Things to do in London this week

Finally, just shy of a decade after it was first announced as part of the £1.1 billion development of Stratford’s East Bank cultural quarter, the long-awaited V&A East is due to open to the public on Saturday. The 7,000-square-metre museum will bring together exhibits that speak to both east London’s creative heritage and the voices that are shaping contemporary culture across the globe today. Early visitors will be able to check out its Why We Make Galleries, a permanent display spread across two of the museum’s five floors and featuring 500 objects from the V&A’s collection, arranged into ten key themes addressing the most pressing issues in contemporary society. And its inaugural temporary exhibition The Music is Black: A British Story. 

Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s subversive ’00s classic Avenue Q, has been revived by Jason Moore, and is a fun piece of naughty noughties nostalgia that raises a smile from the sight of its fluffy yellow stage curtain onwards. Princeton (Noah Harrison) is a wet-behind-the-ears young puppet who has just graduated from university and is now looking for a place to live on Avenue Q, a shabby but affordable neighbourhood in outer NYC and gets enmeshed in the general goings on of his neighbours. It’s all very well done: Anna Louizos’s sets and Rick Lyon’s puppets look superb. While the humour of Lopez and Marx’s songs stands up well, with their big, bright, primary coloured tunes. As a heritage musical, it remains a delightful one-off.

Grade II-listed north London icon Alexandra Palace is the home of this literary festival, which promises four jam-packed days of readings, panel discussions, workshops and book signings. Celebrated authors in attendance include Booker Prize-winner Alan Hollinghurst, acclaimed novelist Tessa Hadley, author, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes, local literary legend Michael Rosen and science fiction screenwriter Ben Aaronovitch. 

Polished Italian mega-trattoria Burro, is the next venture from little Highbury restaurant and perennial Time Out favourite Trullo. Taking the original Trullo concept (handmade pasta, charming service, salty snacky bits, actual tablecloths), Belfast-born founder Conor Gadd has super-scaled it for the West End masses. It’s not too flashy but not too basic, not too pricey but not too cheap, not too experimental but not too cautious. Burro is just right. A silky, pine-nut-heavy caponata is heaven. Ribbons of yellow fettuccine are intertwined with a rich duck and porcini ragu, and showered with Parmesan, and the crab ‘acqua pazza’, is a mix of chunky mussels, nutty chickpeas, handfuls of fresh parsley and crumbled crab meat in a deep, salty broth. 

This new immersive film is the latest show at Lightroom, and it’s a dive into his story that’s fully authorised by the David Bowie estate. Instead of narration, it’s told fully using voice clips from the man himself, as well as footage from the Bowie Archive in New York. It’ll be relaid in Lightroom’s signature style, which involves ultra high-powered projectors covering the walls, ceiling and floor with vivid imagery. It’s directed by Mark Grimmer, who led the design of the V&A’s David Bowie Is exhibition and went on to direct David Hockney: Bigger & Closer. Like all Lightroom shows, it’s designed to play on loop, and will be divided into themed sections including ‘theatricality, spirituality, songwriting and the transformative power of creativity’.

Irish director Lee Cronin breathes life – or death, more accurately – into another classic horror monster, with a spin on Egyptian mummies that's distinctly Raimi-esque in its goo and gore. Jack Reynor stars as Charlie Cannon, a rising star journalist on assignment in Egypt for several months with his two children and pregnant wife, Larissa. But when his young daughter, Katie is abducted from their garden, their lives are overturned. Cue some impressively horrible experiences for the largely blameless Cannons. Cronin punctuates some slow-burn scenes with regular visceral scares. The film’s final moments mix compassion and vengeance to create something genuinely surprising. 

How often does a night at the theatre begin with an actual full-on karaoke session? That’s the set-up at Heart Wall. As pre-shows go, it’s a high-concept way to kick things off. But that makes sense. Heart Wall, written by Kit Withington and directed by Katie Greenall, is full of equally big ideas. This is a lively, emotive piece of work, providing one of the most fun nights at the theatre we’ve had in a long time. It centres on 23-year-old Franky (Rowan Robinson), who’s returned home, to an undisclosed town in the north of England, to surprise her parents. The father-daughter chemistry between Franky and Dez is instantaneous, even if his London-swelling daughter might look down her nose at her hometown. It’s a play full of sharp dialogue and emotion that will leave you profoundly moved.

