Things to do in London this week

William Shakespeare wrote All’s Well That Ends Well as a comedy. But his play about a young woman who goes to psychotic lengths to secure marriage to a man who essentially hates her is such a hot moral mess that directors tend to play it straight. Not director Chelsea Walker who is determined to make it into a funny comedy. She’s aided enormously by a tremendous lead performance from Ruby Bentall as protagonist Helen who is after Kit Young’s caddish nobleman Bertram. There’s a touch of Fleabag in how deftly Walker mines the awfulness of everyone’s situation and it works thanks to thoroughly modern performances from the cast. It’s a lot of fun and bang on tone.

The annual Gingerbread City exhibition has become one of London’s best Christmas attractions. It tasks leading architects and designers to use their building know-house and ditch their conventional building materials for dough bricks and sugar paste mortar. Expect over 70 gingerbread buildings, everything from doughy houses, train stations, markets, museums, schools and parks – making up impressive, tiny biscuit cities.

Like a blast of hairspray to the eyes, the Tate is about to blind you with the ’80s. This expansive, exhaustive and exhausting exhibition features dozens of photographers and hundreds of photographs depicting all the turbulence of that most turbulent of decades. It opens with Greenham Common, the miners’ strike, Rock Against Racism, the poll tax and the gay rights movement with dozens of black and white images depicting riots, protests, banners, shouting and marches. The second room holds images from Martin Parr, Anna Fox, Tish Murtha and Paul Graham to take you on a journey through all the big issues of 80s Britain.

Columbia Road’s Christmas shindigs are legendary. In the past, they were a wholesome hotspot for mulled wine, shopping and carolling – until last year when, thanks to TikTok, they saw a surge in popularity that reached dangerous levels. Since then, the carols have been cancelled, but the street’s festive Wednesday events are still running. Head down to Hackney, and you’ll find its independent shops open late for all your present buying needs, plus mulled wine and mince pies on hand to give you much-needed sustenance as you shop.

AngloThai is finally here. Run by dynamic duo John and Desiree Chantarasak, this husband-and-wife team hosted acclaimed pop-ups and heroic residencies and has finally found a forever home in a room decked out like a Connecticut beach house with a subtle seaside energy. John – who honed his craft in the kitchen at Som Saa – is half Thai and half British, and AngloThai shares the same DNA. In reimagining some of Thailand’s most celebrated dishes via the lens of fastidious fine dining, he uses mystical-sounding, Tolkien-adjacent UK ingredients to mimic Thai food’s puckering sour notes. Look out for a grilled flatbread slathered with shrimp butter, Cornish shellfish, a cloud of coriander and a hearty drizzle of lime and a Hebridean hogget in warm and fiery massaman curry topped with discs of gleaming black fig. It’s worth the wait. 

Jon M Chu’s high-energy repurposing of Stephen Schwartz’s Wizard of Oz origin musical is one of the most highly anticipated films of the year. The Crazy Rich Asians director’s screen version pops with vibrancy and energy, effervescence and sincerity, adding the odd tweak, expanding the occasional storyline, but largely visualising the musical in a way that will delight the many millions who have seen it on stage since its Broadway premiere in 2003. And the songs are belted out via vocal cords you’d pay top dollar to hear in concert, with Cynthia Erivo and a scene-stealing Ariana Grande the powerhouse double-act at the movie’s heart. It’s fun, flamboyant and there’s even time for a cameo that will literally blow the minds of long-time Wicked lovers.

It feels like flight fm really took over our clubs this summer, so if you fancy hearing it IRL by the guy behind it, now’s your chance. Joy Orbison is one of London’s most respected producers, having collaborated with the likes of Mansur Brown and Overmono, and creating a bunch of genre-defining releases such as 2021’s epic still slipping volume 1. Lose yourself in a sweaty underground club space, soundtracked by basslines so heavy the subwoofers start to wobble. 

EartH Hall, N16 8BH. Sat Nov 30, 10pm. From £28.59.

Right on the edge of Covent Garden, Elaine’s London brings a taste of New York to London with a fun, eclectic menu. Kick off your three-course feast with the soup of the day or wild mushroom and truffle arancini. For mains, dive into The käsekrainer hot dog – a cheesy, juicy twist loaded with fried onions, sweet mustard, and salt beef. Save room for dessert, because you’ll be finishing with a baked New York cheesecake, profiteroles, or an epic gelato sundae. Top it all off with a glass of prosecco for the perfect night of indulgence!

Enjoy three courses and a glass of Prosecco at Elaine's Bar, Restaurant & Deli, only through Time Out Offers.

Released just four months before his death from AIDS-related complications, at a time when his illness had left him partially blind and at times only able to see shades of blue, artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman’s 1993 film Blue is a powerful meditation on his impending death and the ravages of the virus on himself, his loved ones and wider society. It’s being reimagined for this one-off performance by British director Neil Bartlett and actor Russell Tovey to mark World AIDS Day. Featuring a new score by original composer Simon Fisher Turner and cellist Lucy Railton, it will star Tovey as the main narrator, alongside queer poets and performers Jay Bernard, Joelle Taylor and Travis Alabanza.  

