This week's Sunday Theatre question is about girl-power on stage - what is your favourite play or production with an all-female cast?  Theatre's gender balance still has a way to go, but it feels like it has improved in recent years. Do you think?

My choice for this makes a thing of having an all-female cast. Emilia, which I saw at the Vaudeville Theatre in 2019 (review here) is the story of Emilia Lanier, the first feminist poet and a possible inspiration for Shakespeare.

And while it is a story with feminism at its heart, having an all-female cast allowed plenty of humourous digs at the fact that women weren't allowed to perform on the stage in Shakespeare's time.

It was brilliantly done and was such a joyous production; I loved it. So what is your choice and why?

Looking for inspiration? Here are some other all-female cast productions that spring to mind:

Queens of Sheba, Battersea Art Centre - Saw this at the Edinburgh Fringe then again when it transferred the Battersea Arts Centre. It's one of those plays that doesn't shy away from looking at the difficult subjects - sexism and racism - but also feels like a celebration and a rally - a call to arms. I loved it very much.

Writer Amy Bethan Evans' new play, Tinted, is another piece that explores what life is like for the visually impaired.  While her previous play, Libby's Eyes, exposed the Kafka-esque nature of the benefits system, Tinted takes on friendships and dating.

Charlotte Eyres in Tinted, Vault Festival. Georgia Harris Photography

Charlotte Eyres plays Laura, a visually impaired young woman, talking us through both childhood and adult experiences around friendships and relationships.

Her dad wants her outlook rooted in reality - he likes to take a hatchet to her favourite fairytales - but is equally over-protective and as a result, Laura isn't very worldly-wise.

She prefaces the tale of her first dating experiences with stories about her sex-education classes which are light on actual detail, to put it mildly.

Writer and performer Katie Arnstein's one-woman show Sticky Door is about how she planned to take back control of her love life but ended up learning to live with past trauma.

Katie Arnstein, Sticky Door © Lidia Crisafulli

It starts at Christmas 2013 when life seems to be conspiring against her. She is between acting agents, lives in flat above a fried chicken shop which means her clothes always smell of fat and her boyfriend has just dumped her.

She decides attachment is where she is going wrong and sets herself a goal of having a different lover every month.

Through a year's exploits, we not only get Katie's witty perspective on dating and casual sex - peppered with numerous cases of cystitis - but also learn more about how past and more recent traumas have affected her mental health.

If Nor Woman Neither sounds familiar it's from Hamlet when the prince is talking about losing interesting in life and feeling misunderstood by his friends.

Nor Woman Neither ©Laura Dorn Photography

It's a curiously poignant title for a sharply funny coming of age story about the struggle of turning childhood dreams into reality while navigating the slings and arrows of love and lust.

Written and performed by Ingrid Schiller and Verity Kirk we meet Laura (Schiller) as a child in South Africa reluctantly watching a Bond movie with her dad.

In her child-like way, she wants to be Honey Rider in the film - beautiful and the focus of attention. She also feels the first stirring of sexual desire, even if she doesn't yet understand what it is.

Desire to be seen

The scenario will be played out time and time again as we follow her through English boarding school, drama school and early career, a mixture of the desire to be seen, to fit in, to be loved... and sexual desire.

"You'll get the drama of a fight night coupled with the laughter of a comedy night."

Fighter (Stratford Circus Arts) is the story of a single mum who decides to take up boxing. Set in a boxing gym with cast that includes young boxers, I asked writer/performer Libby Liburd and performer Cathy Tyson about the inspiration behind the play and what it's like to perform.

Libby Liburd. Photo by Jon Holloway

Tell us a bit about Fighter and what inspired you to write the play?

Libby Liburd: Fighter is the story of Lee, who finds herself plunged into the world of boxing, and through finding herself in a world that doesn't yet embrace women in the ring, she finds her 'happy place' where she feels she belongs and is alive.

It's about literal and figurative fights and changing through challenge. Most of the show is set in 1998, which was super important for me as the late 90's was the era when women in Britain were finally able to fight.

Up until 1996, there was a ban on women boxing in the Amateurs and it was only in 1998 that the first professional women boxers were licensed in Britain.

So, that research, my own experiences as a boxer and conversations with our Ambassador Cathy Brown (the 2nd ever licensed Pro female boxer in the UK) inspired the story of Lee and her journey.

Why is a story like this important and why now?

Libby: I think theatre generally should tell exciting and unheard stories. Certainly, I think we're used to seeing boxing as an inspiration for theatre, but I've never seen the kind of story I'm telling in Fighter.

It's elevating themes of motherhood and womanhood but the story of courage, resilience and overcoming obstacles is universal. It's a story that everyone can relate to whilst at the same time, exposing a truth and aspects of history that we might not be aware of.

Music and a final dance metaphorically lifts Emilia and her message onto shoulders and had the audience leaping up for a standing ovation.

Clare Perkins (Emilia 3) Saffron Coomber (Emilia 1) and Adelle Leonce (3) in Emilia at the Vaudeville Theatre. Photo credit: Helen Murray.

