AUDITORIUM

✮✮ Ersan Mondtag & Olga Bach's The Extermination Theatertreffen | Berlin directed by Ersan Mondtag Blackout. Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem can be heard slowly building to its climax as the theater fills with fog. At the pinnacle of suspense, the classical music subsides and is replaced by the stillness of a summer night; crickets, an occasional crow cawing in the distance, and above all an almost unbearable calm. As the four-man ensemble comes into view their ennui and utter

✮✮✮ Anne Washburn's Mr Burns Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Imara Savage There are three distinct acts in Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play. First, we discover that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket; it is the apocalypse, and we have run out of electricity. A small group of survivors huddle together, trying to keep themselves sane by retelling episodes of The Simpsons. They each contribute fragments, but memory, like all human ability, proves to be considerably

✮✮✮✮ Brecht's Life of Galileo Young Vic | London directed by Joe Wright Block rocking' beats from The Chemical Brothers' Tom Rowlands set your pulse racing (or give you a headache) as you file into designer Lizzie Clachan's ingenious circus-arena-cum-planetarium. The Young Vic is almost unrecognisable in this modern take on Brecht. Trance-like video projections of the universe on the huge domed ceiling captivate half the audience who lie on cushions on the floor beneath. The

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Tony Kushner's Angels in American National Theatre | London directed by Marianne Elliott Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels In America is a theatrical marathon, and elicits much the same effect: breathlessness, exhaustion, light-headedness – the sense that the experience has enriched you, quasi-mystically, beyond the sum of its parts. Like a 26-mile slog it leaves you a little closer to death and yet inexplicably more alive. In Marianne Elliott’s cornucopia

✮✮✮ 1/2 Simon Stone's Ibsen House Toneelgroep | Amsterdam directed by Simon Stone Simon Stone has turned yet again to the works of Henrik Ibsen as a source of inspiration. Ibsen House is produced in cooperation with the Toneelgroep Amsterdam and performed at the companies’ home base, the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg. Over the course of last season Stone has worked together with the Netherland’s largest repertory company on no less then three productions. This new piece, however,

✮✮✮✮ Nakkiah Lui's Black is the New White Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Paige Rattray Charlotte worries about being too white, or to be more accurate, she carries shame about her life not being black enough. The blood in her veins is Aboriginal but having been born into great privilege, she can only observe, what she considers an authentic black experience, from afar. In Nakkiah Lui’s new play Black is the New White, we visit a wealthy black home, through what c

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Simon Stone's Three Sisters Theatertreffen | Berlin directed by Simon Stone Simon Stone’s modernisation of Anton Checkov’s Three Sisters opens Germany’s 53rd annual Theatertreffen as a guest production by Theater Basel at the Berliner Festspiele. Three Sisters has been selected as one of the “ten most notable productions” of the year in the German-language region selected by the jury from 344 productions in 63 cities. The festival is introduced by the director of the

✮✮✮✮ Barney Norris's While We're Here Bush Theatre | London directed by Alice Hamilton While the Bush’s main theatre is whisking off audiences to Imperial India in Guards at the Taj, its studio space is offering up a two-hander closer to home in every respect. Barney Norris’ While We’re Here may not be a ticket to anywhere more exotic than a Havant living room, but its characters are so tenderly drawn and poignantly performed you almost feel you’ve popped into a new neighbour