IN LONDON, there’s been a lot of loss in theatrical themes this year, and a lot of theft.

In the stupendous Exodus at the Finborough from writer and director Rachael Boulton and her trailblazing company Motherlode, there was a loss of hope, future and self-esteem while the theft of language and a community’s sense of its own history was ever-present in Brian Friel’s Translations at the National Theatre.

In it, Ciaran Hinds dominated the stage as the charismatic Latinate scholar Hugh, claiming that the lyrical and sometimes mendacious Irish language was “our response to mud cabins and a diet of potatoes,” while in Ella Hickson’s The Writer at the Almeida there is loss of a woman’s identity and purpose with Romola Garai as the eponymous playwright coming across as uncertain, neurotic and passive.

So how on Earth were these pieces energising and inspiring, rather than leaving audiences slumped in their seats? These fine productions introduced us to characters who were not going down without a fight and there was a strong element of “fuck you” in each act of defiance.

Imperialism is at the heart of Friel’s modern classic and the “translations” are weapons with which to sweep away Ireland’s provenance, its stories and its sense of self. There are those who resist, those who appease and those who retreat into melancholy.

But the lesson remains, long after the musket fire has died away. The next time a group of people come with a new vocabulary for you, replacing your own, they’re not giving you much. They plan to take plenty.

The author’s voice in The Writer is powerful stuff and, it turns out, she isn’t passive at all – she’s more anarchic, if anything. There’s a glorious moment when Garai walks through a door, changes her mind, and walks back through the set. She knows the game very well, and she’s not playing.

Exodus was a reminder of the freestyle, sweetly surreal performances of the so-called alternative theatre of the 1970s and 1980s. Part of that dynamic, of course, is that audiences have to make an effort.

Accepting that four random, dysfunctional characters are to fly a tiny plane from Aberdare to Patagonia is a stretch, though not so much for those of us from Aberdare – the town brought up on Max Boyce’s tale of Morgan the Moon.

Ready to lead them on this over-optimistic exodus from their neglected home, ex-soldier Ray reminds his crew: “A hundred and fifty years ago our great ancestors set off from this exact place. Thirteen weeks in a boat that sailed across two oceans, searching for a better life.”

That deserves wild applause, indeed.