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Spend your weekend hanging out with clowns, on a tour bus that’s been transformed into a brilliant barbecue shack, or watching a screening of ‘Frankenstein’ at the Regent Street Cinema. Make the next few days count with the fun that follows!
Things to do
Shuffle Chinese New Year, Southern Grove Community Centre, TONIGHT, £15 + booking fee. Shuffle Festival will be screening two films that sum up the year we've just had, and prepare us for the one ahead in celebration of Chinese New Year.
Love, Sex and Marriage...with a Robot?, British Academy, TONIGHT, free. Part of the British Academy's season 'Robotics, AI and Society', this late night event includes talks, performances and activities exploring how robots and AI tech will change our relationships.
Fare Healthy, Old Truman Brewery, Sat-Sun, £25, £50 VIP. Though perhaps not quite as thorough as a juice cleanse, this festival of food, fitness and wellbeing is sure to leave you feeling a whole lot healthier just by virtue of inspiration.
Grimaldi Service, All Saints Church, Sun, free. Dozens of clowns in full regalia pay tribute to the late, great king of their kind once again in 2017.
Visit My Mosque Open Day, East London Mosque, Sun, free. Take a tour around one of Britain's busiest mosques and observe the live prayers, take part in discussions with Muslims and listen to a reading from the Quran. Finish with tea and cake.
Super Bowl Party, The Diner, Sun, £51. If you don't associate delicious fried food and great hunks of meat with sport then this all-American football-watching (and eating) finale blow-out isn't for you.
Flea at Flat Iron Square, Sun, free. A weekly vintage and makers market with heaps of antiques, clothing, homeware, books, bikes and cameras to search through.
Your Reality is Broken: A festival of Abstracted, Ritualised and Embodied Live Art, Guest Projects, all weekend, £5 adv. This month-long festival presents a series of happenings, workshops, performances, live music and films that explore perception: altered states, visual illusions and hallucinations, and how they are linked to the creativity.
…or check out more events happening in London this weekend.
Eating and drinking
Brother Marcus Supper Club Series, Brother Marcus, Fri-Sat, prices vary. Brother Marcus has teamed up with a range of foodies for a series of supper clubs at their Balham HQ. Chicory Kitchen, Sam Stern, Alex Hutton, Daft Puddin's and The London Food Babes will all be gracing the kitchen for three nights each.
North London Brew Fest, The Snooty Fox, Fri-Sat, free entry. This craft beer festival returns for three days, with an impressive array of cask ales and keg beers.
The Bare Bones Tour, various, Sat-Sun, £30. Meat-lovers can give into their carnivorous cravings by tucking into loads of beefy treats while touring the city on a double-decker bus.
The Food Market, Chiswick, Sun, free. Join this farmer's market by Duke's Meadows for a Sunday graze. Prices start at just £1 and there are all kinds of independent British food producers present.
…or check out the latest restaurant reviews.
Live music
KRS-One, Jazz Cafe, TONIGHT, £20. A headline set from Lawrence Krisna Parker, the conscious, anti-gangster hip hop pioneer (and occasional university lecturer) behind Boogie Down Productions.
The Tiger Lillies, Roundhouse, TONIGHT, £15-£22.50. The world’s foremost filthy neo-Brechtian-post-punk-falsetto-squeezebox-gypsy-cabaret-three-piece band rock up for a showcase that’s sure to offer thrills, chills and more than a little grotesquerie.
The Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Cafe Oto, TONIGHT, £40, adv £38, mems £35, phone for availability. The avant-garde jazz ensemble performs a variety of styles using many instruments, costumes and face-paint during their performance.
Skunk Anansie, O2 Academy Brixton, Sat, £28.50. Another return from these mid-’90s contenders, who made their name with a polished mixture of metal and wailing soul, with a few more ballads in their later days.
…or take a look at all the live music events in London this weekend.
