Mouthful, Trafalgar Studios

MOUTHFUL, TRAFALGAR STUDIOS Plays responding to the global food crisis are efficient, but too explicit

Plays responding to the global food crisis are efficient, but too didactic

Metta Theatre’s didactic "short plays" evening takes a rigorously Poppins approach: a spoonful of drama to help the medicine go down. The sobering facts – “We need to produce more food globally by 2050 than we have done in the whole of human history” – come thick and fast, emblazoned on a screen and spouted by four versatile performers. Some pieces, written in collaboration with scientists, are fuelled by those stats, others crumble under their weight.

10 Questions for Eno Williams of Ibibio Sound Machine

10 QUESTIONS FOR ENO WILLIAMS British-Nigerian singer and lyricist discusses blending highlife and Western music into a global sound

British-Nigerian singer and lyricist discusses blending highlife and Western music into a global sound

Eno Williams is lead singer and composer of the band Ibibio Sound Machine, an eclectic fusion in which contemporary dance and synth are laid over classic Nigerian highlife rhythm and vocals. The full line-up consists of eight musicians working with a range of influences, including Brazilian percussionist Anselmo Netto, Ghanaian guitarist Alfred Bannerman, and producer and saxophonist Max Grunhard.

Half of a Yellow Sun

HALF OF A YELLOW SUN Too episodic transfer to the big screen for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Biafran bestseller

Too episodic transfer to the big screen for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Biafran bestseller

It’s the bad books, it has been famously said, that make the good films. As for the good ones, they have to take their chances. There is so much more to lose, so many nuances of tone and subtleties of texture to be sacrificed. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun is one such good book. It won the Orange Prize for fiction in 2007 and became a bestseller. Being a multi-stranded narrative peopled by a rich array of characters against an epic backdrop, its journey to the big screen was always on the cards.

10 Questions for musician Burnt Friedman - with video exclusive

10 QUESTIONS FOR BURNT FRIEDMAN German maverick takes his "rhythm language" to Africa - with exclusive video.

The Berlin-based musician on taking his experiments to Africa

Bernd “Burnt” Friedman is one of the most relentlessly questing of experimental musicians. In over 30 years of making music and 25 years of releasing it, he has specialised in researching ancient, hypermodern and as-yet-undiscovered methods of soundmaking, including traditional and home-built instruments and the application of high-tech methodologies to established forms from around the world, in particular jazz, western club sounds, and African and Japanese styles.

Routes, Royal Court Theatre

Brisk new play by Rachel De-lahay is deceptively simple but emotionally profound

You could call it the iceberg syndrome. It’s a work of art that is a flash, a sliver or an imprint: think of a passport photograph, a cheap trinket or a half-finished graffiti. Yet beneath the simple image there is a world of pain. Rachel De-lahay’s new play, a follow up to her award-winning The Westbridge, offers snapshots of the great migrations of recent years, and slowly reveals the raw emotion of these simple tales.

Feast, Young Vic

FEAST, YOUNG VIC Can a talented team pull off an insanely ambitious depiction of Yoruba culture?

Can a talented team pull off an insanely ambitious depiction of Yoruba culture?

Feast aims high. Very, very high. Steered by experienced and much-lauded director Rufus Norris, five playwrights and one choreographer seek to make a fusion of physical theatre, dance, onstage music, straight drama, abstract poetic dialogue, projected animation and knockabout comedy to tell no less a story than 350 years of the history of the Yoruba people of west Africa. It spans four continents through recurring manifestations of a group of their “Orishas”, or gods, a series of meals, and an ongoing quest for eggs. Yeah, that old chestnut.