Last week’s theatre was all about men in extremis, or at least it turned out that way for me. Not an uncommon situation in our theatres, you might say, although now there is increasing awareness that we need to see a wider range of experience on Australian stages. (Hello lobby group Women in Theatre and Screen! More power to your elbow.) King Charles III (the Almeida Theatre production presented by Sydney Theatre Company) fell into last week simply because I hadn’t had the chance to see it earlier in the season but it made an interesting companion to STC’s Disgraced and the new one-man chamber piece Lake Disappointment.

King Charles III begins with mourning for Queen Elizabeth II. At long last Charles is king, although not yet crowned. From his many decades as king in waiting he knows exactly what the role entails, and yet from the first moments of his rule he is troubled by the implications. Is he to have no real authority at all? And if that is so, what meaning does his life have?

Mike Bartlett’s audacious play overlays this contemporary dilemma with Shakespearean structure, style and themes in a way that is both illuminating and often very funny. As the constitutional crisis unfolds there are shades of Macbeth, Hamlet, Henry IV and King Lear and an appropriately Shakespearean mix of tragedy and comedy. Bartlett explores an intriguing political conflict with potentially explosive fallout as well as giving a trenchant view of family dynamics of a particularly complicated kind.

I first saw the play in London in 2014 from a bench seat in the small, vertiginous upper level at the Almeida, which has a cosy 325 seats and an enticingly intimate atmosphere. That was a substantially different experience from seeing it at Sydney’s Roslyn Packer Theatre, which has nearly 900 seats and a different layout and character. Obviously a very different audience too, although at the matinee I attended it was a highly engaged one. There was undoubtedly more laughter in Sydney, although Bartlett’s text frequently encourages it and this audience’s response was rarely gratuitous. (There were grumblings after opening night of much inappropriate hilarity.)

It was always going to be hard for Robert Powell, the Charles in this excellent touring cast, to erase memories of Tim Piggott-Smith, who originated the role. Powell’s Charles was less comprehending of what his actions presaged; Piggott-Smith’s struggle was titanic. Even so, Powell’s downfall was deeply moving. I was thrilled to be able to see his extraordinary play again.

That was Wednesday afternoon; in the evening Luke Mullins and Lachlan Philpott’s Lake Disappointment received its premiere at Carriageworks. Mullins is the sole performer, an unnamed man with a precarious grip on reality. When we first see him he is talking to us as he performs the menial but necessary tasks that fall to the body double of a big movie star – the second-unit stuff like holding a cup, picking up a briefcase, hands on a car wheel, that sort of thing. Or perhaps he’s telling us after the event, as he remembers it. It doesn’t matter. The man is an empty shell who happens to have a similar shape to the actor he serves, Kane, and to whom he has attached his identity, such as it is.

Mullins is exceptional in his ability to make blankness and banality intriguing and the man’s disintegration moving. Even so, the elegant production, with direction by Janice Muller and design by Michael Hankin, ultimately feels almost too fragile. The play, like the man, evaporates.

Disgraced is excellently staged, beautifully performed and terrifically well-directed theatre that had the first-night audience happily discussing its incendiary themes. It’s also one of those highly conventional plays of serious intent that wins prizes (the Pulitzer) and gets a run on Broadway. Disgraced’s climactic arguments are explored at a dinner party and have exactly the well-rehearsed, incredibly articulate quality inherent in this set-up.

Still. The issues canvassed by playwright Ayad Akhtar are pertinent. Amir’s parents were born in India, he says, just before it became Pakistan. Not that that’s going to reassure anyone in these troublous times. Amir is a high-flying lawyer who is far from being attached to his Muslim heritage. His artist wife Emily, however, finds beauty and grace in Islamic art. Emily’s dealer, Isaac is Jewish and his wife, Jory, is African-American and an incredibly pragmatic and ambitious lawyer who works at the same firm as Amir. Starting positions everyone. A favour for his wife and his nephew, reluctantly entered into, throws Amir into a head-on collision with his heritage and the way he lives and feels. Yes, you can see the points being crossed off in the script but Disgraced does have legitimate points to make.

Clearly there was a lot of male angst in the theatre last week, but it was cheering to see excellent women directors at work in Sarah Goodes (Disgraced) and Lake Disappointment’s Muller. The week before Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, for STC, not only featured one of comedy’s cracking leading roles for a woman, delivered sensationally well by Heather Mitchell (see my review below), but was directed in rollicking fashion by Imara Savage. See, you only have to ask them …

Looking at another aspect of diversity in the theatre, it was salutary to read the biography of the exceptionally fine Sachin Joab, who has the leading role in Disgraced. The Melbourne-born actor’s theatre credits before this? None, or at least none that he lists here or on his website, although he mentions Stanley Kowalski and Richard III. From his training days perhaps. Why haven’t we seen him before?

Joab’s background includes a stint in Neighbours, which has proved one of Australia’s greatest acting nurseries (I give you Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, the Hemsworth brothers, Margo Robbie and so on and so forth) so his credentials are impeccable. Let me put it this way: some Sydney casting directors seem to fish in an unfairly small pool.

Finally to another kind of extremis – environmental degradation – and a theatre company with a strong commitment to diversity. The Bee and the Tree is the first children’s show from Sydney company Mongrel Mouth, founded in 2014 to present site-specific, socio-political theatre. The Bee and the Tree asked its audience of very young children to help save a dying tree, the last one in existence. A difficult-to-understand song made for a slightly puzzling start but once the action got underway the children took part willingly and, by the end, with much gusto, showering the grey, drooping tree with coloured petals to bring it back to life. Director Duncan Maurice’s costume designs – Mongrel Mouth champions recycling – were all winners and included a gold-encased Sun, large drooping tree, metamorphosing Grub and, best of all, Bette the Bee, played with much charm by co-writer Moreblessing Matarure.