London events in June

This two month-long season aims to explore the brilliant yet lesser-known gems of Pan-African cinema, handpicked by the BFI Southbank. There’ll be a screening of Integration Report 1, a film made by Madeleine Anderson, the first African American documnetarian, as well as Cabascabo, a thrilling drama by director Omuarou Ganda about a Senegalese rifleman enlisted in the Indochina war. Coming Forth By Day is a debut about the struggle of a young girl and her mother looking after her father in Cairo, and there’ll also be a selection of four short films in the ‘Original Voices’ programme – loads to see.

The Natural History Museum’s big exhibition for 2024 is this massive new celebration of our avian pals. As you can doubtless glean from the title, ‘Birds: Brilliant & Bizarre’ focuses on the weirder end of the feathered spectrum, from actually strange-looking birds to exploring things like the links between pigeons and T-rex, or daring you to sniff a stinky seabird egg. While some of the NHM’s permanent exhibitions can look a little tired these days, its big temporary exhibitions are typically cutting-edge, interactive and hugely fun.

Twenty years after the classic comedy film briefly threatened to make Lyndsey Lohan a global icon for the right reasons, Tina Fey’s musical adaptation of her smash ‘Mean Girls’ finally makes it to the West End. Following the misadventures of Cady Heron, a home-schooled student totally naive to the cliquey ways of the high school she starts at aged 16, the musical version of ‘Mean Girls’ did decent business on Broadway a few years back but then became a victim of the pandemic. General word on the street was that the script was as funny as ever. 

This mid-career survey of South African visual activist Zanele Muholi captures the breadth and power of an extensive body of work dedicated to presenting a multifaceted view of Black LGBTQI+ individuals. This show originally opened near the start of the pandemic, and has now been expanded with more recent work, all tackling big important themes like labour, racism, sexism and sexual politics.

Have you noticed that everyone’s wearing kilts at the moment? It’s partly down to Glaswegian fashion designer and radical creative Charles Jeffrey, whose fashion brand Loverboy reimagined the textile, creating checked lewks that were more high club night than Highland fling. This exhibition – fittingly at Somerset House, where Jeffrey has a studio – will go behind-the-scenes, exploring how Jeffrey built the brand from scratch. Expect intriguing sounding ‘sensorially led spaces’ full of archival artefacts from Jeffrey’s unique collections and newly commissioned works. Plus, it’s pay what you can, so everyone can appreciate the fabulousness. 

At Between The Bridges every Sunday this summer, SoLo Craft Fair will hold the eclectic South Bank Summer Market. With over 60 traders, you’ll find a wide variety of bits and bobs to take home with you, from art, jewellery, fashion, kids’ products and more, all created by independent designers from across the capital. If you want to try your hand at making something, there’ll be free workshops on site. Food and drink, live sports screenings and DJ sets will keep you occupied between shopping.

The RA’s annual showcase of all the artists you need to know about right now will return for its 256th edition to brighten up the summer holidays. The world’s oldest open submission exhibition (which means anyone can enter their work to be considered for inclusion), the artist with the big job of sifting through the works and curating them this year is sculptor Ann Christopher. 

Even by Complicité’s lofty standards, 1999’s ‘Mnemonic’ is regarded as something truly exceptional. Devised by company founder Simon McBurney – and originally starring him –  it’s a wild ride show about humanity, memory and loss that starts as a jokey biochemistry lecture and ends up as something vast and transcendent involving an ancient body found in the ice and a woman searching for her vanished lover. You kind of jut have to see it, really, but if it lives up to the hype, it’ll change your life. McBurney directs again, though it seems unlikely he’ll star this time: the only cast members confirmed so far are Richard Katz and Kostas Phillippoglou.

Grab your sunblock and hiking boots to explore Phantom Peak’s starlit summer, as the residents of Phantom Peak are heading to the great outdoors!Follow ten ground breaking trails with new characters, and thrilling new stories, and for the first time, Phantom Peak will host an audience-wide competition! Compete in camp activities, uncover secrets, and impress the townsfolk to gain points and support your cabin!

Jeremy O Harris’s frenzied satire about a trio of interracial couples who seek to get their sex lives back on track by indulging in Antebellum-styled master-slave roleplays was both a massive smash and wildly controversial over its two Broadway seasons (for reasons that are presumably obvious from that description). Harris’s second play ‘“Daddy”’ was better received over its 2022 Almeida run than it was back home, but a UK transfer for ‘Slave Play’ has been a long time coming. Finally, though, here’s Robert O’Hara’s production, which boasts a cast to die for, with James Cusati-Moyer, Chalia La Tour, Annie McNamara and Irene Sofia Lucio returning from its the original Broadway production, plus an infusion of Brits headed by ‘Game of Thrones’ man Kit Harington and the reliably hilarious Fisayo Akinade.

He’s pushed a block of ice across Mexico City, kicked a flaming football, painted a line across Palestine and moved a mountain: Belgian artist Francis Alÿs goes for big gestures to make big points. He’s one of the most affecting and recognisable conceptual artists working today, and now he’s taking over the Barbican for an exhibition about children’s games in all their different forms around the world. 

Perhaps more so than ‘Cats’, more so than ‘Phantom’, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Starlight Express’ is his most quintessentially ’80s musical, its world of highly competitive trains played by people on rollerskates somewhat unimaginable as a product of any other era. This new UK production, which will convert the Troubadour Theatre in Wembley Park into the Starlight Auditorium and what we’re promised will be an ‘immersive’ take on the show directed by Luke Sheppard of ‘& Juliet’ fame. 

At Time Out we’re big fans of cosying up in our favourite London cinemas and entering a whole new world through the power of projection. But, when the sun’s out and the weather’s at its best, hiding away in a dark, stuffy room isn’t quite as appealing. Thank god then, for outdoor cinemas letting us get our film fix under the stars and with a sweet summer breeze in our hair. London is home to some brilliant alfresco movie spots, which will be popping up all over the city in 2023. Welcome to the summer of the big-screen extravaganza.