© Stacey Hatfield
Nightlife
80s Party - Brixton Rooftop Party, Prince of Wales, TONIGHT, £10. Disco, hip hop, soul, house, new wave, rock and more supplied by resident DJs in a retro wonderland.
Wotnot Tropical Loft Party, CLF Art Cafe (Block A, Bussey Building), TONIGHT, adv £5 & £8. Innovative house, hip hop and jungle from guests selectors Deft, NKC, Pete On The Corner and residents.
'90s Lates at Styx, Styx Bar, Fri-Sat. '90s bands and DJs play every Friday and Saturday and there's after parties with loopy performance artists Figs in Wigs, a Bjork-inspired Drag extravaganza with Take That tribute 'Take Twat' and '90s techno from Vector Space.
Feeling Gloomy Present Pulp On Ice, Alexandra Palace, Sun, £9.90, with own skates £8. DJs will be spinning the works of Jarvis Cocker and his associates while the dancers will be spinning on the ice.
…or see all the parties planned this weekend.
Toni Erdmann
Film
Classic Cinema Club: ‘Cape Fear’, Ealing Town Hall, TONIGHT, £7, £6 concs. This supremely nasty thriller boasts great credentials: Robert Mitchum as the sadistic villain, Gregory Peck as the wholesome family man, seedy locations in the Southern bayou and whooping music by Bernard Herrmann.
‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ + Paul Greengrass Q&A, Tricycle Cinema, Sun, free. The director of ‘United 93’ and ‘Captain Philips’ introduces the best of the Bourne series.
Universal Monsters: ‘Frankenstein’, Regent Street Cinema, Sun, £12, £11 concs. Boris Karloff gives one of the great performances of all time as the monster whose mutation from candour to chill savagery is mirrored only through his limpid eyes.
Cinema Matters: ‘Sullivan’s Travels’, Barbican Centre, Sun, £9.50, £8.50 concs. Preston Sturges’s Hollywood satire is perhaps best known today as being the movie that ‘inspired’ the Coen brothers’ ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, but this meaning-of-life masterpiece deserves so much more.
Or at the cinema...
Toni Erdmann ★★★★★ This tender German comedy is a moving, often hilarious portrait of an unusual father-daughter relationship.
Loving ★★★☆☆ Jeff Nichols's story of a 1950s US couple whose marriage defied the law is sensitive if a little too restrained.
…or see all of the latest releases.
Theatre
Us/Them, National Theatre, TONIGHT, £12-£25. The unlikely Edinburgh hit about the Beslan siege comes to London.
Escaped Alone, Royal Court Theatre, Fri-Sat, £10-£35, £12-£30 concs. A menacing, joyous, brilliant return from the enigmatic Caryl Churchill.
Fantastic Mr Fox, Lyric Hammersmith, all weekend, £15-£40, under 16s £20. A sort of panto-lite adaptation of ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’, Roald Dahl’s story about the escapades of a cocky fox and his woodland chums.
…or see our theatre critics’ choices.
This week's best new art
Tim Noble and Sue Webster: Sticks with Dicks and Slits, Blainsouthern, Fri-Sat, free. It’s exactly what it looks like: massive stick figures with their genitals out. Puerile, aggressive, childish, silly art. But you know what? If art’s going to be stupid – if it’s going to ignore the world, to look inwards, to be basically unaesthetic – then it might as well be really fucking stupid.
Ben Jeans Houghton: ! Blessed Be :)) Merry Part :(( But Again!, Space in Between, Fri-Sat, free. Ben Jeans Houghton’s first solo UK show is a bit like a weird collector’s den and a bit like a mad scientist’s lab: wild, cluttered, but ordered with care.
House Work, Victoria Miro Mayfair, Fri-Sat, free. See what they did with the title? House. Work. It’s a bit like ‘housework’, except it’s in two parts, which is very clever, because it makes the subject of houses way more deep and ambiguous.
…or see all London art reviews.
And finally
Win... two nights at the four-star Brooklands Hotel, including fine dining and pampering
Book… these gigs while you still can
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