THEATRE / There goes the neighbourhood: The writers from over there are over here. And this time, as they say, they're angry. Sarah Hemming talks to Judith Thompson

Audiences heading for Hampstead Theatre's Canadian season in the expectation of wholesome Canadian fare are in for a shock. The theatre has just staged Brad Fraser's dark, sexy piece about the seedy underworld of Edmonton, where life is conducted in the shadow of a serial killer. And the view doesn't improve much with the next play, Judith Thompson's Lion in the Streets.

Though set in a leafy Toronto suburb, Thompson's drama is riddled with domestic tragedies - and this time there's a child-murderer at large. 'We have ideas about the terrific niceness of Canada,' says Jenny Topper, artistic director of Hampstead Theatre. 'These plays show that the serpent got in there as well]'

Judith Thompson's work pulls no punches. In her earlier play The Crackwalker, set among Toronto's dispossessed, a retarded man puts his new-born baby in the oven to keep it warm. The image is ghastly - yet The Crackwalker (shown at the Gate last year) drew rave reviews for its compassion and vivid, exciting use of language. Thompson's writing may be dark, yet she feels she is simply dealing with what is on her doorstep.

'We're all involved in fantastic denial,' she says. 'When people find my work shocking, I'm puzzled. I think, 'How can this be more shocking than the news we watch every day?' '

In Lion in the Streets, she moves even closer to home. The action is set in Thompson's own neighbourhood, and is watched over by the ghost of a Polish girl killed by the murderer.

'My plays are usually triggered by something specific,' explains Thompson. 'In this case it was a little local girl who was emotionally disturbed. She used to eat dirt and kick people, and the boys would encourage her to do this so that they could chuck stuff at her. I was interested by the sadistic nature of these kids, which seemed to reflect a sadism at large in society. Also I wanted to explore what a 'neighbourhood' is. Our area is very mixed ethnically - there are Polish and Greek people, Yuppies, working- class whites and students all living in a kind of rough peace. I wanted to ask, 'How does this little girl fit in?' and 'How do we fit into that sadism?' '

Thompson is not alone in her concerns. This spring London's fringe theatres are being engulfed in a flood of tough new work from the other side of the Pond: there is a Canadian season at the Riverside Studios, as well as at Hampstead; there are American seasons at the Royal Court and Gate Theatre. In Edinburgh the Traverse (which gave Brad Fraser's Unidentified Human Remains . . . its British premiere) is now showing The Swan by Canadian writer Elizabeth Egloff.

Stephen Daldry, artistic director designate of the Royal Court, puts this activity down to a burst of new transatlantic writing that is fuelled by disillusionment. 'There is some extraordinary work coming out of North America at the moment,' he says. 'A cultural watershed has been reached there which is producing new playwrights who are breaking away from traditional American theatre writing - family-based, rather sentimental drama - into public plays. They are different from British writers; they are very definitely American. They are steeped in their culture and they're quite angry.'

Daldry perceives two common strands to most of the indigenous new American writing being staged at the Court: interesting use of language, and the omnipresence of violence - or at least the threat of violence.

'They're all dealing with fear,' he says. 'That's why we've subtitled our season 'Welcome to the Decade of Fear'. In Howard Korder's Search and Destroy, which I'm directing, everybody is frightened - or about to be frightened. You get a tremendous sense of a society full of foreboding and fear and great anxiety about where the values are. There's also a return to the importance of text. There's a move away from performance art towards language.'

In David Mamet's Oleanna (coming to the Royal Court in June) and Anna Deavere Smith's solo show Fires in the Mirror (shown there last month) language is immensely important - not only in the way characters express themselves, but also in the way they fail to express themselves, or communicate. It is in the gap between events and the characters' differing descriptions of them that much of the drama lies, prompting questions as to how such a fractured society can communicate or find a common voice.

Judith Thompson, who also dramatises the search for articulacy, feels that these communication difficulties can best be shown on stage.

'People are expressing themselves even when they are looking for the language to do so. Your personal and cultural history is revealed in every 'um' and 'ah'. I don't think film can portray it so well. I work in both mediums and I don't believe a picture is worth 1,000 words at all. As screenwriters you're told again and again to 'cut the words' - but we live through the words.'

Thompson makes compelling use of language. Her characters grope for expression and talk in broken English or pungent argot. Then occasionally they reach an emotional pitch when their feelings pour out in a chaotic, poetic torrent of words.

'I write these speeches because it's what I hear on the streets. I see it as the way into a person's soul,' says Thompson. 'That's when you really see who they are. They're not hard to write - once I tap in, it's just like opening a faucet. It's a matter of getting to that monologue, the scene where they're alone and this Niagara of words comes pouring out.'

Judith Thompson deals with communication; she also deals with the prevalent subjects of fear, violence and moral confusion. Yet she brings her own slant - and perhaps takes her drama one stage further than most. In Lion in the Streets, the ghost of the murdered girl, Isobel, wanders through the neighbourhood seeking her killer. But by the time she finally encounters him, she has seen so much other pain in the neighbourhood that she is able to forgive him. Thompson says that she did not begin the play with this ending in mind, it evolved while she was writing it. For her, it indicates a deep-seated desire for reconciliation and peace.

'I was as surprised by it as you are, and as audiences are,' she says. 'Isobel even surprises herself. She initially wants to hunt and kill 'the lion'. But then she sees so much suffering along the way that she realises she wants to stop the cycle of death. I think the play has to be redemptive in some way. I think you have to want to provoke change through your plays. I don't believe I've done my job if I've just shown horror.'

'Lion in the Streets' previews from tomorrow at the Hamspstead Theatre; it opens on 19 April (071-722 9301)

At the Royal Court 'Treatment' previews from tomorrow, opens 20 April; 'Search and Destroy' previews from 29 April, opens 5 May; 'Oleanna' previews from 24 June, opens 30 June (071-730 1745)

Paines Plough's 'Festival of New Writing from Canada' at the Riverside Studios runs 16-18 April (081-748 3354)

The Gate's American season runs to 1 May (071-229 0706)

At the Traverse, Edinburgh 'The Swan' runs to 18 April (031-228 1404)

(Photograph omitted)