The Enron playwright talks about retelling the murder of the KGB whistleblower, our surreal political era, and how Billie Piper helped her through dark times

Lucy Prebble operates an “elephant in the room” method when it comes to writing plays: she tries to take on the biggest overlooked ideas that shape our world.

“In theatre there is always a lot of very tasteful, refined work,” she says. “I wouldn’t be dismissive of that. But it doesn’t feel very representative of life at the moment, which feels to me quite ugly and lacking taste and unrefined. Rambunctious.”