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Over the next four days, you can dig into an 'Arabian Nights' themed supper in Kensal Green, watch chefs go head-to-head in a sausage-roll-making competition, or discover more about the galaxy with a late-night event at the Science Museum. This week is going to be out of this world!
Things to do
Yoga at St Stephen's, St Stephen with St John, Tue, free. Holy moly, it's a miracle! We've found a free yoga class open to all abilities with mats provided and no advanced booking needed. Yogis will even be served tea and coffee following the class, meaning they'll be heading off to work feeling new levels of heavenly.
Science Museum Lates: Cosmonauts, Science Museum, Wed, free. Hear from the second woman in space, Svetlana Savitskaya and attend a discussion with Times columnist David Aaronovitch about Yuri Gagarin's visit to London. Visitors can also take part in comic workshops and listen to live music.
The Great Sausage Roll Off, The Red Lion (Barnes), Wed, free. This annual competition sees 20 entrants roll and cook their sausage rolls live before presenting them to a line-up of judges which in 2016 includes Thane Prince, Bonhams Restaurant head chef Tom Kemble, and 'Masterchef 2015' finalist Emma Spitzer.
Life Behind the Lens, Royal Geographical Society, Thu, £15 + booking fee. Join award-winning wildlife filmmakers Patrick Morris and Huw Cordey for an evening of conversation exploring their documentation of some of the most impressive places on Earth.
Bardeblah, Balham Bowls Club, Thu, free. Combining intelligent debate, a group of opinionated players and good humoured fun in a local boozer, Bareblah is an intellectual game of persuasion centred on contemporary political and social issues.
…or check out more events happening in London this week.
Paradise by Way of Kensal Green’s Supperclub
Eating and drinking
Australia Day, The Hops & Glory, Tue. Hops & Glory celebrate Australia Day once again in 2016. They'll be firing up the barbie in the beer garden and serving burgers with beetroot, sausage sandwiches and lamingtons to keep Aussie revellers happy.
T2 Chai Championships, T2, Thu, free. Following two successful events down under, Australian tea company T2 are bringing their Chai Championships to London. Top baristas will be piling into the Regent Street store in an attempt to concoct the champion of all Chais, and win a trip to Australia for the final round.
Paradise by Way of Kensal Green’s Supperclub, Kensal Rise, Thu, £40. Paradise's head chef Cat Ashton used to run the kitchen at Petersham Nurseries, which must be London's only garden centre with a Michelin-starred restaurant. This series of supper clubs sees Ashton put her own twist on interesting cuisines.
…or check out the latest restaurant reviews.
Comedy
The Invisible Dot Ltd's Big Birthday Bash, Eventim Apollo Hammersmith, TONIGHT, £18-£25. Super-trendy comedy production outfit The Invisible Dot Ltd celebrates seven years in this business with a huge, blow-out birthday gig at the Hammersmith Apollo.
Joz Norris and Friends Present: The Reunion Tour (One Night Only), The Miller, TONIGHT, free. New jokes, ideas and general tomfoolery from pleased-to-be-anywhere stand-up Joz Norris plus guests John Kearns, Holly Burn, Matthew Highton and Eleanor Morton.
Pappy's Presents: Secret Dudes Society, Soho Theatre, TONIGHT, £12.50. Supremely silly sketch trio Pappy's – the funniest sketch act on the circuit right now – host this anarchic night.
Investigations (With Josie Long), The Invisible Dot Ltd, Wed, £10, £9 concs. The eternally optimistic Josie Long teams up with investigative journalist Martin Williams to present their heavily-researched findings.
The Story Beast, Soho Theatre, Wed-Thu, £10-£12.50. John Henry Falle's 'The Story Beast' bagged a Best Newcomer nomination at last year's year's Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Awards. And it's, er, a difficult show to describe: part 'Jackanory'-style storytelling, part gibberish, part Harry Potter singalong… Bookish comedy fans will love it.
…or check out all the critics’ choice comedy shows.
Live music and nightlife
Toy, Village Underground, TONIGHT, £12.50. Scowling like the Stones and riffing like the Stooges, Toy burn through OMD-like synth ballads, krautrock grooves and Hawkwindian chugs with the same ferocity, and take tips from the psych-noise rush of My Bloody Valentine and Ride along the way.
Savages, 100 Club, Tue, £11-£17 (including album). The London post-punk quartet show off their thrillingly dark clatter, which recalls The Slits and Siouxsie And The Banshees as well as noisier bands like Dead Kennedys and Sonic Youth.
Nina Nesbitt, Bush Hall, Tue, £12.50. Precocious young singer-songwriter Nesbitt was discovered and championed by Ed Sheeran. After a year away from London in 2015 she’s back for another crack at the capital, with a slick image revamp which implies she might have dropped the cutesy acoustic pop thing in favour of something more ‘mature’.
