The stage has always been a place where kings are mocked in safety and tyrants are killed in verse when they cannot be reached by law? A weekend in which hundreds of theatres and galleries shout together that speech is being strangled is less a novelty than a return to an old duty. Censors hate crowds because crowds start to compare notes, and nothing unnerves power like an audience suddenly realising it has lines too. If this Fall of Freedom keeps its wit sharp and its courage steady, it may yet turn a protest bill into a history play instead of a verdict.