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Glug away on craft beers, ales, cider and more at drink festivals happening across the week, take all your clothes off and streak through London Zoo dressed as a tiger for charity, or watch as a cast of sheep perform Shakespeare's 'King Lear' live on stage. Have yourself a weird one!
Things to do
Gladiator Games, Guildhall Yard, TONIGHT, £15, £12.50 concs, £10 children. See professional gladiators (who may well have other jobs too, but they're definitely also very good at pretending to be gladiators) battle it out in Guildhall Yard, the site of London's only Roman amphitheatre.
Amy's Kitchen Presents: A Handcrafted Summer, E5 Bakehouse, Tue, £10 + booking fee. Learn a new craft and enjoy a healthy dinner courtesy of Amy's Kitchen at this series of supper events held in east London.
Printmaking Taster Workshops, Lordship Recreation Ground, Tue, £27. Bring a photograph or drawing along to this introductory class for teenagers and adults and turn it into a mono print. This workshop will be led by artist and local Tottenham resident and Sally Wilford.
State of the Art Cinema, The Strand Gallery, Tue-Thu, free. Expect iconic film posters and modern day examples from flicks being released this year at the Film Distributors' Association touring exhibition. As well as 2D design work and photography, a specially built cinema made entirely of LEGO will take pride of place, complete with an auditorium full of famous characters from the silver screen.
Korfball Training, Petchey Academy, Wed, free. These free training sessions take place every Wednesday. If you haven't heard of Korfball before then you're not alone, but we’ve had a google and it sounds like great fun. As far as we can make out it’s a mix of netball, quidditch and a year eight disco where mysterious magnetic forces separate boys and girls.
Body Bootcamp and Outdoor Swim, Lewis Cubitt Park, Wed, £10 + booking fee. Get fit then take a dip at this collaboration between FRAME and King's Cross Pond Club. The exercise studio who usually hosts classes from a railway arch in Shoreditch are heading north to lead hour long sessions of their popular high impact workouts.
A Taste of India, Holborn Station, Wed-Thu, free. This walking tour celebrates Indian Independence Day and visits sites around the Holborn area associated with Indian history and culture. Meet at the orange kiosk outside Holborn station for the 45 minutes walk.
A Summer's Evening in Chelsea Physic Garden, Thu, £35. Visitors to this ancient garden are normally turfed out at dusk, but this event is a rare chance to enjoy its tranquility as the sun sets.
Streak for Tigers, London Zoo, Thu, £20 registration. If you like tigers and enjoy getting naked, then you absolutely must sign up for this charity run through London Zoo, which is raising funds for global conservation work.
…or check out more events happening in London this week.
Eating and drinking
Great British Beer Festival, Olympia London, Tue-Thu, £10, £8 members. You'd better arrive thirsty or you'll never even make a dent in the 900-strong list of ales, ciders, perries and international beers available at this five-day festival of the art of brewing.
Funthyme at the Farm, Spitalfields City Farm, Wed-Thu, £35. Wherever possible, Matthew Phelps sources ingredients for his alfresco dinners from the venue’s polytunnels, flowerbeds and veg patches. The meat is not, of course, home grown, but usually bought from east London butcher The Ginger Pig and then grilled on-site on a charcoal barbecue.
Qcumber Presents: Classics on the Canal, The Electric Barge, Thu, £12. Hop aboard the Electric Barge for an evening of summertime sipping and sightseeing along the canal. The boat doubles up as a cocktail bar serving drinks as it roams the waterways, and for this series of events, the Qcumber team have concocted a menu inspired by literary tales.
London Craft Beer Festival, Oval Space, Thu, £38.50. The international line-up of breweries includes The Kernel, Magic Rock, Partizan, Pressure Drop and Omnipollo. Food will be served from pavements by various vendors, with edible highlights including onglet steaks and rosemary salted chips from Pull & Punch, triple-smoked Ginger Pig steaks and organic vegetarian treats from Plump
…or check out the latest restaurant reviews.
Comedy
Daniel Koren – The Most Important Thing, Soho Theatre, TONIGHT, £15, £12.50 concs. Brooklyn-based Musician-comedian Daniel Koren plays his tunes accompanied by a virtual choir of other Korens. 'The Most Important Thing' is his proper comedy debut.
Zoe Lyons, The RVT, Wed-Thu, £12. The utterly charming Lyons presents a solo show at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which promises a mix of silliness, satire and one-liners. Unpretentious and brilliantly funny.
Simon Evans – In the Money, Soho Theatre, all week, £10-£15. Slick, sharp, very funny stand-up Simon Evans – who's appeared on 'Live at the Apollo' and hosts Radio 4's Goes to Market – makes a welcome return to Soho.
Eastend Cabaret: Perverts, Soho Theatre, all week, £10-£15, £12.50 concs. Cabaret circuit stalwarts Eastend Cabaret are back in London with show 'Perverts'. The musical comedy cabaret mash-up has Bernie and Victy providing a risque hour of filthy songs and saucy goings-on.
