Things to do in London this weekend (29-30 November)

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 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 confectionary 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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

Director Matthew Dunster and a top-notch creative team do a pretty damn good job of finding a way to stage the titular Games of Suzanne Collins’s smash 2008 YA novel The Hunger Games, deploying aerial work, pyro, video screens, some tightly drilled choreography, the odd song and a highly mobile, rapidly changing set, creating a sequence that’s coherent and gripping. It’s hard not to admire the quixotic but skilled attempt to translate something so action-packed to the stage. Dunster is not a subtle director, and in many ways that suits Collins’s novel. He picks out the themes of class oppression between the gaudy dandies of the Capitol and dirt-poor folk of District 12 with day-glo aplomb. Smartly, the set of the in-the-round show is steeply raked to resemble a sports stadium and the audience is cast as spectators. A lot of creative talent has been poured into this. 

Dreaming of a kitsch Christmas? New York’s famous Miracle on Ninth Street bar is popping up in London for its seventh year, ‘50s Christmas decorations, nostalgic accessories and creative new spins on beloved cocktail favourites in tow. Past years have seen the bar slinging the likes of a Snowball Old Fashioned or a Christmapoliton, which includes cranberry sauce and absinthe mist – a take on Christmas trimmings that’s not for the faint-hearted. If you’re failing to get into the Christmas spirit, this is one great place to find it.

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.

’Tis the season for rampant consumerism, but if all the covetable clobber, shiny new tech and luxury knick-knacks are failing to fill the void, you’d do well to swing by the Choose Love store during your Christmas shopping spree. First set up in 2017 by Help Refugees, the clever pop-up doesn’t peddle fancy beauty products or the latest trainers. Instead, its shelves are filled with emergency blankets, children’s shoes, sleeping bags, toiletries, mobile phone credit, nappies, education supplies and other essentials needed by refugees around the world. Once you’ve bought what you can, the products are distributed via more than 80 projects that the humanitarian aid organisation works with across the globe. After several successful years on nearby Carnaby Street, the pop-up has moved into a department store-sized space on Regent Street for its biggest ever edition this year. Head down to check out a beautifully-designed space which is once again designed by Misty Buckley (The Oscars, The BRIT Awards) and will be set across two floors, with the usual roster of surprise celebrity volunteers working on the tills, and to do your bit to spread some Christmas cheer to those who need it most.

Every year, thousands of professional and amateur photographers around the world submit their best portraits to The Taylor Wessing Photo Prize – a contest that has helped launch the careers of many top photographers. Around 60 finalists are selected and put on display at the National Portrait Gallery, giving an insight into the lives of friends and family of those behind the lens, or capturing a moment in time with stars in the spotlight. One image will take home the big prize, while the annual ‘In Focus’ display will feature a new work by an established photographer.

★★★★ 'Frameless has managed to create something genuinely exciting' – Time Out

Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined beyond belief, through cutting-edge technology. Situated in Marble Arch, Frameless plays host to four unique galleries with hypnotic visuals and a dazzling score. Enjoy 90 minutes of surreal artwork from Bosch, Dalí and more for just £24!

Get £24.80 tickets (originally £31), only through Time Out Offers.

The Southbank Centre is shining a light on some great artworks this winter – literally. In its annual Winter Lights exhibition, the institution will be bringing a selection of pieces to the streets surrounding the venue. Everything on display uses light and colour to dive into topics like identity, environment and tech, making it both an attention-grabbing and thought-provoking exhibit. Among the works at this free exhibition are ‘Beacon’ by Lee Broom, which invites you to pause and reflect as you examine the chandelier of light, and Jakob Kvist’s ‘Dichroic Sphere’, a geodesic dome that is illuminated by only one single energy-efficient light bulb, but is still lit up in various colours.

Each year, the bright lights of Leicester Square get a little bit more dazzling with its massive festive pop-up, which boasts a Christmas market, tons of scrumptious food and drink, and live entertainment. The square is also switching things up a bit this year, replacing its circus and cabaret venue The Spiegeltent with an ice skating rink. Wrapping around the Shakespeare statue in the centre of the square, London’s newest pop-up skating venue for nine weeks over the festive season, encircled by the market stalls. 

A month-long feast of contemporary Czech cinema, the Made in Prague Festival is back for its 29th edition with a thrilling selection of high-calibre dramas, comedies, docs and family films, hosted by venues including BFI IMAX, BFI Player, ICA, Regent Street Cinema, The Garden Cinema. This fest opens with the UK premiere of Jiří Mádl’s historical drama Waves, an intriguing-sounding drama about the journalists who risked everything to keep broadcasting during the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, followed by a Q&A with its director and lead actress. It'll also include Zuzana Kirchnerová’s feature directorial debut Caravan, a portrait of a mother and her disabled son which was warmly recieved at Cannes. Browse the full line-up for more.

Though it would be pushing it to say Tom Morris directs Othello as a comedy, he certainly wrings more laughs than usual out of Shakespeare’s great tragedy. The title role is played by David Harewood, who returns to the part 28 years after he was the first Black actor to star as the doomed Moorish general at the National Theatre. His new Othello is a precise, confident, seemingly unflappable man who shows little sign of jealousy or doubt for a long time. But his extreme rationalism proves his downfall: once Toby Jones’s Iago presents ‘proof’ of Othello’s wife Desdemona (Caitlin FitzGerald) being unfaithful, her husband simply accepts it, something that speaks as much of misogyny as insecurity or insanity. It’s a solid commercial show. 

Love sushi, dumplings or noodles? Inamo’s got you covered. This high-tech spot in Soho or Covent Garden lets you order from interactive tabletops, play over 20 games while you wait and even doodle on your table. Then it’s all you can eat pan-Asian dishes like Sichuan chicken, red dragon rolls and Korean wings with bottomless drinks. Usually £113.35, now just £33 or £26 if you're in early at the weekend!

Get Inamo’s best ever bottomless food & drink brunch from only £26 with Time Out Offers.

Born in a fishing village in Denmark in 1859, Anna Ancher painted and memorialised life on the coast, cementing herself as a Danish household name. Now Dulwich Picture Gallery brings Ancher’s work to a UK audience in her first ever British exhibition, which will showcase over 40 of her luminous paintings, many of which are reminiscent of the coastal community where she grew up. Also featuring in the exhibition will be four of Ancher’s contemporaries: Marie Luplau, Emilie Mundt, Marie Sandholdt, and Louise Bonfils. 

Imagine indulging in all the dumplings, rolls, and buns you can handle, crafted by a Chinatown favourite with over a decade of culinary excellence. Savour Taiwanese pork buns, savoury pork and prawn soup dumplings, and luxurious crab meat xiao long bao. To top it off, enjoy a chilled glass of prosecco to elevate your feast. Cheers to a truly delightful dining experience at Leong’s Legend!