“Television and film have made realist theatre unpalatable: it’s difficult to sit in the same space as a group of actors, suspending your disbelief, when you’re used to being in thrall to the TV screen. One way round that would be to get rid of the TV news – and instead have Shakespearean actors perform a daily news update at the National, acting out world events in real time. That would be a chance to return to the empathetic, cathartic traditions of Greek tragedy: rather than watching the news as if it was an objective description of an event occurring beyond our personal reach, we’d have a true physiological response.”