Things to do in London this week

Expectations have been high for Ivo van Hove’s revival of Arthur Miller’s 1947 breakthrough All My Sons, because Van Hove made his own UK breakthrough with his extraordinary 2014 production of Miller’s A View from the Bridge. And by Hove, he’s done it again. To some extent the secret of his triumph here is ‘cast really really good actors’, foremost Bryan Cranston and Paapa Essiudu, who offer two of the best stage performances of 2025. But what van Hove has done is discretely uncouple Miller’s play from the naturalism that often stifles it. The whole thing plays out symphonically, building to an astonishing crescendo. Right near the end, Joe finally says the play’s name, its meaning clear at last. When I’ve seen the play before, there’s been no special reaction. Here, the audience gasped.

Slowburn isn’t like other restaurants. That’s because Slowburn almost isn’t a restaurant, it’s a slap-up dinner party in a working denim factory. The best seat in the house is next to a gigantic industrial washing machine. During the week, the warehouse is home to Blackhorse Lane Ateliers. Come Friday evening, tables and chairs are bought in and the kitchen fires up for the weekend. Chef and founder Chavdar Todorov started Slowburn in late 2020, delivering local meals during lockdown on his motorbike. Over the past five years he’s honed his hearty home -cooking-but-better, menu. It’s not a vegetarian restaurant by any stretch of the imagination, but vegetables here are king and everything comes full of love and flavour. This isn’t tweezer-tastic fine dining, but great, semi-chaotic things on a plate that comfort and coddle as well as surprise and shock. There’s a lot to love about the ever-so-slightly unhinged Slowburn, book in for your very own factory reset. 

This exhibition will put the work of two rivals – and two of Britain’s greatest painters – J.M.W. Turner and John Constable side by side. Although both had different paths to success, they each became recognised as stars of the art world and shared a connection to nature and recreating it in their landscape paintings. Explore the pair’s intertwined lives and legacies and get new insight into their creativity via sketchbooks, personal items and must-see artworks.

Looking for a dirty weekend? The Barbican is going strictly 18+ for one weekend only. It’s all in honour of its big Autumn exhibition Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion, which traces fashion’s obsession with all things dirty, grimy and messy. For this weekend of events, it’s dialling it up a notch and looking at how fashion is influenced by sex, sweat, protest, and pleasure through performances, talks, screenings, live art, and late-night club energy. HOWL, the queer rave and sexual wellness brand, will be putting on screenprinting workshops and speed dating nights, a new collaboration between artist Sophie Cundale and author Izabella Scott will take place in the Barbican Conservatory and foyer, and takeovers will range from an x-rated fashion show to a club night from Club Stamina championing trans-femme talent. 

Get ready to settle in for another two-and-a-half more hours of Elphaba and Glinda belting out anthems of empowerment while Jonathan Bailey’s army officer Fiyero suffers a crisis of conscience in the background. Whisper it, but the concluding part of John M Chu’s musical epic will be a disappointment for anyone who hasn’t sipped the green and pink Kool-Aid. Wicked: For Good magnifies the shortcomings of the stage musical’s underpowered second half. But, while the songbook is depleted, Cynthia Erivo and Ariane Grande’s lungs are in full effect. There’s a mighty rendition of No Good Deed and a couple of new tunes from Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz. Fans will be obsessified; everyone else, ossified.

Prepare for a feast for the eyes, but resist the urge to nibble! The sweetest festive event you’ll find, the Museum of Architecture’s edible exhibition tasks leading architects and designers to ditch their conventional building materials for dough bricks and sugar paste mortar to construct a miniature biscuit metropolis erected in King’s Cross’s Coal Drops Yard for the festive season. With a new theme each year, the exhibition aims to encourage innovation and future-forward city planning, and this year’s ‘Playful City’ theme has resulted in some really fun designs, from school buildings with slides between classrooms to candy-coloured climbing walls. As well as marvelling at all the confectionery craftsmanship on display, visitors can take part in a series of hands-on gingerbread house workshops where they’ll be able to construct a delicious souvenir to take home. 

