THEATRE / Berlin back on the map: Della Couling on drama where West struggles to meet East, at the Berlin Theatertreffen

THE Berlin Theatertreffen in May has the same kudos in the German-speaking theatre world as Cannes or the Oscars in the international film world. Each year a jury of nine theatre critics spends about nine months travelling from Vienna to Hamburg to Zurich to anywhere they might find one of the 'most interesting' productions of the year (they carefully avoid the word 'best'). A select dozen or so productions are then invited to Berlin. Theatres have been known to field a promising production at a strategic time, to increase its chances of selection. The black hole is from mid-March, when the jury meets, to June, when the hoo-ha is over.

This year's selection has thrown up some interesting patterns. Of the 12 productions, six are from the former East Germany, and five are from Berlin theatres (four of those from east Berlin). Nothing from Austria or Switzerland - or from Hamburg or the Munich Kammerspiele, for that matter. This indicates two welcome trends: it shows that east German theatre is continuing to uphold its high standards, in spite of cutbacks and insecurity, and that Berlin is becoming the theatre capital again.

This year, Shakespeare topped the Theatertreffen league table, as usual, with three productions - two by the young star from the East, Leander Haussmann. He rose to fame two years ago with his Weimar production of A Doll's House, nose-dived when his world premiere of Botho Strauss's last play, Angela's Clothes, was shot down in flames by the critics, but has risen once more.

His Munich Romeo and Juliet was chosen to open the Theatertreffen. A lyrical, moving view of the play, it trod a fine line between iconoclasm and sincerity, without succumbing to the temptation to epater les bourgeois - something Haussmann cannot always resist. In the balcony scene, a desperately ardent Romeo, stripped to the buff, tried to scale the balcony in a sequence where the slapstick almost became agonising: this is, one became convinced, really the only way to play this scene.

Haussmann's second production, A Midsummer Night's Dream from Weimar, was less successful. His young lovers wandered dazed around a revolving tropical jungle of a set. In the first act, a little man in modern dress climbed out of a cardboard box and then wandered in and out throughout the play, watching and listening in disbelief - a good gag, but adding little insight.

The third Shakespeare was Frank Castorf's King Lear from the Berlin Volksbuhne. Castorf took over the running of the Volksbuhne, a huge Stalinist barn in east Berlin, and in less than a year turned it into the place in Berlin for alternative theatre - no mean feat, as the Volksbuhne was threatened with closure soon after the Wende (the change, or removal of the Wall). In Lear, he kept up his enfant terrible reputation from the first scene, which had Regan and Goneril peeing into buckets.

The Berliner Ensemble in east Berlin, Brecht's theatre, fielded Rolf Hochhuth's latest, Wessis in Weimar. This is a verbose diatribe on all Germany's failings, and the director, Einar Schleef, gutted the text - apparently prompting Hochhuth to dissociate himself from the production - filling the gaps with some striking theatre, albeit not to everyone's taste. The general atmosphere was of brutality and hatred: soldiers spent up to 20 minutes at a time marching round the stage, then removed their greatcoats and, clad only in boots, repeatedly stormed to the front of the stage. There was also some killing and the odd bit of buggery and self-abuse. All quite unlike Brecht, though also quite obviously aimed to be didactic.

A much more coherent attack on the Wessis - the West Germans - was Johan Kresnik's Wendewut (Wende- fury), from Bremen. This is based on a story by Gunter Gaus in which an East German woman, like the majority, has adjusted to the system, an attitude most Wessis have enormous difficulty with. Kresnik creates an eloquent plea for a more charitable approach from the Wessis. This was so explicit that it prompted several Wessis to leave during the performance. The opening - a voice listing missing persons from the last war - was striking. Two Russian officers were stationed in front of the stage, the auditorium was divided by a black gauze curtain. One of the first scenes had Erich Honecker dancing a pas de trois with the Russians; later, he had a macabre pas de deux with a tall SS officer, who finally stripped him and crushed six eggs in his underpants. The whole production was witty, moving and immaculately performed and it cried out to be invited abroad.

In a class of its own, though, was Thomas Langhoff's Deutsches Theater (east Berlin) production of Hofmannsthal's Der Turm ('The Tower'), based on Calderon's La vida es sueno. What was striking, in Langhoff's portrayal of the young man locked up and deprived of human contact until his late teens, was its intense narrative drive, and Daniel Morgenroth's remarkable performance as the unfortunate Sigismund. A very worthwhile revival of a largely neglected work by the theatre now acknowledged as the best in Berlin.