On June 19 Aung San Suu Kyi turned 62. The democratically elected Burmese leader, who has never been permitted by her country’s military dictatorship to take up her rightful position, has spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest. Her birthday was marked by readings and performances of Richard Shannon’s one-person play, The Lady of Burma, in seven countries and eleven British locations – including Westminster, where Liana Mau Tan Gould, who first played Suu Kyi at an Old Vic gala last year, once again delivered her passionate message. Now, after appearances in Edinburgh and at Soho Theatre in London, Shannon’s self-directed monologue returns in its first full theatrical run, before a tour next year. In developing the play, Shannon travelled to Burma and spoke to some of Suu Kyi’s closest associates. His text draws on material gathered from those conversations, as well as on Suu Kyi’s own words. The results suffer from the usual problems associated with the single-voice form, notably a lack of structural and dramatic interest, and a static, slightly contrived quality in performance. But the substance of the piece lies in Suu Kyi’s extraordinary life and strength of character, and Gould’s performance is one of quiet intensity.

We discover Suu Kyi in a bare cell in the hospital wing of the Insein prison in Rangoon, built, as she wryly points out, “by the British, to last”. She has been brought here after the assassination attempt at Depayin in 2003, during which about 100 of her followers were killed. With a lightbulb ever burning, no clear sense of the passage of time and nothing on which to fasten her attention but a bowl of dirty water, Suu Kyi takes refuge of a kind in her memories.

In her portrayal, Gould distils grim determination, rage, sorrow and steadfast belief in the possibility of a better future. The monologue convention carries the suggestion that Suu Kyi’s stream of recollection is a deliberate means of stubbornly refusing to allow herself to be driven mad by isolation.

And her story is unforgettable. She tells of her father, General Aung San, who negotiated Burma’s independence from Britain in 1945 and who was assassinated when Suu Kyi was 2; of the massive stroke suffered by her mother, which brought Suu Kyi back to Burma from Oxford, leaving behind her husband, Michael Aris; and of her agonising choice, with Aris dying of cancer, between leaving her country behind forever and losing the opportunity to see him once more. Personal and political have rarely been so ferociously connected; and the play climaxes with an account of the Depayin massacre that Gould delivers with incendiary force.

Shannon’s play isn’t theatrically ground-breaking, but in a way that’s almost beside the point. It is a compelling tribute to all those engaged in Burma’s continuing struggle for liberty, and to a truly inspiring human being.

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