Things to do in London this week

Londoners can be a cynical bunch, but there’s still something special about Valentine’s Day and London is predictably full of fun things to do (which is Saturday February 14 if you’re disorganised enough not to know this already). There are slap-up dinners for two, classic rom-com screenings, romance-themed comedy nights and novelty pink and/or heart-shaped versions of all our most hyped dishes. If you’re not currently boo-ed up, there’s loads for you as well, from speed-dating events and singles nights to ‘Palentines’ celebrations bigging up platonic love and ‘anti-Valentine’s’ happenings for those who find it all just a bit too saccharine. 

The NPG will be the UK’s first museum to stage an exhibition focussing on Lucain Freud’s works on paper, including some artworks seen on display for the first time. Focussing on Freud’s mastery of drawing in all forms, Drawing into Painting will look at the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the human face and figure, from the 1930s to the early 21st century.

Tom Stoppard’s 1993 masterpiece is a work of burning, ravenous intelligence, and almost universally acknowledged as his best work. It’s a play about the unpredictability of humanity, how we’re defined by our transience, our sex drives, and our desire to understand. Carrie Cracknell’s revival is not an attempt to radically reconfigure Arcadia. She and her team - notably designer Alex Eales - have leaned nicely into the Old Vic’s current in-the-round configuration with a revolving circular stage that neatly encapsulates the underlying sense of cosmic wonder that underpins it all. Arcadia is a perfect play, which means there’s a lot less wiggle room for a director to impose themselves. It’s also unforgiving to actors. Cracknell gives it a nice air of intimacy and avoids having her cast speechify Stoppard’s ornate prose.

A bold new voice is born with this story of a dad and his two sons set over a single day in Nigeria as it teeters on the edge of a coup. Nigerian-British filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr taps into universal feelings – of wide-eyed childhood discovery, parental responsibility and a feeling of a world spinning out of control – and backdrops it with an immersive sense of controlled chaos. Written by the director and his older brother Wade and fuelled with their childhood memories, the result is touching, contemplative and unsettling – a film with the gentle impressionist gaze of Moonlight, the hard-scrabble edge of Bicycle Thieves, and a fourth-wall-breaking daring all of its own.

Chef-founder Dara Klein has opened a restaurant of her own inside a gorgeously gabled Victorian boozer on the eastern fringes of Colombia Road. It still feels pubby, with a handpainted Tiella sign, 1930s-styled stained glass windows, and, inexplicably, a giant portrait of Cher above the bar. Dara dips into rarer regional cracks of Italian cuisine, such as a pretty plate of shimmering anchovies in saor; a ye olde Venetian marinade like a fishy fruit salad. There’s the passatelli in brodo, a chunky, dumpling-like pasta of eggs and cheese bobbing around in a meat broth and Dara’s infamous chicken Milanese. Tiella is what eating out is all about: the warmest of welcomes, a subtle dose of glamour, incredible food, and the vague sense that nothing much else matters beyond the restaurant’s front door. 

Miriam Battye’s comedy The Virgins is set in an unremarkable house, with a corridor in the middle. With Joel (Ragevan Vasan), his mate Mel (Alec Boaden), and his teenage sister Chloe (Anushka Chakravarti) and her friends Jess (Alla Bruccoleri) and Phoebe (Molly Hewitt-Richards), who are getting ready for a big night out as it opens. The boys are not the focus here. The girls – clever, wordy, neurotic, virgins – are painstakingly crafting a plan to go out and get… snogged. They are smart and irrational, sweet and maddening as they try to naively micromanage their journey to adulthood. It’s a fine play: funny, concise, stacked with rising talent. And very accessible: Battye has written a lot for TV and it shows, in a good way. 

Aside from 2009’s Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi has been largely AWOL from the horror genre that made his name. Happily, Send Help is both a return to the world of horror and a major return to form. There’s nothing bland in his queasy funhouse ride, a table-turning death match set on a remote island. Rachel McAdams plays hard-working, unsung professional Linda Liddle who’s been overlooked for a promotion by her nepo-baby CEO, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien). When the company’s private jet flight to Bangkok goes down in a tropical storm, boss and underling are forced to team up on a remote island. What follows is a gloriously over-the-top battle of wits that plays out like a violent mix of Cast Away, Misery, Lord of the Flies, and a day out with Bear Grylls. 

Between 1885 and 1890, OG Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat spent five summers observing the port towns along the northern coast of France, capturing impressive seascapes, regattas and other oceanic activities. Twenty three of these paintings, oil sketches and drawings are to be showcased at the Courtauld from February next year, offering a nautical insight into this elusive French artist. The exhibition will borrow works from world-class galleries including MOMA and the Musée d’Orsay, making it even more worth the peek.

Yes, nobody – apart from possibly children – looks forward to the February half-term, but at least it’s invariably blessed with the Southbank Centre’s Imagine festival, a mix of family-oriented shows and workshops, play experiences and exhibitions, music, art and literature that’ll keep youngsters diverted February 11-21. There are events for kids of all ages (from babies to pre-teens) with many of them free, ranging from communal singalong sessions to dance workshops. 

