BERLIN — Telemachus tries to hang himself with a video game controller, Helen of Troy poses heroically on a tank, and Zeus emerges from a dumpster disguised as a rat. These are a few of the startling sights in Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson and Mikael Torfason’s “An Odyssey,” which recently ushered in the 2019-20 season at the Volksbühne here.

This messy, sometimes exhilarating “Odyssey” is one of several new productions at the start of Berlin’s busy theatrical season that, with varying degrees of success, hold a mirror up to our fractured reality of endless wars, environmental catastrophe and social atomization.

“An Odyssey” takes scant interest in the drama of Odysseus’ homecoming to Ithaca. But while the themes of Homer’s epic are admittedly given short shrift, the new episodes that Mr. Arnarsson and Mr. Torfason devise to fill the four hours often make for dynamic and engaging theater.

The start of the evening is where they show the greatest fidelity to Homer and Greek mythology, with a musical account of the Trojan War that sounds something like a rock opera (music director: Gabriel Cazes). The actors, stationed at microphones, chant in unison like a Greek chorus. But this first act lacks full power, with the singing growing monotonous as the stage constantly rotates.