Things to do in London this weekend (6-7 December)

Spoiler alert: ‘Paddington’ is a small woman (Arti Shah) in a bear costume (by Gabriella Slade), with a regular-sized man (James Hameed) doing the voice and remote controlling the facial expressions from backstage, and it’s enough to make us believe that Paddington is really in the room with us. He’s not the Paddington of the films or of Michael Bond’s books, but he’s not really him either, on account of all the singing he does and how much more wordy that makes him. He is a new Paddington. But he is, fundamentally, Paddington, right there in the room with us. Main attraction aside, a fine creative team led by director Luke Sheppard has created a very enjoyable show indeed. It’s by and large a stage adaptation of the first Paddington movie, although writer Jessica Swale has been quite free. It has a looser, more knockabout air, less droll, more cartoonish. It’s a luxury musical, and when the maximalism works, it really works.

Casa Felicia is helmed by chef Francesco Sarvonio, formerly of Manteca and currently of Elephant. The menu switches up daily, but always promises southern Italian ‘soul food’. A pleasing heap of puntarelle salad embellished with pear and hazelnuts, and a faultless seabass crudo speckled with crispy red pepper starts us off. We’re then presented with the most intriguing take on parmigiana I’ve ever seen. It comes as the whole vegetable roasted, skinned and fried in a tempura batter. The bowls of pasta are truly generous with a perfect al dente bite, and they’ve nailed the sauce to carb ratio. The fettuccine porcini and the paccheri with mussels and squid are both simple but impeccable. We finish with a potato doughnut coated in lavender sugar and a pile of Verdello lemon zest perched on top. It’s a wholesome tribute to Neopolitan cooking. 

Ten of Blackhorse Beer Mile’s finest drinking holes are combining forces to bring a mega Christmas fest to E17. A Christmas tree market will pop up at Big Penny Social with entertainment from nine-piece brass band Brass Funkeys; a live marachi band will be stationed at Exale performing their twist on Christmas classics and a swathe of local artisans will line up at Renegade Urban Winery for its festive market. And that only scratches the surface. Festive drinks and dishes will be available up and down the mile all afternoon – including a bespoke menu from chef Josh Dallaway at 40FT Brewery – and DJs will take the reigns at different venues to keep the festive spirit alive until 1am.  

John le Carré breakthrough The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is in safe hands with playwright David Eldridge and director Jeremy Herrin, whose adaptation settles in at the West End after scoring good notices in Chichester. This is a slick and yes, maybe slightly MOR adaptation of Le Carre’s taut, brutal espionage yarn. But it’s a very good one, and Eldridge deftly crafts an intensely interior world, with us seeing the action unfold as much from within jaded spy protagonist Alec Leamas’s head as without. Herrin’s production goes heavy on the noir, and with good reason. Rory Keenan is magnificently grumpy and rumpled as Leamas, a hardbitten British spy in Cold War Berlin who is brought home after his last informer is executed by Hans-Dieter Mundt, a ruthless counterintelligence agent who has systematically dismantled the British spy apparatus in East Germany. The story feels fresh because Keenan’s it feels like Leamas is really living it – those shocking final hairpin plot twists are still jaw-dropping.

Cementing the Lyric Hammersmith’s place at the top of the London panto pantheon, here’s a wonderfully inventive new take on Jack and the Beanstalk for 2025. Returning writer Sonia Jalay and director Nicolai La Barrie are impressively assured as they relocate the bean-centric action to a strict Hammersmith school concealing a sinister secret. The imperious grandeur of regular Lyric dame Emmanuel Akwafo is somewhat missed, although replacement Sam Harrison is great fun when he’s allowed off the leash. It’s pepped up by a wonderfully chosen barrage of pop songs that runs the gamut from ‘Seven Nation Army’ to ‘Espresso’, ‘Formation’ to a version of ‘Pretty Fly for a White Guy’ about Ofsted inspections. There are some great visual gags, too. Superbly done as ever, and an object lesson in how London pantomime not only survives, but actively thrives.

The magnificently restored Victorian subway in Crystal Palace will be open to visitors for one day only in December. Visits to the Grade II-listed subway will be self-guided, but staff and volunteers will be on hand to share nuggets of the subway's remarkable history; from its original use as an entry point to the Crystal Palace for railway passengers, to an air raid shelter, to illegal raves. It’s free, but booking is required. 

Jermyn Street Theatre have gone a little left field with their festive programming. Scrooge has been ditched for an adaptation of Dickens’s ‘favourite child’, David Copperfield. And, in Abigail Pickard Price’s production, the reasons for this great honour shine loud and clear. With a small cast of three – Eddy Payne as David, and Luke Barton and Louise Beresford as, erm, everyone else – the diverse and sprawling world is pulled out bit by bit. Does it manage to include all the intricate chronicles and glory of the book’s 882 pages? Well, of course not. But good god, Pickard Price keeps Dickens’s irresistible richness intact. Much of that is down to Barton and Beresford, who must be dying for a lie-down after their final bow. The pair dash from one personality to the next, changing costumes, physicality, and accents at the rate of a runaway train. The speed alone is enough to impress you, but with every new face so sharply etched, it becomes a magnificent, character-exploding evening.

Sweet, shy Colin is having a shit time. His mother is terminally ill (but still trying to set him up with inappropriate men), his only hobby is barbershop quartet singing with his father, and to top it all, he’s a parking attendant. Played with wide-eyed bemusement by an outstanding Harry Melling, Colin’s dreary existence changes dramatically when he meets very tall, exceedingly handsome and inscrutable biker Ray in a Bromley boozer. Ray, a fittingly stern Alexander Skarsgård, propositions him over a bag of crisps, and before he knows it, Colin’s licking Ray’s boots (and rather a lot more) by the bins next to Primark. Pillion starts as it means to go on; aligning its oddly innocent nature with extreme, hardcore imagery, and managing to give screwball humour an emotional gravitas. Think, if you will, Kenneth Anger’s horny, leather-clad opus Scorpio Rising as directed by Richard Curtis. 

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.

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.

‘Blue moon, you saw me standing alone’ runs the line from songwriting double-act Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s classic ballad, and Boyhood director Richard Linklater’s long-term collaborator Ethan Hawke transforms into the rumpled, melancholy Hart. He slouches in the washed-up man’s shrunken frame and balding crown. Down on his luck and drinking heavily, his once-grand writing partnership with Rodgers (a sharply tuxedoed Andrew Scott) has been dashed, thanks to his increasing unreliability. It hurts on a bone-deep level. Linklater knows how to draw the most intimate performances from Hawke – and he’s brilliant here. His pairing with Andrew Scott, so devastating in All of Us Strangers, is note-perfect. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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 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. 

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. 

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!