The word "after" can be elastic when a modern writer is inspired by a classic. Nima Taleghani here stretches it to breaking point, although, to be fair his piece is also described as a new play. It is not so much "after" Euripides as a celebration of theatre with frequent sideways reference - mostly knowing and comic - to The Bacchae.

Tate Britain is currently offering two exhibitions for the price of one. Other than being on the same bill, Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun having nothing in common other than being born a year apart and being oddballs – in very different ways. And since both reward focused attention, this makes for a rather exhausting outing – I’m reviewing them separately – so gird your loins.

Wagner’s universe, in the second of his Ring operas which brings semi-humans on board to challenge the gods, matches exaltation and misery, terror and tragedy – and throws down a gauntlet to singers, orchestra and director capable of going to extremes with due discipline.

This album is SHORT. At 27 minutes and just five tracks, one might wonder why Julienne Dessagne (this is a solo act) didn’t call it an EP. But maybe this is a good way to go in the trenches of the modern attention wars. It set me to thinking about two recent-ish albums that have become fabourites: Earl Sweatshirt’s 24 minutes of rap introspection SICK! from 2022, and last year’s Rosenhagtorn by Isabel Gustaffson-Ny, a sub-18 minute wisp of puzzling, barely there jazz-folk abstraction.

Percy Jackson is neither the missing one from Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael, nor an Australian Test cricketer of the 1920s, but a New York teenager with dyslexia and ADHD who keeps getting expelled from school. He’s a bit of a loner, too intense to huddle with the geeks, too stubborn to avoid the fights with the jocks, and his mother won’t tell him anything about his absent father. Who turns out to be a Greek god. Could happen to any kid. 

The ancient Greeks would probably have liked a lot about Charlie Covell‘s manipulation of mythic material. After all, Euripides was prepared to have a laugh about the notion of Helen whisked off to Egypt while a phantom version wrought havoc in Troy. Helen doesn’t figure in this mostly modern-dress gods-vs-humans drama, but so many other legendary figures do, as well as several you probably won’t have heard of.

Òran, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ 

Four years embracing pandemic, genocide and rapid environmental degradation predicted by Wagner’s grand myth have passed before the Southbank Brünnhilde could become a new woman – literally, in this Ring. Since Das Rheingold, the “preliminary evening”, in 2018, the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski has grown ever more idiomatic and resplendent. Casting of the main roles, however, had more than its usual peaks and troughs this time round.

Io Capitano works on several levels. At first glance, it’s a ripping yarn – two optimistic Senegalese teenagers embark on a dangerous journey, across the Sahara, through the hell of Libya and on to an overcrowded boat across the Mediterranean – all inspired by the lads’ dream of Europe. 

In terms of conveying monumental events using small-scale means, Edinburgh’s Tortoise in a Nutshell visual theatre company has form. Their 2013 Feral, for example, depicted the social breakdown of an apparently idyllic seaside town using puppetry and a lovingly assembled miniature set, to quietly devastating effect.