Things to do in London this weekend (27-28 September)

Aussie director Simon Stone’s The Lady from the Sea is based on Ibsen’s 1888 drama of the same name, and shares its basic plot beats while tinkering with much of the underlying characterisation and motives. It’s a starry production: Edward (Andrew Lincoln) is a wealthy neurosurgeon married to his second wife Ellida (Alicia Vikander), a successful writer. They live with Edward’s two pathologically precocious daughters from his first marriage: Asa (Grace Oddie-Jones) and Hilda (Isobel Akuwudike). Stone is a real throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks guy and he excavates some interesting, complex stuff on consent, memory and the controlling nature of men. 

From Vivienne Westwood’s mud-inspired collection, to Acne Studio’s stained jeans, the autumn exhibition at the Barbican traces fashion’s obsession with all things dirty, grimy and messy. That’s right. Through the collections of more than 60 designers from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion will take a look at everything from models wrestling in mud at New York fashion week, to Hussein Chalayan’s dresses buried underground, and the newish trend, hailing from Copenhagen, ‘bogcore’. Containing pieces from Paco Rabane, Dilara Findikoglu, Maison Margiela, Issey Miyake and Alexander McQueen, Dirt’s lineup promises to give a comprehensive look at the grubbier side of clothing design, with enough to impress any fashion lover. 

Intimate Filipino restaurant Belly Bistro is the latest spot from Omar Shah, an entrepreneurial chef from the Philippines whose parents opened Bintang (a great Thai spot) back in 1987. It’s compact and candle-lit, with a strip of small tables covered by white tablecloths. The cocktails are punchy and well-balanced and the food comes quickly. One of Belly’s ‘viral dishes’, cured scallops in big, shallow shells, swimming in coconut cream, is a thing of beauty. There’s also a soft and tender smoked trout kinilaw – a Filipino take on a ceviche, tempura cod pandesal designed to be a posh filet o’ fish and a seafood caldereta stuffed with clams, mussels and squid in a thick tomato sauce with that familiar subtle, sweet heat. Belly serves small plates that are spicy, salty, colourful and packed with flavour – the best new opening in Kentish Town for a long, long while.  

Early in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, we are told that ‘sometimes we have to perform to get to the truth’, and that’s what this magic-realist road movie romance is all about. Directed by Kogonada (Columbus, After Yang), lonely traveller David (Colin Farrell) hires a car from a quirky rental company which forces him together with Sarah (Margot Robbie) – another lonely traveller – where a kooky GPS directs them to a series of magic doorways, which the imperfect strangers unquestioningly walk through to experience significant memories, from a high-school musical to the death of a parent. This is a movie that isn’t afraid of sincerity, and it brings a bit of silver-lining energy to our overcast world.

Alice Birch’s Romans: A Novel is a tiny bit like a British feminist version of The Lehman Trilogy, if the three Lehman brothers were replaced by the Roman siblings - three seemingly immortal, semi-allegorical, deeply damaged brothers whose brutal childhoods in the Victorian era have disastrous consequences for the next 150 years of humanity. It’s a bleakly irrelevant epic drama with a touch of Pyncheon-esque humour that centres on Kyle Soller’s Jack – undoubtedly the protagonist – plus his brothers: Marlow (Oliver Johnstone) and Edmund (Stuart Thompson). Birch weaves a deft path – you can see it as a parable about toxic masculinity without feeling lectured to. In many ways the message is simple: messed up men running society messes society up. But it’s the writing that dazzles: surreal, savage and at times startlingly empathetic. 

Irish writer Conor McPherson also directs this West End revival of the play that sent his career into the stratosphere when it opened at the Royal Court in 1997. It’s lost none of its gently haunting, melancholic pull in the intervening years. The Weir is a classic example of a play where nothing really seems to happen, but then you realise you’ve seen pretty much all of life pass by. Here, Brendon Gleeson steps into the shoes of garage owner Jack, who we meet chewing over his day with publican Brendan (Owen McDonnell) in an Irish boozer in County Leitrim. McPherson builds a portrait of people whose seemingly mundane lives are deeply rooted in the landscape and history of where they live. It’s quietly, humanly, devastating. 

