Things to do in London this weekend

Londoners tend to be a pretty cynical bunch. Normally the mere mention of enforced romance is enough to make the average city dweller’s eyes roll back so violently into their head it causes a permanent strain to their optic nerve. But there's something special about Valentine’s Day. London is predictably full of fun things to do come February 14 – a Friday this year. There are slap-up dinners for two, classic rom-com screenings and romance-themed comedy nights. And if you’re not currently boo-ed up, there’s speed-dating events, singles nights, ‘Palentines’ celebrations and ‘anti-Valentine’s’ happenings for those who find it all just a bit too saccharine. 

In 1999, at the age of 10, Martin came down to the last two for the role of Harry Potter, but fell at the last hurdle. The rest is history and his competitor Daniel Radcliffe went on to become a household name, so now Martin lives in the shadow of what he could have been. In Barney Norris’s adaptation of David Foenkinos’s best-selling novel Asa Butterfield gives a totally assured and searing performance as Martin who is haunted by his lost potential, the trauma of the Hollywood audition process and the star that is everywhere. He is the nucleus of Michael Longhurst’s barebones production. An actor with less talent would have been exposed by Longhurst’s demanding direction -Butterfield is simply magic. 

A contemporary of Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin and David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar was a key figure in New York’s East Village art scene in the 1970s and 80s, even if his reputation as a major force in American photography has largely come about in the decades since his death of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987. This exhibition of his later work has been curated by his close friend, the artist and print-maker Gary Schneider, alongside his biographer John Douglas Millar, and features portraits of several of Hujar’s friends and contemporaries from the downtown scene.

The latest chefs to take over the kitchen at Islington pub The Compton Arms are Rake; Jay Claus, Syrus Pickhaver and Peter Ward. Their menu is ruddy-faced British gentleman food, rethought for people who don’t own a cottage in the Cotswolds. Here, the spectre of St John is strong, with the likes of salsify and scotch broth, but rather than ostentatious ‘I-dare-you-to-eat-that’ whole beast butchery, Rake’s approach to meat is more earthy and pagan; said duck hearts come in a marvellously dank sauce which soaks into the crunchy toast. It’s a winning dish in a line-up of endless hits. Deep fried cockles on skewers are the perfect pub snack. Browned oysters rarebit are cooked with a creamy, addictively mustardy gunk and ray wing tenders are sweet, juicy and crunchy buttresses of fish. 

The capital’s favourite himbo party boy Babymorocco has just released his first full-length album. Amid bratty, slightly irritating lines like, ‘When they look at me I’m hot/I get paid cause I’m attractive,’ there are glimpses of sentimentality, as he comforts a past lover on the raging club anthem Red Eye and reflects on the heartbreak of having three people in a relationship on Left u on the Track. So don’t expect it all to be muscle-flexing and slut dropping at this Omeara show. Though there probably will be lots of that too. 

Omeara, SE1 1TE. Sat Feb 15, 7pm. From £16.68.

Imagine indulging in all the dumplings, rolls, and buns you can handle, crafted by a Chinatown favourite with over a decade of culinary excellence. Savour Taiwanese pork buns, savoury pork and prawn soup dumplings, and luxurious crab meat xiao long bao. To top it off, enjoy a chilled glass of prosecco to elevate your feast. Cheers to a truly delightful dining experience at Leong’s Legend!

Daniel Fish’s take on Sophocles’ Elektra is a curious mixture of chaotic randomness and underlying respect for the 2,500-year-old play. Marvel star Brie Larson puts in a very solid turn as the eponymous princess. We meet Elektra living a twilight existence, locked in a permanent state of impotent rage at her mother Klytannestra (Stockard Channing, acid) and her lover Aegisthus (Greg Hicks, hapless). Famously, they killed her father Agamemnon. Now Elektra wants them dead. Larson’s Elektra stomps about in a Bikini Kill t-shirt with a shaven head, trading sardonic quips with her mother. It’s a gratifyingly bone-ratting 75 minutes of punk rock theatre made with respect for the Ancient Greek tradition. 

