Things to do in London today

It’s been unspeakably hot in London for weeks, but it seems the temperature is about to cranked up even more. Matthew Bourne’s sultry dance reinvention of Carmen has returned to Sadler’s Wells in all its sweaty, grimy glory after a decade off-stage, and its timing couldn’t be more apt.  Set in the 1950s in the fictional town of Harmony – a midwestern Italian-American community where the residents appear to be permanently horny – The Car Man’s plot mashes up Bizet’s passionate opera (it uses the Rodion Shchedrin score with additional music by Terry Davies) with the erotic noir The Postman Always Rings Twice. We meet Luca (the formidable Will Bozier), a drifter who arrives in the dusty enclave looking for work. Upon his arrival, Luca causes quite the stir as he effortlessly cartwheels over diner tables and jibes the mechanics with threats of fisticuffs. Oozing raw masculinity, he immediately catches the eye of the wily waitress Lana (Ashley Shaw), as well as the naive dogsbody Angelo (Harry Ondrak-Wright), and a love triangle begins – when The Car Man premiered in 2000, it was the first depiction of bisexuality in a ballet.  I won’t ruin the plot, but it’s deliciously melodramatic, and buoyed by the highly atmospheric set and lighting, designed by Lez Brotherston and Chris Davey, respectively. The steamy mood is enhanced by plenty of literal mist, as plumes of hot air float across the stage almost constantly, rising from the cars of the garage. There’s also the grinding of...

‘But how did Marilyn Monroe really die?’ is not necessarily a question you’re expecting to have answered down the theatre in 2026, especially not via the medium of a play starring late ‘00s pop star Pixie Lott.  But here we are. Sharleen Cooper Cohen’s drama – conspiracy thriller, even – opens with Lott’s extremely breathy, extremely blonde Marilyn hovering near the bed where her body was found. She tells us we don’t really know the real her, and to prove it she drops an F-bomb (Marilyn Monroe did swears???) and takes us on a whirlwind tour of her life.  Not a very illuminating one. In part because Lott’s limitations as an actor leave her stranded doing what amounts to a Monroe impression and in part because Cohen clearly thinks subtext is for cowards there’s simply no depth of character here. A ‘real’ Marilyn is constantly alluded to, but her whole life still seems like a performance. Everyone talks in exposition. Lott’s Marilyn never does anything casual or insignificant. The stilted dialogue is simply a cavalcade of modestly interesting facts about her career, marriages and death. And then there’s the conspiracy. Although the fact of Monroe’s death is dropped at the start, Cohen essentially precedes in a purely linear fashion, only revealing how she believes her subject died at the end. Rather than present it in a literary way, Cohen simply trundles through and says ‘this is how it happened’… and then has Marilyn confirm it herself. Lott’s Marilyn never does anything...

London’s spectacular free Greenwich + Docklands International Festival is back for 2026, taking place over three weeks at the end of the summer as the skies darken and its huge outdoor shows look particularly impressive at night.  Celebrating its 31st edition in 2026, the festival will kick off with 360 (Aug 21, General Gordon Square, Woolwich), a huge outdoor electronic dance work.  This will be followed by the return of the beloved Greenwich Fair (Aug 23 and 24), which combines family friendly games and activities throughout Greenwich with spectacular acrobatic works, largely in Greenwich Park. Meet My By the Fountain (Romford Market, Aug 28 and 29) will be a stunning son-et-luminaire bringing Romford’s ‘lost’ Liberty Fountain back to life, and in probably the most ‘wow’ show of the festival Argentina’s Efectos Especiales (pictured, Aug 29 and 30, Greenwich Peninsular) will seek to thrust you into an actual action movie. There will be dancing throughout the period, including the return of the Dancing City sub festival (Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Sep 5) and it’ll wrap up with (In)visible Dancing (General Gordon Square, Woolwich, Sep 6) and exhilarating 90-minute flashmob in the heart of Woolwich.  

To be totally clear: Now You See Me Live is a stage-magic spectacular that has little to do with the Jesse Eisenberg-fronted film trilogy of the same name. That is to say, there’s no plot here and if the various participating magicians are using it as a front for fighting capitalism via the medium of high-concept heists, then they’re keeping quiet about it. Nonetheless, the producers of this Australia-originating international touring show have paid for the IP and it’s not a bad investment. After all, the films did in their own absurd way make magicians look cool. If there’s genuinely almost no allusion to the source material beyond a heist-themed mind reading trick at the start, then the grungy, black-wearing aesthetic and branding of the core performers – that’s Enzo Weyne, Andrew Basso, Gabriella Lester and Matthew Pomeroy – as ‘the Horsemen’ serves to give it a more focussed, less cheesy vibe than some of these multi-magician West End spectaculars.  In a way I don’t have a huge amount more to add, other than to note that while the individual names are subsumed by the concept, these are some top-class performers. At best, the magic on display here is jaw-dropping. I would say there are three tricks that are astonishing, none of which I should really spoil, plus there’s a tribute to Harry Houdini from Basso that is utterly nerve-wracking to look at but I think it’s probably fine to divulge that he doesn’t drown trying to pick the locks of his watery prison (or he didn’t...