Unless you’re some kind of monster, it’s impossible to appreciate the unbridled joy of chomping down on your favourite filling cosily encased between two slices of bread. No matter what you’re flavour of choice, the humble sandwich is a gastronomic delight, which is why Sarnie Party are back for a Christmas edition. For one day only, 15 of the country’s top chefs and sandwich specialists, including The Black Pig, Rogue Sarnies, Dom’s Subs, The Bodega, Imma The Bakery and Picnic Deli, will be taking over the beautiful Somerset House and creating festive takes on the lunchtime treat for you to try. Expect upgraded turkey-and-stuffing subs, inventive new twists and even toasted ice cream sandwiches from Happy Endings. To accompany all the sandwich snaffling there’ll be live DJs, mulled drinks, party games and sing-alongs. 

Alfie (Clive Owen) is dying of cancer. Julie (Saskia Reeves) is not. A couple since their twenties, their lives are about to diverge dramatically, though precisely how dramatically is up for grabs. David Eldridge’s new play begins with a physically ailing Alfie telling Julie he wants to stop treatment, before proceeding to splurge all manner of wild thoughts, theories and plans about his imminent death. End follows Eldridge’s Beginning and Middle at the National Theatre, all an interrogation of middle age. What Eldridge’s text and Rachel O’Riordan’s production do really well is capture the sense of a couple whose longevity has been achieved by not communicating. Now they feel like they have to say some major unsaid things, and have no idea how to do it. It’s been great to watch a playwright as emotionally astute as Eldridge excavate his middle years so single-mindedly.

If you’re a very online kinda person, you may well have seen the tortilla slap game all over social media. If you’re not a very online kinda person, this is gonna sound strange, but it basically involves competitors filling their mouths with water, and then proceeding to slap each other as hard as they can in the face with a tortilla, until one of them laughs and sprays their mouth water everywhere (honestly, just look it up!) If you reckon you’d make a champion tortilla slapper, then get down to Market Place in Vauxhall, which is hosting the second annual championships in collaboration with Venezuelan and Mexican street food purveyors Streat Latin. Spectators can get their hands on free tacos and cocktails and will be entertained by a live mariachi band and Lucha Libre wrestling. 

Featuring nearly thirty feature films, shorts and documentaries reflecting on Palestinian history and sharing the experiences of Palestinian people in their homeland and around the world, the London Palestine Film Festival returns to some of the capital’s biggest screens over two weeks this November with its biggest programme yet. The festival opens with Kaouther Ben Hania’s critically acclaimed The Voice of Hind Rajab, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival earlier in the year. Other highlights include The Mission, an unflinching documentary following acclaimed British-Iraqi surgeon Dr. Mohammed Tahir on his third humanitarian mission to Gaza, Annemarie Jacir’s much-praised historical drama Palestine 36, and the UK premiere of the Nasser Brothers’ crime drama Once Upon a Time in Gaza. 

Rollercoasters and death may sound like a strange subject for a musical but Ride the Cyclone spins them into its own brand of jaunty strangeness. The Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell-penned show begins with a freak rollercoaster accident dispatching six teens to a limbo presided over by the Amazing Karnak (Edward Wu), a mechanical oracle perched inside a fortune-telling booth. When the teens arrive, they’re joined by Jane Doe (Grace Galloway), a mysterious girl with no memory and no head, and informed — albeit in riddles — of the rules of a contest in which only one of them will earn a second chance at life. Each must plead their case. It all sounds pretty dark, but Richmond and Maxwell have created a diverse score that ranges from soaring ballads to auto-tuned rap to space-cat numbers. By the end, you’re rooting for every single one to come back.