The London Bookshop Crawl takes the basic premise of a pub crawl – only instead of drowning in beer, you’ll be drowning in books. Join one of the guided group tours and organised workshops or strike out on your own and create your own route using one of the free maps. There’s a range of events all supporting bookshops and libraries with author meet and greets and signings included. One thing’s for sure: snubbing Amazon will be a lot easier once you know where all the good bookshops are. 

We’ve all heard about gay sailors, but what about queer pirates or trans seahorses? Taking place across the National Maritime Museum, the Cutty Sark and Queen’s House, Out at Sea is Greenwich’s annual celebration of LGBTQ+ History Month, a free week-long events series packed with historical storytelling sessions, lively performances and crafty workshops for the whole family. Head down to enjoy Drag Queen storytime sessions, performances from LGBTQ+ asylum seeker choir Rainbows Across Borders, singing workshops facilitated by the Trans Voices Young Company, drag aerobics classes and a plethora of arts and crafts sessions. 

The long shadow of a tragic accident looms over the story of two feuding farming families in this gripping debut from director Christopher Andrews. What unfolds in Andrews’ screenplay, co-written with Jonathan Hourigan, has the grim inevitability of a Greek tragedy, no less violent than the feud at the centre of The Banshees of Inisherin, albeit without that film’s Irish black humour. Set in rural Ireland, it feels like a Gaelic version of a Kurosawa film, enhanced by the cut-up storytelling and a sparse, dread-inducing skin-drum score. It’s as bleak and chilly as a winter’s night in the Irish hinterland, and every bit as bracing.

In UK cinemas Fri Feb 7.

The Young V&A’s exhibition Making Egypt will look at creativity in Ancient Egypt and its enduring influence on contemporary society, gathering together over 200 items from the V&A archives, with the oldest around 5,500 years old and many not displayed before. It will range from the fully painted inner sarcophagus of Princess Sopdet-em-haawt to examining the influence of Egyptian design on Minecraft and Moon Knight. New films will explore Ancient Egyptian art techniques, and there will be kids’ activities including drawing with scale, deciphering hieroglyphics and designing your own amulet.

Ditch the usual pub pint and get hands-on with clay at Token Studio near Tower Bridge! For just £32, enjoy a 90-minute session crafting pottery, from spinning the wheel to painting your own design. Prefer painting? Choose from already-fired mugs, plates, or bowls to customise for £23. The best part? You can BYOB! And if you love your masterpiece, come back in two weeks to pick it up for just £10.

Get the ultimate pottery experience from £23 at Token Studio, only with Time Out Offers.

‘Know thyself’ it says in thick red letters on a wall at this year’s Turner Prize exhibition. Those words, a directive from Ancient Greek priestess Pythia, are a common thread running through all four artists’ work: this is art about the urge, the desperate need, to figure out who you are. Pio Abad comes first, with a display exploring colonial history, lost narratives of oppression and the role of museums in perpetuating both. Glasgow-based Jasleen Kaur’s installation is a space for symbols of cultural identity and communal memory. Chaos comes in Delaine Le Bas’ hectic installation of splattered paint, mirrored walls and electronic sounds and Claudette Johnson’s big, imposing portraits of Black sitters take up space in an art history full of white people. 

One of the most bewitching and fascinating buildings in London, Sir John Soane’s House is a beautiful townhouse turned time capsule that holds the architect’s fabulous and extensive collection of art, furniture and architectural ornamentation. This Twilight Tour lets you tour the museum after dark when it’s at its most atmospheric and romantic. An expert guide will lead a fascinating tour through the building bringing the ornate objects to life. 