Fat White Family, Rough Trade East, Thu, free w/wristband. London’s most notorious young band stage another raucous and raunchy live show.
Fleetmac Wood, XOYO, Thu, £10. Here at Time Out, we're big fans of Fleetmac Wood – a project dedicated to disco-leaning Fleetwood Mac re-edits which gave birth to Psychemagik's wonderful Crystal Vision rework of 'Dreams' – and we're not the only ones.
…or take a look at all the live music events in London this week.
Room
Film
The Duke Mitchell Film Club: ‘Dangerous Men’, Prince Charles Cinema, Tue, £10, £7.50 concs. The Duke Mitchell Film club is a long-established monthly event showing weird, lost exploitation oddities alongside trailers, competitions and all kinds of other film-related fun. They’re now branching out into regular screenings at the Prince Charles, kicking off with the latest discovery by Drafthouse Films, the folks who brought you ‘Miami Connection’ and ‘Roar!’.
'Fahrenheit 451' + live score, Hackney Picturehouse, Wed, £9. Of all the things that make a moviegoing experience special – celebrity Q&As, unique locations, themed dinners – there’s nothing quite like seeing a great film with a live soundtrack. And there are two particularly fine examples in London this week, kicking off with Francois Truffaut’s stark sci-fi ‘Fahrenheit 451’ followed by 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' on Friday.
The VITO Project: ‘Fox and His Friends’, The Cinema Museum, Wed, free. ‘Fox and His Friends’ might just be the unstoppable Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s most lacerating, mordant and righteous takedown of postwar bourgeois hypocrisy (and Lord knows there’s some competition).
Or at the cinema...
Room ★★★★☆ Brie Larson is harrowing as a young mother abducted and trapped in a shed for years.
The Revenant ★★★★☆ Leonardo DiCaprio battles the elements – and a ferocious bear – in this fierce, elemental western from 'Birdman' director Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Creed ★★★★☆ In this low-key boxing drama, Sylvester Stallone is on impressive form as the ageing Rocky – now playing mentor to a new generation of fighters.
…or see all of the latest releases.
© Zanna Wharf
Theatre
Botallack O'Clock, Old Red Lion, Tue- Thu, £15, £12 concs. There was almost a movie of Roger Hilton’s life with John Hurt playing the obscure abstract artist. Thank heavens his story found playwright Eddie Elks, whose portrait of the painter outstrips mere biography. Dazzlingly eloquent yet always just beyond sense, ‘Botallack O’Clock’ is a stunning miniature; surprising, profound and very, very funny.
Cirque du Soleil: Amaluna, Royal Albert Hall, Tue-Thu, £41.26-£221. Pity the performers in Cirque du Soleil. When they’re not doing jaw-droppingly impressive things on stage, the minutiae of ordinary life – like popping to the shops for milk, say – must be incredibly boring.
Eddie Izzard: Force Majeure Reloaded, Palace Theatre, all week, £15-£45. A virtuoso first half gives way to a more conventional second in Eddie Izzard's revamped show.
The Rolling Stone, Orange Tree Theatre, all week, £15. ‘The Rolling Stone’ is packed with lines that sing, slaps that sting and scenes that will break your heart. In a similar manner to Chris Urch’s first play, ‘Land of Our Fathers’, this award-winning script combines the political and personal to phenomenal effect.
…or see our theatre critics’ choices.
This week's best art
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa: God’s Reptilian Finger, Gasworks, Wed-Thu, free. David Icke may seem an unlikely source of inspiration for the Guatemalan artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa. But for an artist interested in the fertile zones between fact, folklore, history and mythology, the beliefs of a man convinced that the world is governed by a 6,000-year-old secret society of lizard-men called the ‘Babylonian Brotherhood’ must have been quite the find.
Jeff Keen: Cartoon Theatre of Dr Gaz, Kate MacGarry, Wed-Thu, free. The films of Jeff Keen (1923-2012) are some of the most extreme works of cinema you’ll ever encounter – extremely chaotic, that is, and occasionally extremely violent.
Saul Leiter: Retrospective, Photographers' Gallery, all week, £3, adv/concs £2.50, adv concs £2. An overdue retrospective of the late, great US lensman Saul Leiter (1923-2013). Defying his father's wish that he should follow in his footsteps by becoming a rabbi and scholar, Leiter instead immersed himself in art history, escaping to New York in his twenties to pursue a creative career.
…or see all London art reviews.
And finally
Win... a knock-out holiday to Philadelphia with a Creed film tour or tickets to an immersive dining experience at Burger & Lobster
Grab... up to 43% off pizzas and ping pong at Bounce
Book… these gigs while you still can
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