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Hrair Sarkissian © Kate Elliott, Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery.
Hrair Sarkissian © Kate Elliott, Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery.

Things to do in London this week

Discover the biggest and best things to do in London over the next seven days

Rosie Hewitson
Alex Sims
Written by
Rosie Hewitson
&
Alex Sims
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Get ready for a big week. Easter arrives this weekend, which even if you’re not a fan of egg hunts and chocolate, means a big bumper four-day bank holiday weekend – something we can all get on board with. If you’re searching for ways to fill up the extra-long weekend, you’ve come to the right place.

Spend all your free time checking out London’s best new art exhibitions, including five-star show Nick Waplington’s ‘Living Room’ which brings together familiar images as well as unseen work from his book documenting the community of the Broxtowe house estate in Nottingham in the ‘90s. Or take a look at Jeff Koons’ show of works on canvas from 2001 to 2013, which according to Time Out’s art critic is ‘Dionysican, stupid, real and good’. 

Otherwise, there are plenty of Easter activties going on of every kind of persuasion, be it a boozy egg hunt at natural wine joint Top Cuvée, family-friendly spring fairs like the Horniman Museum’s annual knees-up or big religious spectacles like the  big open-air reenactment of  'The Passion of Jesus', which takes place every year on Good Friday in Trafalgar Sqaure. 

Still got gaps in your diary? Embrace the warmer days with a look at the best places to see spring flowers in London, or have a cosy time in one of London’s best pubs. If you’ve still got some space in your week, check out London’s best bars and restaurants, or take in one of these lesser-known London attractions.

RECOMMENDED: Listen and, most importantly, subscribe to Time Out’s brand new, weekly podcast ‘Love Thy Neighbourhood’ and hear famous Londoners show our editor Joe Mackertich around their favourite bits of the city.

Top things to do in London this week

  • Things to do

Easter weekend isn’t just a time to scoff loads of chocolate and have a big roast dinner: it’s also a double bank holiday. Worried about filling up all your extra time off? Time Out has your back. There’s plenty to do in the capital over the Easter weekend, from trad spring fairs, like the Horniman Museum’s annual bash, to boozy egg hunts, like Top Cuvee’s high-end hunt. Take a look t our top picks. 

  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Mayfair
  • Recommended

Photographer Nick Waplington’s ‘Living Room’ documented the community of the Broxtowe house estate in Nottingham in the ‘90s. The book was a sensation, and this amazing little exhibition brings together previously unseen photos from the same period. It’s the same families, houses and streets, but seen anew. There are scenes of outdoor life: dad fixing the motor in the sun; a trip to the shops to pick up a pack of cigs; everyone out grabbing an ice cream in the sun or play fighting in the streets. But it’s in the titular living room that the real drama plays out. It’s ultra-basic, super-mundane, but it’s overflowing with life and joy. Everyone is laughing, playing, wrestling. It’s as beautiful, powerful, genuine and moving now as it would have been three decades ago. 

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  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Theatre
  • Drama
  • South Bank
  • Recommended

The British, in case you hadn’t noticed, tend to get a little sentimental about the NHS. So it’s understandable that playwright Tim Price and director Rufus Norris are wary of dewy-eyed hagiography when approaching ‘Nye’, a new biographical drama about Aneurin Bevan, the firebrand Labour health minister who founded the service with the title role played by the great Michael Sheen. Norris’s production has a determinedly trippy quality intended to counter the cliches and it’s largely presented as the stream-of-consciousness of an older Bevan, who is a patient in one of his own hospitals. Sheen is a delight as the fiery but unassuming Bevan. It’s otherworldly with plenty of cool stuff. 

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  • Restaurants
  • Eating

With its huge whale skeleton, stuffed dodo, earthquake simulator and roughly 80 million other specimens, the Natural History Museum is really only missing one thing: adorable finger food. Don’t worry though, that’s been resolved. From this week the museum will be serving up a themed afternoon tea made up of quaint little servings of sandwiches, scones, tarts and sponges created by chefs from Benugo, and all celebrating British farmers and growers. The spread includes an Earth pot filled with raspberry and chocolate, a dinosaur-footprint macaron and an ammonite cookie, among other bits.

Get half-price bottomless dim sum and a glass of bubbly at Leong’s Legend
Andy Parsons

6. Get half-price bottomless dim sum and a glass of bubbly at Leong’s Legend

Never ending baskets of delicious dim sum. Need we say more? That means tucking into as many dumplings, rolls and buns as you can scoff down, all expertly put together by a Chinatown restaurant celebrating more than ten years of business. Taiwanese pork buns? Check. Pork and prawn soup dumplings? You betcha. ‘Supreme’ crab meat xiao long bao? Of course! And just to make sure you’re all set, Leong’s Legend is further furnishing your palate with a chilled glass of prosecco. Lovely bubbly.

Get 51% off bottomless dim sum at Leong's Legend only through Time Out Offers

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  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • London
  • Recommended

There’s good within the ugliness of this show of works on canvas from 2001-2013 by Jeff Koons. The ‘paintings’ are collaged hodgepodges of nicked imagery. Nude women’s bodies overlap with inflatable toy monkeys, piles of pancakes, horny fertility talismans, sandwiches, feet. God they’re ugly, a total mess. But it’s also really base and vile and erotic and pleasurable and fun and ecstatic. This is just Jeff’s own joy and kinks on display: food and skin, toys and tits. It’s Dionysican, stupid, real and – whisper it – kind of good.