No matter what your thoughts on Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s beloved BBC horror anthology series Inside No 9, Stage/Fright is a delight, with the duo at the peak of their powers. It dips into the TV show – the first half heavily revolves around the episode Bernie Clifford’s Dressing Room – but it is a rare spinoff that feels totally a thing of the theatre. That’s partly a result of the pair’s long-standing fascination with Grand Guignol, music hall, stand-up and other forms of stage entertainment. It’s a tribute to theatre and stage life in a broader sense. It’s a parting gift, a celebration of Inside No. 9 and its influences, the real wrap party.

London’s beautiful Brutalist masterpiece The Barbican Centre is welcoming in the new season with ‘Concrete Garden’, a cross-arts programme of workshops, talks, screenings and events all celebrating those happy Spring feelings of renewal, growth and wellness. The whole series is inspired by the Barbican’s new major exhibition focussing on the work of American artist Noah Davis whose figurative paintings elevate the everyday and Citra Sasmita’s Curve commission Into Eternal Land explore ancestral memory, ritual and migration. Look out for performances and other special events. 

Get cosy this Valentine’s Day at the Prince Charles and explore their rotating programme of cult, arthouse and classic films, alongside recent Hollywood blockbusters. Veering away from the typical romcoms, the Prince Charles Cinema is offering a line-up of more obscure Valentine’s friendly films, from Wong Kar Wai’s paean to the agony’n’ecstasy of buttoned-up emotions ‘In the Mood for Love’, romantic classics ‘True Romance’ and ‘Casablanca’, Céline Sciamma’s glorious period romance ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’, the wonderful ‘Before’ trilogy and rom-com faves like ‘When Harry Met Sally’. 

In the early twentieth century Brazil was a country shackled by artistic conservatism but bursting at the seams with vibrant indigenous and immigrant cultures, so the modernists decided to create something new and totally Brazilian. That new Brazilian cud is on display here, and it’s gorgeous. The 10 artists in this show mash together indigenous aesthetics, art history and influences from the new European avant garde with a social consciousness and desire to address the challenges of life in Brazil. Poverty, racism, immigration, radicalism and more colour than your eyes can handle.

★★★★ 'Frameless has managed to create something genuinely exciting' - Time Out

Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined beyond belief, through cutting-edge technology. Situated in Marble Arch, Frameless plays host to four unique galleries with hypnotic visuals and a dazzling score. Enjoy 90 minutes of surreal artwork from Bosch, Dalí and more for just £24!

Get £24.80 tickets (originally £31) to Frameless, only with Time Out Offers.

Kyoto, by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, is so indecently entertaining it almost feels like the result of a bet to choose the dullest, worthiest subject imaginable and make it as fun as humanly possible. The play is about the Kyoto UN climate change conference of 1997, at which every country on the planet eventually agreed to curb its greenhouse emissions. The secret is that Kyoto is actually a play about a total bastard. Don Pearlman was a real oil lobbyist whose fingerprints were all over climate conferences in the ‘90s. US actor Stephen Kunken is terrific as Pearlman with boundless cynicism and endless lawyer’s tricks. It’s a total thrill ride. 

In 1837, a baby-faced, wavy-haired 25-year-old Charles Dickens moved into 48 Doughty Street. Taking up two small rooms on the first and second floors of the building, the museum’s centenary exhibition illustrates the life and legacy of one of London’s greatest writers via letters, manuscripts, rare first editions, sketches and the cheesy love poems he wrote at 18 (thought to be his earliest surviving writing). If The Muppets Christmas Carol is as far as your Dickens knowledge stretches, this is an accessible showcase. You’ll leave feeling endeared to Dickens and charmed by the fervent admiration the museum evidently has for its subject.

In The Lonely Londoners, Roy Williams lifts the words from the pages of Sam Selvon’s seminal 1956 novel about the Windrush generation in London and sears them onto the stage. Moses (Solomon Israel) is our eyes and ears into the city as he greets – and quickly shows the ropes to – other immigrants from the Caribbean seeking a new life. From the novel’s picaresque shape, Williams crafts a story that touches on Black immigrant experiences without patronising his characters. We feel their rage in a postwar UK that has exploited their citizenship for gain but treats them like dirt. 