After a break brought on by tightened post-pandemic budgets, the Greenwich Fair – the colourful family friendly festival within the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival – seems to be making good on last year’s combeack edition as it’s back this year too. The riotous and completely free two-day showcase of theatre, dance and games is back for 2026, and once again takes place in Greenwich Park and will feature nine full blown shows you can see completely gratis, ranging from feminist highwire act ElevateHer by Daughters of the Wire, to Kismat Walla by Thingumajig Theatre, a magical outdoor puppetry show inspired by South Asian street markets. Most of the GDIF line-up is suitable for kids, but with its focus on daytime shows in lovely Greenwich Park, the Greenwich Fair is especially family friendly.

As You Like It is mostly a play about a large assortment of oddballs living in a forest for some reason. It definitely has a plot, but it also kind of plays out like an eccentric Tudor sketch show. And I’ve seen a lot of productions get lost in the woods (badoom) of its teeming characters and their largely low stakes adventures – you can watch this show a dozen times and not be entirely clear who, say, Silvius is if the director doesn’t lead you through it. Fortunately dual directors Sean Holmes and Charlie Josephine – plus their creative team headed by designer Paul Wills – are excellent guides though the trees.  This is not a production that (as far as I can tell) comes with a massive high concept and I don’t think the reason why the opening court scene sees the characters dressed set in a sort of eye-poppingly absurd 17th century style – big wigs; insanely silhouetted dresses; vaguely kinky; general Marie Antoinette-on-acid vibes – comes with any great point other than that it looks awesome and it sets up a contrast with the longer more rustic sequence that follows when most of the key cast are banished or run away to the Forest of Arden. But by making every character as vivid as possible, visually and personality-wise, it’s just a great, boisterous production where you don’t find yourself questioning ‘and who is THAT guy?’ two hours in. From Lola Shalam’s high strung romantic lead Rosalind and Gracie Oddie-Jones as her amusingly laidback posh girl BFF Celia to...

The posters have been plastered around the London Underground for years – long enough for this show to become the most successful musical of all time – but nothing prepares you for the sheer impact of 'The Lion King's opening sequence. With the surge of 'Circle Of Life' reverberating through your chest, Julie Taymor's animal creations march on, species by species. Gazelles spring, birds swoop and an elephant and her child lumber through the stalls. It's a cacophonous cavalcade that genuinely stops you breathing. You'd think Noah's Ark had emptied onto the stage. For a global blockbuster, 'The Lion King's absolute theatricality is astonishing. Techniques from all over the world – African masks, Japanese Kabuki costumes, Malaysian shadow puppetry – are smashed together in an explosion of spectacle. It's perfect for a musical, allowing both distinct flavours and an eclectic carnival spirit. Admittedly, things deflate when it sacrifices this defiant originality for subservient approximation of the film. Timon and Pumba (Damian Baldet and Keith Bookman), though impressively like their screen counterparts, step into the savannah from a different dimension. The hyena-infested elephant's graveyard swaps menace for goofiness and the famous stampede scene, so delicately handled and moving in the film, is merely ticked off with a sigh of relief. The familiarity of the film is a root cause of the show's commercial success. But, ironically, 'The Lion King' can't afford such...

The lighting may be dim in the Menier Chocolate Factory’s auditorium – reconfigured to resemble an atmospheric 1960s NYC cabaret club – but the star wattage is bright. It’s not hard to see why American musical theatre powerhouse Ben Platt was attracted to the British debut of Mark Sonnenblick’s 2018 off-Broadway show. A two-hander, it’s a great vehicle for his talents as a singer and actor.  But there’s more to this funny, sad and wistful piece – directed here by David Cromer – than that. It’s New York, 1965, and Platt is Trevor, the singing half of a performing and romantic duo, alongside songwriter Arthur (Gregor Milne). It’s an era when being gay is a threat to life and livelihood. We are Trevor’s audience in smoky Greenwich Village club the Never Get as he tells – and sings – the story of their turbulent relationship and contrasting careers.  The way in which Sonnenblick, partly through Trevor’s casual asides, creates in Arthur a fictional superstar of the great American songbook, is a delicious blurring of reality and theatrical invention. This is heightened by his score and lyrics, which are lushly evocative of Cole Porter. They feel like songs you almost remember. But as Arthur (initially) insists on keeping male pronouns in these classically framed love songs, they become – in one of the show’s strongest through-lines – a powerful social lens. But there’s an engrossingly thorny knottiness – which Sonnenblick, to his credit, doesn’t untangle – to Trevor’s increasing...