With a picturesque view of Tower Bridge and St Katharine Docks, Chayote offers the essence of Mexico, Peru, and Spain with high-end ingredients in every dish to provide an uncompromising culinary experience! Be transported to sunnier climes with three authentic South American courses and a welcome Margarita.

Get your three courses and a Margarita at Chayote for just £23, only through Time Out offers

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  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Theatre
  • Drama
  • Seven Dials
  • Recommended

‘Harry Clarke’ is quite possibly the blandest name for a play in written history. However, behind this unassuming exterior lurks a truly odd play. In the UK debut by playwright David Cale, Harry Clarke is the English alter ego of Philip Brugglestein, a sensitive gay guy from Indiana who had already adopted another English alter ego, having moved to NYC and told people he was from London. Although Crudup dips into a multitude of roles and voices, the ‘English’ Philip serves as the show’s narrator, with an accent and persona somewhat seemingly cribbed from neurotic ‘Star Wars’ droid C3PO. It’s trashily entertaining and certainly if you’re on a big ‘Saltburn’ comedown this will give you your next creepy little guy hit, no problem.

Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined through cutting-edge technology. Marble Arch’s high-tech Frameless gallery houses four unique exhibition spaces with hypnotic visuals reimaging work from the likes of Bosch, Dalí and more, all with an atmospheric score. Now get 90 minutes of eye-popping gallery time for just £20 through Time Out offers.

£20 tickets to Frameless immersive art experience only through Time Out offers 

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  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Spitalfields
  • Recommended

The story goes that modernism ripped everything up and started again; and nowhere did more of that mid-century aesthetic shredding than Brazil. Helio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark, Ivan Serpa et al forged a brand new path towards minimalism. But Raven Row’s incredible new show is challenging that oversimplified narrative, showing how figuration, traditional aesthetics and ritual symbolism were an integral part of experimental Brazilian art from 1950-1980. The whole thing’s great. It’s a gorgeous, in-depth, museum-quality exploration of creativity at its most fertile, modernism at its most exciting and abstraction at its most beautiful. 

Lightroom is back with another spectacle set to take your breath away. 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 tickets to 'The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks' at Lightroom for £19, only through Time Out offers

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  • Things to do
  • City Life

Ramadan 2024 has begun, with Muslims all over the world participating in a period of reflection, prayer, fasting and community gatherings from the evening of Sunday March 10 until Tuesday April 9. To mark the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, areas across the capital will be lit up with Ramadan light displays. The huge display of 30,000 lights will illuminate the streets from Piccadilly Circus all along Coventry Street to Leicester Square. There’s also a brand-new Ramadan display at Edgware Road with a bespoke, 2.9m tall installation featuring a crescent moon. 

 

At the heart of London’s lively, eclectic dining scene is Madison, offering unparalleled views across the Capital’s skyline from its large rooftop terrace, delicious grilled food, great cocktails and live music. Madison invited you to be a part of its world with a delicious three-course menu that combines playful takes on American classics with a broad range of influences from the diverse communities of New York. Book in with this ideal catch-up spot and take in the rooftop views while you take in a refreshing glass of bubbly.

Get this three courses and bubbles at Madison for £29, only through Time Out offers

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  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Bethnal Green
  • Recommended

There’s a warning in Sibylle Ruppert’s art: if the devil doesn't get you, technology will. And if they both miss, it’s your own perverse instincts and desires that’ll consume you. The German artist (1942-2011) filled her drawings, paintings and collages with writhing bodies and gnashing teeth, evil spirits and throbbing phalluses. The implication is that all of this chaotic sci fi horror porn was a way for Ruppert to deal with the legacy of the war and a litany of personal traumas. All this erotic, traumatic horror is way too over the top, absolutely obscene, disconcertingly vile and genuinely amazing.

  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Art
  • Bow
  • Recommended

As artist and writer Joshua Leon shows in his Chisenhale exhibition, names are malleable things for Jews; signifiers that can be altered to allow you to better fit in. Bob Dylan’s real name is Robert Zimmerman, Joey Ramone’s was Jeffrey Hyman, and on and on. Leon’s grandfather was born Kurt Hutter, but in the programmes to accompany his musical performances he became Ken or Curtis. This nominative malleability is at the heart of Leon’s sparse show. The ideas are brilliant, moving, intimate. He asks what it means to have a name, to hide, to choose a path, to integrate, to be rejected. The work has Jewish roots, but these are big universal questions filled with a silent pain that anyone can relate to. 

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  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Theatre
  • Musicals
  • Covent Garden
  • Recommended

‘Standing at the Sky’s Edge’ is a musical about three generations of incomers in Sheffield’s iconic – and infamous – brutalist housing estate, Park Hill. It’s a stunning achievement, which takes the popular but very different elements of retro pop music, agitprop and soap opera, melts them in the crucible of 50 years of social trauma and forges something potent, gorgeous and unlike any big-ticket musical we’ve seen before. It has deeply local foundations, based on local songwriter Richard Hawley's music and it was made in Sheffield, at the Crucible Theatre, with meticulous care and attention. It has all the feels – joy, lust, fear, sadness, despair, are crafted into an emotional edifice which stands nearly as tall as the place that inspired it.

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