A citywide mega-exhibition involving dozens of galleries from around the world, Condo is the best thing that happens in the London art world every January. The idea is that commercial galleries from over here invite galleries from over there to share their spaces for a month. This year’s edition sees 49 galleries showing across 22 spaces, including Sadie Coles HQ hosting Jahmek Contemporary Art from Luanda, The Sunday Painter hosting Proyectos Ultravioleta from Guatemala, Project Native Informant hosting Nova Contemporary from Bangkok and loads more. 

It’s always a happy occasion when Chelsea Physic Garden’s annual Heralding Spring season rolls around. London’s oldest botanical garden has its very own unique microclimate, which means that come late January the ancient spot is home to over 120 species of snowdrops that bloom unusually early each year there. Guests are invited to embark on the Heralding Spring trail to check out the dainty white flowers and other early spring plants including a 70-year-old grapefruit tree. You can also learn more about snowdrops, including their unique place in folklore, at a variety of workshops. 

Soil – it’s not something you really think about, unless you’re doing the gardening. But this new exhibition at Somerset House will change all that, shining a light on its important role in our world, including the part it plays in our planet’s future. Top artists, writers and scientists from across the globe are all involved in the thought-provoking exploration, which aims to stop you thinking of soil as mere dirt and start considering it as something far more powerful instead.

You’ve probably heard all about Versailles’ dazzling Hall of Mirrors and its gorgeous, well-manicured gardens – maybe you’ve even seen them IRL. But do you know about the role the French royal court played in not just spreading scientific knowledge, but making it fashionable, too? The Science Museum’s latest exhibition, ‘Versailles: Science And Splendour’, will uncover that lesser-talked-about side of the palace’s history, diving into the royal family’s relationship with science, women’s impact on medicine, philosophy and botany at the royal court, and showcasing more than 100 items that reinforce those stories – many of which have never been displayed in the UK before. 

Get tickets to Versailles: Science & Splendour, for just £5.40, down from £10.80, only through Time Out Offers.

American ecologist David Abram, whose 1996 book ‘The Spell of the Sensuous’ is the inspiration for this group show at Edel Assanti, had a theory that the codification of language into written form was a turning point for humanity that saw us sever our ties with nature. Mirtha Dermisache’s indecipherable, invented alphabets open the show, before we see Kat Lyons’ swirling, psychedelic painting, Marguerite Humeau’s twisting sculpture and aboriginal Australian artist Yukultji Napangati’s stunning abstract landscapes. It brings together artists who think in similar ways about nature and time and the speculative future of humanity and it’s hard to argue that they’re wrong.

In the short, dark days of midwinter, it’s pretty rare you get a chance to bask in the sun’s warm glow. That is, unless you pay a visit to Greenwich’s Painted Hall over the next couple of months to catch Luke Jerram’s latest installation. A to-scale sculpture of our sun, complete with sunspots and filaments, Helios is the most recent addition to the British artist’s ongoing series of large-scale celestial installations. Accompanied by a soundscape created by acclaimed composers Duncan Speakman and Sarah Anderson, the seven-metre-tall sculpture is suspended from the ceiling of the Old Royal Naval College’s magnificent Baroque dining hall. 

Designed by the legendary Tom Dixon, Sea Containers Restaurant offers an all-day dining experience along the Thames, blending the elegance of transatlantic travel with fresh, local ingredients. The three-course menu celebrates seasonal flavours, with dishes like Butternut Squash Soup, Atlantic Prawn Cocktail, Flat Iron Steak, and Seabass with celeriac. Finish with indulgent ice cream, sorbet, or a rich chocolate brownie, paired with a glass of prosecco. Perfect for any occasion!

Get a three course menu & a glass of Prosecco for an exclusive price of £30, only with Time Out Offers.