One of Christmas’ great perks is all the food you’re allowed to stuff your face with. You don’t have to wait til December 25 to get started. At Maltby Street Market every Friday from the end of November, the food market’s finest traders will be cooking up some scrumptious snacks for you to fill your boots (or, well, stomach) with, all beneath Victorian railway arches lined with twinkling lights. Usually, the Christmas market offers entertainment like carolling and wreath-making so keep your eye out for word on activities.

English abstract artist Mary Ramsden’s show is her return to full on, no compromise abstraction. Her paintings are big washed out colourfields, drenched in lilac and soft, sunny yellow. They look like she’s zoomed in microscopically-close on a tiny segment of a Pierre Bonnard or Edouard Vuillard painting, something impressionistically bright, then blown up that minuscule view to monumental size. It’s all about texture, surface, these moments of intense daubing mixed with empty, calm spaces. Seen from a distance they become one big gradient; up close they’re filled with tiny detail. 

Festive karaoke is a bit of a tradition for us lot in the Time Out office. If you’re also a fan of necking half a bottle of prosecco and belting out some Michael Bublé, you’ll love this festive edition of the phenomenon that is Massaoke, or ‘mass karaoke’. Popping up at a host of London venues this December, it’s offering you plenty of chances to warble along to Mariah, Wham, Slade and all your other favourite festive bangers soundtracked by a live band, and with lyrics on the screen in case you somehow don’t have every word of ‘Fairytale of New York’ etched into your brain. Christmas jumpers and festive fancy dress are of course encouraged.

‘Two men forge a friendship over sport’ is something of a storytelling cliché. But in the assured hands of writer Rajiv Joseph and director Alice Hamilton, the connection made between two very different Ohio natives over their love of basketball succeeds in being funny and genuinely touching. Joseph’s beautifully observed script is full of telling details, while Sam Mitchell and Enyi Okoronkwo are exceptionally good as the two leads. This isn’t a play with a tidily happy ending, but it’s a hopeful one with an affecting sense of the power of a shared passion to create a fragile unity.  

False Idols returns for its third outing, bringing with it a crew of performers and DJs that guarantee a banging night on the dancefloor. Disco-pop superstar Jessie Ware will headline and will be joined by Romy, The Blessed Madonna b2b Haai, Chloé Caillet, Coucou Chloe and many more expert crowd conductors.

Lightroom is back with another spectacle set to take your breath away. Tom Hanks narrates an epic experience that offers a unique new perspective on humankind’s past and future voyages to the moon. See this exciting Apollo Remastered collaboration with Tom Hanks, Christopher Riley and 59 Productions with an insight into the impending return of crewed surface missions by going behind the scenes of the Artemis programme, including interviews between Hanks and Artemis astronauts. With a musical score by Anne Nikitin, Lightroom’s powerful projection and audio technology will transport you to another world.

Get adult tickets for £19, (down from £29.50), and child tickets for £10 (down from £15), only through Time Out Offers.

Is there a better British actor at work than Ralph Fiennes? Peter Straughan’s eloquent adaptation of Robert Harris’s 2016 Papal thriller allows him to be very good indeed. He’s Cardinal Lawrence, a Vatican functionary charged with overseeing the election of a new Pope when the ailing Pontiff heads for the Pearly Gates. Rounds of voting – and scheming – await before a new pope is chosen and white smoke comes out of the Vatican chimney. And Fiennes is immaculate. There’s also moments of visual grace – nuns under umbrellas, shards of light beaming down on the conclave – that light up this cloistered world. And hold onto your mitre for a third act packed with twists.

If you’re one of those people who adamantly argues that Die Hard is absolutely a ‘Christmas movie’, or simply someone who relishes the opportunity to revisit some classics over the festive period, then you’ll love this festive film season at the BFI Southbank. It features an eclectic programme of movies few would seriously argue are Christmas films, but which all feature at least one scene set during the December holiday period. There’s all sorts on here, from cult queer films like John Waters’ Female Trouble and Sean Baker’s 2015 trans comedy-drama Tangerine to classic gangster hit Goodfellas, the Ryuichi Sakamoto-soundtracked war film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. It kicks off with Greta Gerwig’s Little Women on Sunday. 

Visions of Nature is a new mixed reality experience at the Natural History Museum – which essentially means you wander around its Spirit Collection wearing a headset which superimposes computer-generated images on what’s physically there – which shows a realistic vision of global biodiversity in 100 years’ time, but in a weirdly comforting way. It begins by telling us that come 2125, global warming has very much happened and about 10 percent of species on the planet have died out, but there are little visual vignettes of what might be left that can offer hope. If you’ve got a sense of curiosity about our terrifying future, it’s well worth the hike into the depths of the Orange Zone.

St Andrew’s Book Festival aims to celebrate Scots – and, by extension, Scotland itself – in the capital. The new literary festival will bring together bestselling authors and debut novelists from the country in a series of events that will dig deeper into their stories. School and family-friendly events will also be a part of the programme, which takes place at St Columba’s Church, Scotland House and The Caledonian Club.