…or check out all the critics’ choice comedy shows.
Live music
Ben Folds, Royal Opera House, TONIGHT, £25-£75. More thumpingly fine and melodically sussed collegiate pop from the former head of Ben Folds Five.
Arthur Russell's Instrumentals, Oval Space, TONIGHT, £14-£18. This evening you’ll hear Russell's work ‘Instrumentals’ – premiered in California in 1975 and inspired by nature photography – performed by some of his original collaborators including Rhys Chatham, Peter Zummo and Ernie Brooks.
Dornik, Notting Hill Arts Club, Thu, £9. Mining the ’80s for his sophisticated synth-funk, Dornik was Jessie Ware’s drummer until her label PMR signed him up to record some slinky tracks of his own. The velvety, Michael Jackson-esque ‘On My Mind’ is typical, and sounds like both the past and the future.
…or take a look at all the live music events in London this week.
Nightlife
Morning Gloryville, Ministry of Sound, Tue, £16. A pre-work mid-week fitness rave, which aims to give punters a healthy, start to the working day via snacks, massages and a lot of dancing.
Hip Hop Karaoke, The Social, Thu, £5-£7 adv, MOTD. Think you can rap? Prove it at this popular karaoke night, where you can flex your rhyming muscles to your favourite hip hop cuts from over the decades.
Your Mum's House, The Nest, Thu, £7, £5 before midnight. Not for the faint-hearted, this weekly jaunt is a 'dress up 'n' get messed up' night of mayhem and mischief, with a soundtrack of bassy house, hip hop, old school bangers, trap, R&B and UK garage.
…or see all the parties planned this week.
Film
Tufnell Park Film Club: ‘Plein Soleil’, The Lord Palmerston, Tue, £15 m’ship. The perfect film for a summer’s evening. In 1960, French filmmaker René Clément was the first to adapt Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ for cinema, with the roles of Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf played by Alain Delon and Maurice Ronet.
Nothing But a Man, Regent Street Cinema, Wed, £11, £10 concs. Nothing but a Man’, originally released in 1964, set out to do something rarely before seen in American cinema – portray multi-dimensional, complex black characters.
Or at the cinema...
The Diary Of A Teenage Girl ★★★★☆ Finally, a thoughtful, witty and forthright drama about what it actually feels like for a girl.
The Gift ★★★★☆ Actor Joel Edgerton makes a confident directorial debut with this enjoyably old-school, compellingly nasty home invasion thriller.
Marshland ★★★★☆ This gripping Spanish cop drama will delight fans of classic film noir and modern American TV, especially 'True Detective'.
…or see all of the latest releases.
Theatre
King Lear with Sheep, Courtyard Theatre, Thu, £10, £8 concs. The stars have aligned on this one: not only is there a director mad enough to try 'King Lear With Sheep' out, they've also found a theatre mad enough to host it.
Baila Brazil, Royal Festival Hall, Wed-Thu, £15-£38. Brazilian percussion and dance company Bale de Rua arrive in London to shake things up.
The Heresy of Love, Shakespeare's Globe, Wed, £16-£43. A smart revival for Dominic Dromgoole's final summer season.
Splendour, Donmar Warehouse, all week, £10-£37.50. Abi Morgan’s strange, haunting play about a dictator’s wife gets under your skin… eventually.
Grand Hotel, Southwark Playhouse, all week, £22, £18 concs. Like the hundreds of glinting crystals in the vast chandelier that hangs over Thom Southerland’s sparkling production, the characters in this richly layered musical are a beautifully crafted but fragile bunch.
…or see our theatre critics’ choices.
Summer Graduate Show
This week's best new art
Fig-2, ICA, Tue-Thu, free. 50 weekly spontaneous exhibitions will take over the ICA’s studio space. This week Oreet Ashery transforms the gallery to contemplate afterlife and legacy.
Summer Graduate Show, Anise Gallery, Thu, free. Through video art, installation, photography, etching and wood-cuts, this group show of five recent art graduates showcases London's most exciting future artists.
Construction Industry, APT, Deptford, Thu, free. Artist Geoff Rigden curates this group exhibition of 15 artists who make constructions, assemblages and reliefs.
Ângela Ferreira: Talk Tower for Ingrid Jonker, Marlborough Contemporary, all week, free. The Lisbon-based artist presents a sculptural homage to the South African poet Ingrid Jonker, designed for broadcasting poetry.
Vivian Maier, Beetles & Huxley, all week, free. A presentation of stunning black-and-white photographs by the original secret street photographer.
…or see all London art reviews.
And finally
Win... one of five pairs of tickets to Festival No. 6 in Portmeirion or your own taste of Italy
Grab... £30 tickets to London Craft Beer Festival at Oval Space, including unlimited beer samples
Book... these gigs while you still can
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