Entering its eleventh year in 2026, this annual two-day film festival at the Barbican is programmed entirely by young people aged 16 to 24 as part of the arts centre’s Young Film Programmers scheme. The free-to-attend, six-month talent development scheme sees the group determine the themes, film selections and connected public events. This year’s programme, curated by a group of ninteen young folk, features With Hasan in Gaza, an experimental work by Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari (April 25), Rose Troche’s 1994 underground classic Go Fish (April 25), the London premiere of Fifth Cinema, an essay film by Nguyễn Trinh Thi (April 26) and the UK premiere of Puppygirl, a gonzo documentary following a trans woman’s journey to confront years of sexual repression. 

Keep your fingers crossed for good weather. This wholesome-sounding book festival is back for its third year, foregoing the venues where literature events are usually held and putting on a big ol’ book bash in the park instead. ‘Books in the Park’ will fill Lewisham’s beautiful Beckenham Place Park with author talks, guided walks, writing workshops and an interactive children’s programme. Authors appearing this year include Lucy Steeds, whose novel The Artist was named Waterstones Book of the Year, Harriet Constable, the international bestselling author of The Instrumentalist, Clare Chambers, author of Sunday Times bestsellers Small Pleasures and Shy Creatures, Jesse Bernard, who offers an intimate history of Black British music as he discusses his new book Escaping Babylon, and New York Times bestselling crime writer Ruth Ware. 

A content creator, a disruptor, a beekeeper and a teacher walk into a bar. The punchline, as spun in Cédric Klapisch’s amiable time-leaping comedy, is that these four people are cousins. Their family tree has sent its branches shooting off in the maddest directions. Like Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, we’re off time-travelling to a more colourful era in French history to understand their common dominator: a young Norman woman, Adèle Vermillard (Suzanne Lindon), who sets off to find her own mother in Belle Époque Paris and ends up intersecting with the Impressionist masters. Clever cuts between timelines lend a nice unpredictability to the yarn. It’s a great excuse to revisit this gilded age in French history.  

Saltburn and Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike plays Jess Parks, a pioneering feminist judge, in Suzie Miller's three-hand play that feels more like a 100-minute monologue. Like its companion legal drama Prima Facie, which was a massive hit starring Jodie Comer, Inter Alia is a spectacularly demanding showcase for a female star, and Pike delivers the goods with stadium-level charisma, intelligence and flair. Miller’s play is based on interviews with female judges who juggle demanding careers with caring responsibilities and social lives: ‘inter alia’ means ‘among other things’. Punchy, thought-provoking drama, it has brought Jess and real women like her into the limelight.

Anya Reiss’s new adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House smartly amplifies the debt-related anxieties that underpin the 1879 original into something extremely modern and extremely nerve-wracking. Nora (Romola Garai) is an anxious, impulsive woman, who we first meet in her bougie rental house surrounded by obscene amounts of Christmas shopping. Her workaholic husband Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) is taken aback by the sprawl of purchases, but Nora remains brittly giddy. They are on the cusp of being rich. However, it’s all built on a lie. Reiss is a former Royal Court prodigy and this is her first stage play in almost a decade. And it’s really good! The best thing she’s done in theatre. Reiss’s updates aren’t just a modish reskinning but an impressively incisive, white-knuckle engagement with contemporary anxieties. 

A landmark exhibition exploring how Black British music has shaped culture in Britain and beyond. Items on display will include Joan Armatrading’s childhood guitar, looks worn by Little Simz and newly acquired photography by Dennis Morris and Jennie Baptiste. The exhibition’s opening will also feature a sound experience by Sennheiser, and will mark the launch of a the inaugural edition of a new festival that will take place annually each spring, bringing together the East Bank’s neighbouring cultural institutions, which include the London College of Fashion, the BBC Music Studios, Sadler’s Wells East and UCL East.