Kristen Stewart reveals a deft directorial hand and a distinct, languid, echoing style in her vividly made, emotionally visceral exploration of the life and times of American novelist Lidia Yuknavitch. Filmed on 16mm, split into five literary-style chapters across Lidia’s life and matching the prose of the memoir it’s adapted from, The Chronology of Water is a story of trauma, resilience, the dispelling of female shame, and gynephilic fascination. It tells us how trauma begets more trauma, and the painful, courageous process of turning it into art.

The Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens is taking a voyage to China this February, courtesy of the latest annual mind-bending orchid display that takes over the iconic glasshouse each year. As ever, the exotic display will celebrate the natural beauty and biodiversity of its subject country: China is home to thousands of varieties of orchid, plus vast amounts of other flora and fauna besides. Look out for sculptures of dragons and Chinese lanterns, as well as intricately woven plant installations. There’ll also be ticketed after-hours events with live Chinese music, food, cocktails and dance performances. 

The Horniman’s big 2026 exhibition in this globe-trotting Australian show inspired by Jules Verne’s classic novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. You’ll command the legendary Nautilus submarine and journey to the depths of the oceans, visiting Atlantis, weaving through huge kelp forests and meeting extraordinary aquatic creatures. And while the giant squid you come ‘face to face’ with is presumably not real, there will be actual living sea creatures present courtesy of six aquarium tanks that come with the show. Exclusive to this stop will be a partnership with beloved CBeebies show Octonauts and a series of its trademark ‘creature reports’.

There’s no denying it: screenwriter Nora Ephron is the queen of movie romcoms. And Sleepless in Seattle is her most sophisticated masterpiece, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan starring in a story that's soaked in yearning and dreamy romance. Its jazzy, moody score is a big part of the film's appeal, so its first concert screening is not before time. A full band will soundtrack an HD screening of the film, playing Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole numbers as well as its original songs that composer Marc Shaiman. It should make for an atmospheric serenade for this pair of very grown-up lovers. 

Tooting’s turning up the heat for 2026’s Valentine’s weekend with the launch of the Tooting Food Festival, a two-day celebration of global flavours, local legends and proper community vibes. Taking over Tooting Market and Broadway Market, the festival brings together the neighbourhood’s best traders for tasters, street eats and stories behind the dishes. Expect live music from afternoon to evening, guided tours exploring Tooting’s rich food heritage and plenty of chances to graze your way around the world. Entry’s free – just grab food tokens and follow your nose. A tasty new highlight of Wandsworth’s Borough of Culture year.

Condo is the best thing to hit London’s art scene every January: a citywide mega-exhibition where galleries from around the world take over spaces across the capital. The idea’s simple, London galleries invite international ones to share their walls for a month, but the results are anything but. In 2026, 50 galleries show across 23 venues, from Sadie Coles HQ hosting Paris’s Sans Titre to The Sunday Painter welcoming Mumbai’s Jhaveri Contemporary. It’s a brilliant way to sample global contemporary art in one hit, and to enjoy watching London’s art crowd parade their questionable winter fashion between stops.

The far right on the streets, an agenda-filled press and a nation caught in a cost-of-living crisis being encouraged to blame immigrants for its woes. It’s not hard to see why this new musical – set in the lead-up to and aftermath of the real-life 1936 stand against the march of Oswald Mosley’s black-shirt fascists by the residents of Cable Street in London’s East End – resonates so powerfully now. Told in flashback via a present-day tour of Cable Street, it follows the fatefully linked lives of Irish Mairead and Jewish ex-boxer Sammy. Its clear-sighted sense of the high stakes of history is what makes it so deeply moving.

In his latest dizzyingly high concept show, avant comedy legend Stewart Lee bemoans his irrelevance – something he’s been been bemoaning for decades, often with zeitgeisty results – in a new show in which he promises to unleash a new, callously offensive stage persona to compete with the likes of Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle. The Man-Wulf is, apparently, ‘a tough-talking werewolf comedian from the dark forests of the subconscious who hates humanity’. Expect nuclear levels of irony. 

The landmark exhibition at the British Museum will trace the evolution of the Japanese warrior class over the past 1,000 years, exploring how their image came to be what it is today. From the medieval period to the present day, this major exhibit will bring together 280 objects to illustrate how the Samurai came to be known as armour-clad warriors, fighting epic duels, and following a strict code of honour. But it will also explore how ideas of Samurai have been fabricated, idealised and adapted, dispelling the myths and revealing their true history. 

Tim Crouch’s new production of The Tempest might baffle a lot of people, but I doubt any of them will forget it in a hurry. We’re in a junk-cluttered study of some sort, presumably on the nameless island that Crouch’s Prospero and his daughter Miranda (Sophie Steer) were exiled to by his sister Antonia (a gender swap, obvs). Their unearthly servants Caliban and Ariel are there too. They appear to be acting out The Tempest. That is to say, they’re using objects in the study to recreate the usual start of the play. It’s a leftfield but fun read. After a while, Crouch’s Prospero starts summoning audience members (planted actors, not unwitting audience participants, don’t worry) to fill the roles. It’s a cerebral and uncompromising – but pretty funny! – Tempest from a director who has devoted his life to deconstructing the nature of theatre.