This review is from 2022. My Neighbour Totoro is now running at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in the West End with a mostly new cast. Studio Ghibli’s 1988 cartoon masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro is a stunningly beautiful, devastatingly charming film, in which not a huge amount happens per se.  It follows two young sisters who move to the countryside with their dad and basically get up to a lot of extremely normal things… while also fleetingly encountering a succession of astounding otherworldly creatures, most notably Totoro, a gigantic furry woodland spirit, and the Cat Bus, a cat that is also a bus (or a bus that is also a cat, whatever). Its most iconic scene involves young heroines Mei and Satsuki waiting at a bus stop, and Totoro shuffling up behind them, chuckling at their umbrella (a new concept to him) and then hopping on his unearthly public transport. So if you’re going to adapt it for the stage you’re going to have to absolutely nail the puppets you use to portray Totoro and co.  The RSC absolutely understood the brief here, although you’ll have to take my word for it, as for this first ever stage adaption – by Tom Morton-Smith, overseen by legendary Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi – the company hasn’t allowed a single publicity photo of a single puppet (bar some chickens) to be released.  Nonetheless, the puppets – designed by Basil Twist, assembled by Jim Henson's Creature Workshop – are fucking spectacular. They have to be fucking spectacular because that’s the...

This review is from Southwark Playhouse in October 2025. Hot Mess returns for a summer 2026 run at The Other Palace While the millennia-old union between planet Earth and humanity might not be the first coupling that springs to mind when you think of unhealthy relationships, there’s no denying it is pretty toxic. The Earth gives! Humanity takes! The Earth had boundaries, and humanity violated ‘em – first digging up the ground to mine for coal and drill for oil, then jetting into space with a wandering eye, pushing the atmosphere to its limits in a bid to see what else was out there.   It’s safe to say we’ve put our hosting planet through the wringer physically, but what if we’ve left it feeling emotionally drained too? Could the climate crisis with its ruinous wild fires and unforgiving floods be a scorned Earth’s way of telling humanity to do one? It’s a theory! Or at least, it’s the premise of this pop musical romcom from Ellie Coote (book) and Jack Godfrey’s (music and lyrics), the duo who scored a hit last year with 42 Balloons. Earth and Humanity (aka Hu) are personified as a couple and under this guise, their entire, increasingly troubling partnership is explored. Over the course of one breathless hour of back-to-back songs, the big breakthroughs of our species are reframed as our rocking what could have been a peaceful, happy relationship.  It’s a kooky concept, but this two-hander holds up surprisingly well in a production which Coote also directs, largely thanks...

This exhibition will challenge your perception of Japan, as 27 groundbreaking Japanese female artists are displayed at the Photographers Gallery. Spanning the 1950s to the present day, themes covered in the show include identity, pop culture, fashion and everyday life. Internationally renowned photographers will be displayed alongside lesser known, perhaps overlooked, names, with works by Ishikawa Mao, Ishiuchi Miyako, Katayama Mari, Kawauchi Rinko, Ninagawa Mika, Nishimura Tamiko and more. 

This spring, French Vietnamese artist Nhu Xuan Hua will take over both of Autograph Gallery's main spaces with newly commissioned work at the intersection of art and fashion photography. She'll draw on her Vietnamese parentage, reimagining her family photographs to explore the fragility of memory, and what's lost between generations.

The Bank of England's vaults are full of more than 400,000 gold ingots. They're hidden away below ground, but visit this grand Threadneedle Street institution this summer and you'll find a different kind of golden treasure: honey. A new exhibition in the Bank of England's museum space by Bompas & Parr is designed to help visitors understand more about money, with the help of a sweet metaphor. The centrepiece is a buzzing hive of live bees, who you can watch guard their precious stock. There's also a chance to see if you can tell real honey from fake, a hands-on chance to inspect forged banknotes, and a look into the history of honey in food. Two Lates will include themed activities including learning to line dance, bee style (Aug 7) and making your own mead (Aug 20).

Another London summer beckons: clouds clearing, days lengthening, an imaginative structure being erected in Kensington Gardens. Mexican architecture firm LANZA atelier has been chosen to design this 2026 Serpentine Pavilion, which features a ‘crinkle-crankle’ wall. Traditional structures seen in English architecture from the 18th century, these wavy partitions temper climate, create shelter, and are ideal for growing fruit. And fittingly, they’re also known as serpentine walls.  The prestigious architectural commission celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2026, with a landmark series of talks programmed in collaboration with the Zaha Hadid Foundation, the charitable organisation founded by the late Iraqi-British architect, who designed the inaugural Pavilion 25 years ago. The programme kicks off with an Architects’ Talk hosted by Hans Ulrich Obrist, with a series of Family Days featuring hands-on workshops, creative activities and performances for all ages scheduled throughout the summer. Check out the Serpentine’s website for further details in due course.   

