Add Catalan writer Jordi Galcerán to the shortlist of European playwrights who are finding an international perch, in this case with a tricksy four-character play that has had more than 200 productions in over 60 countries.

Calixto Bieito has a reputation as a radical theatre-maker, and by any standards The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety is an unusual, genre-breaking piece; Bieito has described it as “like a symphonic poem for a quartet of musicians, and a quartet of voices”.

There’s a distinct feeling of back to basics to this opening double bill at the Globe under the theatre’s new Artistic Director Michelle Terry. The elaborations (some would say gimmickry) of Emma Rice’s short tenure have been reined back, and a new concentration prevails.

The show’s subtitle – “Songs banned by the Nazis” – is a catchy one, and somewhere under the confetti, the stilettos, the extravagant nudity, the sequins and even shinier repartee that are wrapped around Effigies of Wickedness like a mink coat on the shoulders of an SS officer’s mistress is the bruised and grubby story of one of history’s foulest episodes.

Towards the end of the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg's Life and Fate, a long scene in director Lev Dodin's daring if necessarily selective adaptation of Vasily Grossman's epic novel brings many of the actors together after a sequence of painful monologues and one-to-ones.

The band’s back together. Alfred Molina plays Rothko for the third time in Michael Grandage’s revisiting of John Logan’s richly textured two-hander, first seen at the Donmar in 2009 and then bypassing the West End for Broadway.

Five years ago, when New York playwright Rajiv Joseph started on his fantasy disquisition on truth, lies and the recent history of Russia, no one was talking about a new Cold War and trump was still a thing you did in a game of cards. Now, at the British premiere of Describe the Night, a wall in the foyer is beaming an image of Vladimir Putin and a pronouncement he made earlier that day.

Problem is Brighton is down in the Festival programme as an “alt-rock/pop pantomime”, with actors involved and the inference it’s some sort of musical featuring “instruments specially created by David Shrigley for the performance”. This turns out to be seriously over-selling it. In fact, Problem in Brighton is a rock band put together to play an hour of songs created in league with the maverick artist and Festival Guest Director. Putting any expectations aside, it’s a patchy show.

The band – four men, two women – initially arrive on stage one by one, in regulation black cowboy shirts with white piping, lining up, side by side, po-faced, riffing. The guitars are also black-and-white, designed by Shrigley, with varying quantities of strings. They start in what will be their default setting throughout, Krautrock garage rock akin to The Fall. Two of them – keyboard-player Craig Warnock and drummer Ben Townsend – soon return to their own instruments. At the front, singing and performing, are Scottish actress Pauline Knowles and German actor Stephan Kreiss, both deadpan but the latter given to persuasively underplayed clowning.

Shrigley’s sensibilities are naturally to the fore in all the lyrics

The set has no narrative arc or general concept, the word "problem" written large behind them apparently an irrelevance. The songs are akin to musical versions of David Shrigley’s one-frame images, using surrealism, dry observation, mundanity and juxtaposition to create an often humorous effect. At first it doesn’t really work, although the venue is spotted with Brighton’s self-regarding bearderati who guffaw knowingly, keenly hip to every abstruse gag. As dryly smart songs about shoes, dancing and digging holes go by, it initially reminds of film director Wes Anderson’s least likeable work, in that it’s self-consciously kooky but to no particular end other than its own smug smarts.

However, it moves up a gear with a very funny song wherein Kreiss bemoans his mother’s attempt to join the band. It has a great sing-along chorus and is the evening’s most immediate number. Shrigley’s sensibilities are naturally to the fore in all the lyrics, especially in a song that keeps saying “Hey, huge man”. He has a wry way with a line. A ballad, sung by Knowles, is about a guest, possibly after a party, seeking a bed. “Don’t sleep in the entrance hall, there’s a drunk sleeping there, and it’s a fire risk,” she intones.

There are a couple of props brought on to entertaining effect, such as the exhaust pipe used as a didgeridoo (main picture), some projected images and film of Shrigley’s work, and entertaining digs at the Tories and the Queen. Sensibly, for something so lightly conceived, it does not outstay its welcome.

The musicians and actors deliver the whole thing well. They’re tight. But, in the end, possibly due to prep time issues, possibly for other reasons, there’s a sense that Shrigley bit off more than he could chew; that when it came to creating his “alt-rock/pop pantomime” (with moshpit!), he actually dialled it back to something else entirely.

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Overleaf: watch a trailer for Problem in Brighton

They say that behind every successful man is a strong woman. The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is as much – if not more so – the championing of the unsung hero in this story of the famous early modernist artist, Marc Chagall. His wife, Bella – early muse, sharer of world views and buckets of milk and mother of their daughter Ida, is paid tribute to, for her devotion and dedication to her husband's art.

Playwright Barney Norris is as prolific as he is talented. Barely out of his twenties, he has written a series of excellent plays – the award-winning Visitors, follow-ups Eventide and While We’re Here – as well as a couple of novels and lots of poetry.