Amazing news for lovers of neat symmetry, loud primary colours and twee outfits. West London’s Design Museum will be staging a blockbuster show delving into the iconic aesthetic of another of Hollywood’s most distinctive auteurs, the Texas-born Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning director Wes Anderson. The film director’s first official retrospective promises to be a different beast. A collaboration between the Design Museum and Cinémathèque Française, it has been curated in partnership with Wes Anderson himself and his production company American Empirical Pictures and follows his work from his early experiments in the 1990s right up to his recent Oscar-winning flicks, featuring original props, costumes and behind-the-scenes insights.

Given this market is held at the Chelsea Physic Garden, it makes sense that’s a top stop on the seasonal fair circuit for picking up some lush new plants and botanical gifts. But with over 100 stalls, there’s so much more on offer here, too, including jewellery, decorations, textiles, fancy toiletries and quirky gifts from indie designers. There’ll also be plenty of treats on offer to keep you sated while you browse, including mulled wine, hot choccies and other festive goodies.

Get £19 tickets, only through Time Out Offers

Frost Fairs have a storied history in London. Between 1605 and 1814 the surface of the River Thames froze over 24 times, so locals took to the ice creating ‘Frost Fairs’ with markets, amusement, food, drink, games and general revelry. Global warming might have scuppered the frozen river bit, but Cody Dock is recreating the roistering atmosphere (minus all the ice) with this day-long shindig. Grab a glass of steaming mulled wine and wander through markets packed with gifts made by local makers, hit up a plant sale, join winter-themed workshops and listen to live music and toast marshmallows. 

It’s weird, in the year 2025, that it seems necessary to point out that the Nazis were bad. But Nuremberg, an old-fashioned and satisfyingly complex morality tale in the guise of a courtroom drama and spy thriller, does that job in impressive style. Supercharged by James Vanderbilt’s smart script and snappy direction, and with an on-form cast, it plots a course through the immediate aftermath of World War II and into the legal nightmare of holding its German perpetrators to account. Russell Crowe plays avuncular Nazi second-in-command Hermann Göring, and delivers his best performance since The Nice Guys a full decade ago, while Rami Malek returns to something like Bohemian Rhapsody form as the American psychologist, Douglas Kelley, who is sent to the Allies’ high security Nuremberg prison to evaluate Göring and his fellow Nazis. It lends authenticity and intellectual rigour to this extraordinary, century-defining event. 

Looking for a wholesome, creative night out that doesn’t involve a hangover (unless you BYOB)? Token Studio in Tower Bridge offers relaxed, hands-on ceramics classes where you can spin, shape and decorate your own pottery piece. Whether you fancy throwing a pot on the wheel (£32) or painting a pre-made mug or plate (£23), it’s the perfect mix of fun, mindful and surprisingly therapeutic. And to top it all off, you can sip while you sculpt as it’s BYOB and super chill.

Buy a Token Studio session from just £23, only through Time Out Offers. 

Given that their nation is home to Lapland, is covered in snow for half the year and boasts a healthy population of wild reindeer, it’s no surprise that the Finns love Christmas. You can expect plenty of festive feels at this always-popular annual Christmas Market at Rotherhithe’s Finnish Church. Browse traditional Finnish toys, design pieces, Christmas cards and plenty of Moomin memorabilia before tucking into barbequed food, cinnamon buns and salmon sandwiches, all washed down with a glass of steaming glögg. 

Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas are good friends. Since meeting on their shared birthday, they have portrayed each other in paint and sculpture, shown their work together multiple times and, perhaps, developed something of a shared sensibility. On the surface, Hambling’s gestural, subconsciously macabre canvases have little in common with Lucas’ euphemistic sculptural assemblages. This year, though, a joint presentation at Sadie Coles HQ and Frankie Rossi Art Projects on Bury Street will tease out hidden commonalities between the two canonical British artists.

Hidden somewhere between a theme park, an escape room and a real-life video game, Phantom Peak isn’t just your average day out. This open-world adventure based in Canada Water invites you to explore a fictional steampunk town at your own pace, chatting to quirky characters, uncovering mysteries and slowly piecing together your own story.

With 11 unique trails, a rotating calendar of seasonal storylines, and a cast of live actors guiding your experience, no two visits are ever the same.

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