The best year for theatre? How about 1905, suggests Dominic Dromgoole. “What made the plays of this moment hit the target so often? Historically, these dramatists occupied a unique moment, precariously balanced between traditional structures and modernism. Ibsen began a process of stretching and distorting the sturdy Victorian play, disturbing its traditional scaffold of strong narrative and regular crisis and resolution. Others took it further. The old form wasn’t sufficient for expressing the miasma of little moments they saw and heard around them. They took the four-act form and filled it with the lazy chaos of life and the confused mess of the inner self.”