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The week's cultural highlights transport Tom Sutcliffe and his guests to the Middle East, via Zena el Khalil's novel Beirut, I Love You and a promenade play set amid the dangers of Jordan.

The Burning Plain
Guillermo Arriaga, screenwriter of Amores Perros and 21 Grams, is famous for his teasing, split-time take on movie storytelling. In his debut as a director, Charlize Theron plays a sad, sex-addicted restaurant manager. Kim Basinger is a worn-out mum renewed by an affair with a married Mexican man. And a young, motherless girl watches her father suffer a terrible accident. But when their stories come together, does the film add up to more than the sum of itsparts?
The Burning Plain is on selected release now, certificate fifteen.

Mythologies
London’s Museum of Mankind was home to the British Museum’s ethnographic collection until it closed in 1998. After a decade with no very clear purpose, it has been reinvented as the home of the commercial gallery Haunch of Venison. Their first show aims to turn the whole space into a cabinet of curiosities – but how curious did it leave the panel?

Mythologies continues at the new Haunch of Venison gallery in central London until 26 April.

Stovepipe
Tom, Rory, David and Susannah visit the Jordanian capital Amman – as recreated in a west London shopping centre. In Adam Brace’s new promenade play, the audience become conference delegates, civilians in a curfew and mourners, as they follow the story of a British soldier turned private security guard. Alan is trying to find his friend Eddy, who has gone AWOL in a city overshadowed by the conflict in Iraq.

Stovepipe continues at the West 12 shopping centre in West London until 26 April. Check the Bush Theatre and the National Theatre for details.

Beirut, I Love You
The artist Zena el-Khalil was born in London, grew up in Nigeria, and went to university in Beirut and New York. During the 2006 Lebanon War she maintained a blog recording the impact of the conflict from inside the Lebanese capital. Now, in her first novel, she explores why, of all the places in the world she could live, she has for so long been drawn to Beirut.
Beirut, I Love You by Zena el-Khalil is published by Saqi Books.