The Wellcome Collection’s big spring exhibition is a deep dive into perceptions of ageing. Expect the Euston Road institution’s typical blend of art, science and pop culture in the 120+ artworks and objects on display, which range from16th century woodcuts made by German printmaker Sebald Beham to Deborah Roberts’ contemporary collages exploring Black childhood. There’ll also be a spotlight on the Wellcome Trust-funded health research project Age of Wonder – one of the largest studies of adoloscence in the world – and an exploration of how societies can adapt to improve everyone’s experience of ageing.

Henry Moore’s bulbous and undulating sculptures were designed to be seen outside and surrounded by nature. So we’re happy to say that Kew is displaying a huge collection of his works as they were intended at this mega exhibition. The world’s biggest ever exhibition of Moore will open at the botanical gardens, with 30 sculptures on show in the open air and more than 90 works including carvings and drawings displayed in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. Several of his famous and iconic reclining figures will be on view, as well as more abstract and amorphous pieces like the massive bronze marvel ‘Large Two Forms’. 

There’s something irresistably fascinating about seeing into artist’s studios – messy materials, stacks of canvases, and a peek behind the curtain into the work spaces for some of the world’s best creative minds. To coincide with the Courtauld’s major Barbara Hepworth exhibition, the gallery is running a companion show of photographs taken by Paul Laib offering a look inside Hepworth’s London studio that she shared with Ben Nicholson in the 1930s. 

As one of Britain’s most celebrated sculptors of the 20th century, Barbara Hepworth made stunning modern creations inspired by the nature and lanscapes of Cornwall, where she lived. Her abstract shapes often featured smooth ovals, holes, undulating surfaces and strings. This summer the Courtauld will stage an exhibition interested in one aspect of Hepworth’s practice: her obsession with colour, which often came up in her work in unexpected ways.  Featuring 20 of her most significant sculptures, alongside 30 drawings, Hepworth in Colour will unite for the first time her early innovative sculptures with colour of the 1940s with major examples of her work with colour from the 1950s and 1960s.  

This is a big show of big paintings. Big, energetic, happy paintings which are just as enjoyable to stand in front of as one can imagine they were to make. Hurvin Anderson is the artist responsible, and the 80 paintings on show at Tate Britain amount to 30 years worth of work. Some date back to 1995 when he was an art student at the Royal College of Art; others were made this year (some he even finished off once they’d been hung). ‘Ball Watching’ hangs by the door, next to the entrance. Painted at art school, it captures a moment in Anderson’s youth living in Birmingham, the city in which he was born and raised after his parents emigrated from Jamaica. He and his friends would play football in Handsworth Park, often kicking the football into the lake – here, as the title suggests, they stand watching it. Compared with the sun-bleached, paint-dripped, tree-filled tropicana that fill the later rooms, the palette is darker, the figures less defined, the sky, rendered in broad brushstrokes, feels as though a foaming sponge has been dragged across a car windscreen. The paintings do something similar for the viewer as they do for Anderson: they hold you between places What it establishes, however, is what has kept Hurvin Anderson returning to the studio for three decades: the urge to paint his experience as a Black man of Caribbean heritage, born and raised in the UK. That sense of inbetweenness – belonging to two places, either side of the Atlantic – plays out through...

For Brits of a certain age, James McNeill Whistler will always conjure memories of that scene in the Mr Bean film. But while Rowan Atkinson’s 1997 opus was a memorable introduction to the American Gilded Age painter, Tate Britain’s grand new retrospective will properly acquaint you with his work – minus any snot-related hijinks – through his paintings, prints, and a litany of personal effects.  Using decoration from his Chelsea studio, the opening room establishes Whistler as a bohemian and fashionable man, but the contextual statement also foreshadows his fall from social grace later in his career (thanks to a lawsuit that left him penniless – more on that later). Thus, a unique, non-linear curatorial narrative is introduced. After arriving from New England in Paris in 1855, Whistler prolifically produced moody etchings that express the stoic dinginess of the French capital with dense and dynamic shadows. His first attempts at oil painting also happened here. The medium became an even bigger preoccupation when he moved to an equally morose city: London. Whether it’s choked by smog or cluttered with cargo, the Thames is his muse during his early years in the Big Smoke. The chaotic figuration of ships floating past in Wapping and the spectral abstraction of a frozen river in Chelsea in Ice represent two extremes of how Whistler turns urban ugliness into visual harmony. Conducting tone, colour, and blankness with orchestral balance, he’s acutely aware of the musicality...