Theatre review: Wolves on Road

Following Beru Tessema's well-received House of Ife, the playwright returns to the Bush for another story with family at its heart, but this time also taking in much wider social and financial themes, as Wolves on Road dips its toe into cryptocurrency - and suggests that's probably as deep into that particular world it's safe to get into. Manny (Kieran Taylor-Ford) is looking to get rich quick, but so far his instincts to resell designer goods online have just resulted in him being saddled with a pile of fakes even the local market stalls won't take off him. His best friend Abs (Hassan Najib) gets him into a crypto app, and after his initial reservations Manny gets sucked into the seemingly limitless possibilities for growth. But the big money will come if they can get in on a new currency at the start, and a local boy done good has come up with a new app that combines crypto with a money transfer service.

Theatre review: Our Lady of Kibeho

Definitely fitting the bill of a long-awaited show, ten years after The Mountaintop first became a surprise smash (and notwithstanding her doing book duties on a musical,) we finally get a follow-up play from Katori Hall in London. Our Lady of Kibeho is a much more epic affair than its predecessor but it shares its theme of looking at an incredibly dark moment in black history from a fantastical, mystical perspective, and bringing an element of hope and humour to it. Inspired by true events, Kibeho is a remote village in the mountains of Rwanda, home to breathtaking scenery, a Catholic girls' school and not much else. But in 1981 it looks like it could be put on the map in a big way when Alphonsine (Taz Munya,) an unremarkable student who, as a Tutsi, is in the minority at the school, claims to have had a vision of the Virgin Mary.

Theatre review: Battlefield

It's probably a safe enough bet to say that Peter Brook is quite fond of the Mahabharata; he staged the entirety of the Indian epic poem 30 years ago, but that doesn't seem to have got it out of his system. Brook and regular collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne have returned to the story, although this time they mercifully don't have a 9-hour theatrical endurance feat in mind: Battlefield, from an adaptation by Jean-Claude Carrière, deals only with one section of the epic. In fact we very much enter in the middle of the story as the battle fought on the titular field has just ended; whole armies have been wiped out, and all that's left is for a couple of the mortally wounded to shuffle off the mortal coil, with a few parting words of advice for the new king (Jared McNeill) before he takes his throne. Much of this will take the form of fables and recollections.

Theatre review: The Epic Adventure of Nhamo the Manyika Warrior and His Sexy Wife Chipo

This year's recurring meme of hefty play titles makes its next appearance at the Tricycle, where Lucian Msamati directs a new play by Denton Chikura, The Epic Adventure of Nhamo the Manyika Warrior and His Sexy Wife Chipo. The setting is Zimbabwe, where a fable for the ages is waiting to be told and the narrator, bad guy and romantic interest are present and correct. Unfortunately the story is stalled because it lacks a protagonist and, egged on by mysterious and somewhat threatening voices, the Narrator (Don Gilet) is desperate to find one. When the goatherd Nhamo (Ery Nzaramba) wanders out of the bush looking for an escaped goat, he's pressed into service but is found severely lacking, and the tale by necessity becomes an origin story, to turn him from zero to hero - all in the silliest way possible.