Robert Icke’s take on Romeo & Juliet has Sliding Doors scenes, wherein we see pivotal moments play out differently to Shakespeare’s plot, before a blinding flash of light resets the scene and we see the story take its inexorable turn for the tragic. At best, they’re an effective way of countering the fact that the bleak end of Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy is only arrived at by a series of mind-boggling coincidences and mishaps. Stranger Things star Sadie Sink’s gawky Juliet is very good, and when she and Noah Jupe’s puppyish Romeo set eyes on each other for the first time, it is electric. Toss in a gorgeous, drone-heavy electronic score from Giles Thomas, and you have something special. 

Henry VIII’s former gaff is already one of the most splendid-looking buildings in London, but fill it with 10,000 tulips and you’ve got something mighty special to look at. Hampton Court Palace’s Tulip Festival is one of the biggest planted displays of the colouful flowers in the UK and is a good excuse to celebrate the start of spring. See the buds pouring out of the Tudor wine fountain and in floating tulip vases, and spot rare, historic and specialist varieties. There are also expert talks on the flowers and craft activities themed around them. The palace’s expert gardeners predict the displays will look at their best between April 11 and 26, though ‘Mother Nature always has the final say.’

Serving up an eclectic mix of live music, visual arts, spoken word, podcasts and club nights, Roundhouse Three Sixty is a springtime festival at Chalk Farm’s famous circular arts venue. After its first edition last year, it's back for a second run that coincides with the 20th anniversary of Roundhouse's big relaunch as a youth-centric arts space. The month is headlined by some massive names. Imogen Heap will drop in for an evening of songs and conversations, Kae Tempest will introduce his new novel, and Amaarae's ‘Black Star Experience’ (Apr 23) is a live show based on her acclaimed latest album. But elsewhere on the line-up you'll find loads of opportunities for rising voices to make their mark. 

Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a classic play. Starting life in 1782 as an epistolary novel, Christopher Hampton’s 1985 stage adaptation was a sensation, adapted into a hit 1988 film and clearly responsible for the ‘90s teen remake Cruel Intentions. This is a pretty good production of it, as you’d expect from the great Marianne Elliott’s first show at the NT in over a decade, with a to die for cast headed by Lesley Manville and Aiden Turner. The duo play callous, capricious, above all very sexy French toffs Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil and Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont, ex-lovers whose relationship has degenerated into callous game playing. It’s a really good production with two sensational leads, of a play that has long stopped being a sexy novelty and now kind of sits as a guilty pleasure. 

Tucked inside the Pan Pacific London hotel, Ginger Lily Bar & Lounge makes a very good case for slowing down over the weekend. Available on Fridays and Saturdays, the experience pairs elegant surroundings with half a bottle of Taittinger champagne, served as sunlight pours through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

On the table, expect freshly baked scones, delicate pastries and neat finger sandwiches prepared by the pastry team. A selection of Newby teas and tea-infused mocktails rounds things off nicely, creating an easy, indulgent way to spend an afternoon in the City.

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Celebrate the Year of the Horse in Chinatown with a feast that keeps the good fortune flowing. Tucked in the heart of Chinatown, Leongs Legend is a long-running Taiwanese favourite offering 45 percent off its bottomless dim sum and prosecco brunch, with 90 minutes of unlimited handmade dumplings and a glass of fizz from a very enticing £24.95. Expect plent of baskets (over 40 dishes) of xiao long bao, and a lively, teahouse-style setting that makes it an obvious pick for ringing in the lunar celebrations with friends.

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With over 400 objects, including 100 ensembles and 50 artworks (by the likes of Salvador Dalí, Picasso and Man Ray), as well as accessories, jewellery, photographs, perfumes and an excellent collection of buttons, Schiaparelli presents a deep dive into the fantastical and surreal world of the fashion house. Founded on Paris’ Place Vendôme in 1927, the exhibition spans the 1920s to the present day, showing glorious garments from Creative Director Daniel Roseberry, who has been at the helm since 2019. The clothes truly are pieces of art and prove that haute couture could always do with a bit of humour.