"date":"2026-05-18T11:18:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/39682\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T11:18:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:18:26","slug":"britains-six-most-exciting-playwrights-according-to-our-theatre-critic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/39682\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s six most exciting playwrights \u2013 according to our theatre critic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What defines playwriting in the 2020s and who are the emerging names to watch? The casual consensus is that new writing is in crisis \u2013 a recent report assessing the impact of the pandemic noted a 30 per cent drop in the number of new plays performed from 2019-2023. Yet 70 years on from the <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/theatre\/what-to-see\/the-10-royal-court-plays-that-changed-britain\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Royal Court<\/a>\u2019s premiere of John Osborne\u2019s Look Back in Anger \u2013 which revolutionised the post-war playwriting scene \u2013 it\u2019s time to celebrate that, for all the challenges, British playwriting is in surprisingly good health.<\/p>\n<p>The six playwrights I\u2019ve chosen are some of the most exciting \u201cnew kids\u201d on the block. (I say \u201ckids\u201d. This is actually the tail-end of the Millennial cohort.) But each of these names has arrived amid \u2013 or in the wake \u2013 of the pandemic, and are now defining the times we\u2019re all living through.<\/p>\n<p>As David Byrne, artistic director of the Royal Court, points out, this wave of younger Britons has been battered beyond belief: \u201cThey\u2019ve known nothing but societal unrest, fracture, financial crashes, Brexit, Trump and social movements that have energised and exhausted people in equal measure. The world is changing at such a rapid rate that people are feeling out of control. That does come through in the writing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019d expect them all to be moaning or angrily tub-thumping. But these playwrights are characterised by their intelligence, nuance and often humour, and display a matching charm and thoughtfulness in their conversation. Far from being simplistically wedded to identity politics, they\u2019re delving into group experiences in intricate, subtle, compassionate ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What defines playwriting in the 2020s and who are the emerging names to watch? The casual consensus is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[20211,13,956,2112,2719,20212,20213,330,387,333,742],"class_list":["post-39682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-almeida-theatre","tag-britain","tag-culture","tag-culture-editors-choice","tag-royal-court-theatre","tag-sheffield-crucible","tag-soho-theatre","tag-standard","tag-theatre","tag-us-content","tag-west-end"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116595308061528670","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}