Hollywood isn’t exactly filling our cinemas with cataclysmic visions of natural and man-made disasters these days. So Paul Greengrass’ tale of humble heroism in the face of the apocalyptic 2018 Californian wildfires has a satisfyingly old-fashioned feel to go with its rousing storytelling. A callback to the days of ’70s ‘master of disaster’ Irwin Allen, it’s full of people putting themselves in harm’s way with minimum fuss. At its heart are two monumental forces: a hellish inferno that burns across vast West Coast valleys and a sweaty Matthew McConaughey, who plays school-bus driver Kevin McKay, a luckless divorced dad failing to fix his painful relationship with his son, deal with his ex and look after his ailing mum. Based on journalist Lizzie Johnson’s book about the disaster, Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, McKay is thrust into the role of rescuer. There are very few bum notes here, and a deep environmental message. 

London’s cultural institutions are having a love affair with the New Romantics this year. Now it’s the Design Museum’s turn to direct its attention towards the most flamboyant subculture of its era, via this exhibition on the Blitz club, the iconic (and we really don’t use that word lightly) Covent Garden nightclub where New Romanticism was born in 1979. Forty years after it closed, the trailblazing club’s atmosphere will be recreated through a ‘sensory extravaganza’ incorporating music, film, art, graphic design and some very ostentatious outfits. This will include several items that have never been on public display before, while some of the scene’s key figures have been involved in the development of the exhibition. Time to liberally apply the kohl eyeliner, fish out your frilliest shirt and whack on some Spandau Ballet: the 80s are back, baby!

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.

Kerry James Marshall is an artist with a singular vision. He has become arguably the most important living American painter over the past few decades, with an ultra-distinctive body of work that celebrates the Black figure in an otherwise very ‘Western’ painting tradition. This big, ambitious show will be a joyful celebration of his lush, colourful approach to painting.

Fashion lovers will lose their heads over the V&A’s big autumn exhibition, focusing as it does on the sartorial tastes of one of history’s most notable bonce droppers. Marie Antoinette Style will look at the ill-fated French queen’s enduring impact on fashion, design and culture, as well as ‘the origins and countless revivals of the style shaped by the most fashionable queen in history’. The V&A’s art collection features two portraits of Antoinette by Jean-François Janinet and François Hubert Drouais which we’d imagine will feature in the exhibition, while visitors can also expect to get up close to some serious couture pieces too; Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Moschino, Dior and the exhibition’s sponsor Manolo Blahnik have all created past collections inspired by the guillotined French Revolution monarch. Let them eat ’fits!

The great avant-garde director Katie Mitchell directs this virtuosic foley performance in which a quartet of actors (Pandora Colin, Tom Espiner, Tatenda Matavai and Ruth Sullivan) deploy a colossal array of objects – from hay bales to hot water bottles – to create the sounds of a cow and also a deer. They’re augmented by sound design from co-creator Melanie Wilson that is heavy on animal noises and a script from Nina Segal that imposes a degree of discipline and direction and ultimately a rather haunting ‘story’ about humanity’s disruption of ordered nature. It’s a dazzlingly coordinated exercise in pure artifice, a sort of vindication of human ingenuity. The four actors are in constant, fluid motion as they fiddle with everything from glittery pom poms to what looks like bundles of herbs to conjure the beasts and their world. Nobody makes theatre like Mitchell, and this is an audacious technical exercise the likes of which you’re unlikely to ever see in a theatre again. 

Yep, this is a live recreation (you could call it immersive theatre if you wanted) of the smash BBC game show The Traitors. As much as anything, this adaptation from Immersive Everywhere is extremely well organised. Clearly, you can’t make a note-perfect recreation the show, but what they’ve done captures a sense of it very nicely. In this much shorter format, a large number of participants book in for a given time slot and are then divided into groups of around 12. Each is spirited away to their own round table, which comes complete with its own Claudia Winkleman-substitute host. The thrill is in the psychology of it all: overanalysing everyone else’s behaviour and body language as we complete a series of puzzles. It’s possible to be eliminated relatively early, but rather than being booted out of the building, ejectees are set up in a comfy room with screens relaying the rest of the game live, and a couple of tasks to complete, which I won’t spoil. Overall: it’s a bloody good laugh.

★★★★ '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 V&A East Storehouse opened in May this year. Spoiler: it’s amazing. But visitors have had to wait a bit longer for the arrival of the massive David Bowie archive containing more than 80,000 items and spanning six decades of the life of Ziggy Stardust. Now, the David Bowie Centre will officially open on Thursday September 13, with opening exhibits curated by BRIT-winning indie band The Last Dinner Party and living musical legend Nile Rodgers. Rodgers, who produced Bowie’s albums Let’s Dance and Black Tie White Noise has selected items including personal correspondence between himself and Bowie, a bespoke Peter Hall suit worn by Bowie during the Serious Moonlight tour and Chuck Pulin photographs of Bowie, Rodgers and guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan recording Let's Dance in New York. The free-to-enter gallery will have nine displays showing everything from photographs to clothing, and drawings, and will include insights into unrealised projects.

