For actor Toby Schmitz, there’s nothing like the exhilaration of being on stage, but for the past week he’s replicated some of that feeling in a series of live-streamed performances of Will Eno’s Thom Pain. He speaks about playing Hamlet, the vitality of theatre and keeping his ‘art spark’ alight in the Covid-19 lockdown. “The audience is the final director that teaches you things you would never have thought of. You know, if one person moves their leg it may mean nothing, but if four people do, then you’ve lost them somehow.”

The Young Vic’s 2014 production of A Streetcar Named Desire, recently rebroadcast during the Covid-19 lockdown, reminds this viewer of the work’s power but also of the test of matching the smouldering energy of Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh.

With theatres around the world closed, stage productions are now entering our homes, via the internet. The fourth streaming performance from Britain’s National Theatre, Twelfth Night, takes its audience on a rollicking journey of mistaken identity and besotted love.

HBO’s The Plot Against America, based on the Philip Roth novel, brings together Winona Ryder and John Turturro in a reimagining of America’s World War II history. Now the slickly produced series is more pertinent to current times than the creators could ever have imagined.

MTC and Queensland Theatre’s revival of Emerald City brings the distinctly Australian dramatic idiom of playwright David Williamson into focus once more. Skilfully led by Nadine Garner, the work still has much to offer.

Boasting a superlative performance by Nikki Shiels, Home, I’m Darling combines high farce and drama to interrogate gender roles.

Once a powerhouse of Australian publishing, Hilary McPhee traded the comfortable life she knew for a mysterious job with Middle Eastern royalty. In writing about this adventure and the collapse of her marriage to Don Watson in her new memoir, Other People’s Houses, she traces her strange journey back to herself. “I dreaded coming back to Australia because I left feeling I’d lost everything, I’d lost my marriage. We’d been together for more than 20 years, so it was quite a lot of life.”

With a superb cast and a cracking pace, the BBC–HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials proves television is the perfect vehicle for the beloved trilogy.

As a piece of ambitious drama – brimming with compassion and moody delights, and performed by a superb ensemble cast – Anthem hits the high notes.