Can London’s theatres survive this crisis?

Never have I stared at my own face so much. Not because I want to, it’s just always there now, ever present in one part of the screen I’m compelled to look at as I talk to the person who requested a Zoom, or a Teams, or a FaceTime. It feels apt, in an existential crisis, to keep opening new ‘windows’ to see out into the world, only to discover they are only mirrors, reflecting oneself. A dark morality tale for the isolation age. ‘You won’t find it on Zoom, James, the answer to your problems lies within.’ Or something. Is that really what I look like when I talk, though? Why do I always look so tired? It’s not as though I was out last night. There’s a perpetual lethargy in quarantine that means you’re forever at a 5 or a 6 out of 10 on the energy scale. Gone are life’s extremes. I feel like that frog in the boiling water fable. I can’t really tell minute to minute, day to day, whether I’m about to freeze or fry.

Luckily, like the spider Charlotte in her barnyard confinement, I was able to spin a web in advance of lockdown. My television drama Quiz, based on the so-called ‘Coughing Major’ scandal, was always due to run during the Easter holiday. On a daily basis I still, four weeks later, try to engage in the ‘conversation’ that the show generated, publicly on social media and privately with industry colleagues — which, living alone, feels like a lifeline and I’m grateful. My last piece of ‘event’ television, Brexit: The Uncivil War, about a certain Dominic Cummings, married to the commissioning editor of this publication, had the opposite effect. It seemed to divide and incite, rather than unite and soothe. I’m not sure what, as a political playwright, is the higher social function — provocation or appeasement.