If you think a two-hander drama about Elizabethan legends Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare having a sexy, dangerous time while trying to write a play together sounds a bit slash fiction-y then you would have the number of Born with Teeth, a new drama by US playwright Liz Duffy Evans. There is more to it than that, though. For much of its running time Daniel Evans’s RSC production comes across like an outlandish workplace comedy. It stars a Ncuti Gatwa who makes a case for Marlowe as quite possibly history’s most annoying person. Hyper horny, hyper bawdy, and with the attention span of a gnat. His unfortunate colleague is Edward Bluemel’s mild-mannered William Shakespeare, who has been summoned by his (then) more famous peer to co-write the play Henry VI. It’s a lot of fun: two charismatic actors having a ball pinging off each other while chomping down on a script that spikes the trashiness with some genuine wit.

Video games are the medium for Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley. The young artist uses them to ‘imaginatively archive and empower Black Trans stories’ - this isn’t just point-and-shoot, slack-jawed gaming for the sake of it, this is one of contemporary society’s most important cultural forms being used to give voice to marginalised identities. 

The fourth and (supposedly) final Conjuring film promises ‘the case that ended it all’. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return as paranormal investigator couple Ed and Lorraine Warren in this recreation of the Smurl Haunting, a series of demonic possessions at a Pennsylvania home between 1974 and 1989. Last Rites promises to conclude the Warrens’ exploits, but don’t be fooled by the title: The Conjuring universe continues, with a Max series already in development.

Out Sep 5

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!

This new comedy drama from state-of-the-nation playwright Mike Bartlett is an amusing but bleak satire about middle-aged couple Ruth (Hattie Morahan) and Lip (Sam Troughton), who have left behind the Big Smoke to plough Ruth’s inheritance into setting up an organic, regenerative farm. Farming requires dedication and an understanding of the land, Juniper Blood tells us. And most of us are slaves to capitalism and too reliant on technology to be able to go back to basics anyway. It’s not one big lecture, though. Directed by Barlett’s regular collaborator James Macdonald, it’s really very funny while holding a mirror up to the gaping chasm between idealism and pragmatism.   

Every year, London’s famous river gets a whole festival of art installations, performances, and talks devoted to her watery charms, many of which are free to check out. This year’s Totally Thames Festival has scores of events throughout September, all dotted along riverside locations from Richmond to Barking & Dagenham. This week, look out for St Katharine Docks Classic Boat Festival (Sep 6) which lets you clamber aboard ancient vessels. You can also visit a mudlarking exhibition, walk and masterclass, take boat tours and listen to special lectures. 

It’s one of those Fringe successes people dream of mimicking. Since debuting in Edinburgh in 2014, Duncan Macmillan Every Brilliant Thing – co-written with its original star Jonny Donahoe – has earned rave reviews and performed all across the globe. Now it’s on the West End. Over the course of its three-month stint, Donahoe, Ambika Mod, Sue Perkins and Minnie Driver will all take the lead role, but we see Lenny Henry. Dressed in a colourful patterned shirt, he sends smiles soaring across the crowd from the outset. The conversation about mental health has moved on since 2014. Nevertheless, the play’s message still lands today. For all its sorrow, the play gleams with hope. It is a truly brilliant thing.

You’ve probably heard of ‘Instagram face’. This summer, Somerset House is dedicating a whole exhibition to things like the internet’s inclination for everyone to look exactly the same. In Virtural Beauty, Somerset House will explore the impact of digital technologies on how we define beauty today. The show will display more than 20 artworks from the 'Post-Internet' era, an art movement concerned with the influence of the internet on art and culture. It will feature sculpture, photography, installation, video and performance art, with highlights including ORLAN’s Omniprésence (1993), a groundbreaking performance in which the artist live-streamed her own facial aesthetic surgery, and AI-generated portraits by Minnie Atairu, Ben Cullen Williams, and Isamaya Ffrench. 

Emily Kam Kngwarray, an Anmatyerr artist from the Sandover region in the Northern Territory of Australia, didn’t start making art until she was 70. Her prolific and vibrant output during the ensuing decade paved the way for Aboriginal artists, women artists and Australian artists – and is the subject of this, her first major solo exhibition in Europe. Expect monumental canvases adorned with batik and acrylic patterns whose networks of dots and lines are almost immersive.