I've read reviews of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's play Emilia that describe its feminist message as 'unsubtle' and the titular character's suffering as overblown.

It's comments like that, which reinforce the need for plays like this and why, perhaps, the time for subtlety is over.

An all-female cast tells the story of Emilia Lanier née Bassano regarded as the first professional female poet, one of the first feminist writers in England and possibly the inspiration behind Shakespeare's 'Dark Lady'.

Three actresses - Saffron Coomber, Adelle Leonce and Clare Perkins - play Emilia at three stages of her life.

Perkins' Emilia opens and closes the play with rousing speeches about the inequality and prejudice served upon herself and women generally.

Mixing the more colourful and camp with the harsh realities of inequality and creative restaint for the Iranian women is a powerful storytelling device.

Nathan Kiley in Lipstick A Fairy Tale of Iran. Photo: Flavia Fraser-Cannon

A catwalk divides the seats at the Omnibus Theatre on which drag queen in green sequined dress is lip synching.

However, this isn't a Friday-night cabaret performance of a power ballad or pop song instead she tells the story of an Iranian woman, blinded and disfigured in an acid attack by a jealous man.

Mixing contrasting forms with narrative is a clever and powerful feature of Sarah Chew's play based on her real experiences when her six-week, Arts Council-funded cultural exchange trip to Iran coincided with the Green uprising.

While Orla (Siobhan O'Kelly) is in Iran, her best friend Mark (drag artist Nathan Kiley) is putting the finishing touches to their new club back in Soho.

Candid voicemail messages

As the story of Orla's trip unfolds, Kiley plays all the other characters as well as Mark who leaves long, amusingly candid voicemail messages for her.

It is inventive storytelling mixing boylesque, drag, Vaudeville with more traditional forms, and at times it feels like a fairytale - a dark, modern fairytale laced with very real modern life horrors.

Last year saw the #metoo movement explode and finally expose the appalling behaviour women can experience, was Pinter ahead of the curve?

Pinter Six of the Pinter at the Pinter season is the first that I can say I quite enjoyed but it didn't stop a nagging question I've had for a while: Was Pinter a misogynist?

I'm not alone as it was the first question in the post-show Q&A with director Jamie Lloyd and cast members Celia Imrie, Ron Cook and Abraham Popoola.

Pinter Six is made up of two plays: Party Time and Celebration both exploring similar themes (link to a review below).

They centre on two different groups of nouveau riche who are shallow in their obsessions for fine things and for all the bonhomie are isolated, disconnected and lonely.

Treatment of women

Both plays are funny and exposing. But they also have something else in common: The women are often not treated very well by the men.

They are derided, ridiculed or presented as ridiculous, nagging or stupid. If they have any purchase in their relationships it feels like it is being presented under judgement.

So I've published my favourite fringe plays list and my least favourite plays list, time now for my best plays of 2018 overall, gleaned from everything I've seen - large productions and small, commercial theatres, subsidised and fringe:

via GIPHY

Misty, Trafalgar Studios

A play which put the pulse back into the West End and as a result was a breath of fresh air.

A Monster Calls, Old Vic

I was nervous about seeing a stage adaptation of a much-loved book but the creativity with which it was staged combined with the performances meant I was an emotional wreck by the end. So much of an emotional wreck, I had to walk around for a bit afterwards to compose myself.

Queens of Sheba, Underbelly, Edinburgh Fringe

A play about the dual prejudice of sexism and racism encountered by black women that succeeded in being both angry, uplifting and empowering.

It left me feeling teary in a happy/sad/exhilarated way and ready to march if the call came.

There is another chance to see it at the New Diorama Theatre, Jan 30-Feb 3 as part of the Vault Festival.

Notes from the Field, Royal Court

It was an uncomfortable, seat-squirming, horrifying joy to sit and experience and I gave it an unprecedented six stars. Yes, six stars.

2018 was my first year at the Edinburgh Fringe which produced a bumper crop of excellent plays (look out for transfer details) but London has delivered some gems too.

Out of the 50-odd fringe plays there are 10 that really stand out but what strikes me most when revisiting them is how many evoked such a strong emotional reaction.

Yes, some are on the list for being highly entertaining but others made me feel angry or empowered or rebellious, some even a bit teary.

The other thing that strikes me is their diversity in ethnicity and gender balance tipped away from male dominance but I'll be writing more about that in another post.

So, in no particular order:

1. The Claim, Shoreditch Town Hall

Based on research into Home Office procedures this exposes the farcical system that asylum-seekers encounter but more than that, how incompetence endangers people's lives. It made me very angry.

2. My Mum's A Twat, Royal Court Upstairs

It's been an incredible year for Patsy Ferran, kicked off in fine style with this solo performance in a play about a girl's relationship with her mother who has joined a cult. Funny and spirited it also had dark edges.

3. Coconut, Ovalhouse

An effervescent love story and a coming of age story that challenged stereotypes.

4. Flesh and Bone, Soho Theatre upstairs

Shakespeare-esque lyricism combined with East End vernacular cleverly takes you on a revealing and entertaining journey that elevates the stories of those that often overlooked. Shakespeare would, no doubt, have approved.