London events in May

Two years on from the reopening of the Young V&A comes the next phase of the iconic museum’s building projects. Opening its doors in May 2025, the V&A East Storehouse is a brand new venue in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Purpose-built to house more than 1,000 archives from the museum’s collection, comprising more than 250,000 objects and 350,000 books, the storehouse promises to offer a peek behind the scenes to show how a working museum goes about cataloguing artefacts, from vintage footie kits and Glastonbury festival ephemera to a collection of samurai swords. It’s set to open on Saturday May 31.

There’s a lot to love about Ikea. Stylish furniture for affordable prices. Those tiny pencils that everyone steals. The iconic meatballs. Us Brits are big, big fans of the blue and yellow mecca, which is why we’re thrilled that the Swedish multinational is finally set to open its long-awaited Oxford Circus store on Thurday May 1. Anyone who has had the misfortune of having to schlep back from Ikea Croydon on public transport with a Kallax shelving unit, two houseplants and a Frakta full of ‘bits of the kitchen’ will understand quite how momentous an occasion this is. There’s no word yet as to what kind of opening celebrations IKEA might have planned for the new store, but after such a long wait we’re thoroughly expecting them to roll out the blue and yellow carpet to mark the occasion, so watch this space!

The legendary pop art pioneer is back in King’s Cross with a stunning immersive exhibition charting 60 years of his creative life. Set in Lightroom’s eight-metre-tall space, the show uses large-scale laser projections, surround sound, and Hockney’s own commentary to bring his world to life — from iconic photography and polaroid collages to personal reflections on his process. With a specially composed score by Nico Muhly, this is Hockney as you’ve never seen (or heard) him before.

Six years after it was first mooted, Soho Theatre’s Walthamstow outpost opens on Friday May 2, with a run for LA clown genius Natalie Palamides’s superb new show Weer. The 970-seater venue takes over a former Granada Cinema built in 1930 and closed in 2003, restoring the Grade II-listed property to its former glory with a £30 million building project. Like the Dean Street venue, there will be a focus on comedy in the programming, with visitors also promised an annual panto, film screenings, theatre and community-focused education projects. And if you live locally, you can claim one of 15,000 £15 tickets available over the theatre’s first year open. 

Although most news coming out of America this year is hysterically awful, we are, at least, getting Stereophonic. The most Tony-nominated play of all time, the drama by David Adjmi with songs by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler is a fictionalised account of the legendarily tense sessions that led to the birth of Fleetwood Mac’s all conquering Rumours album, written and recorded while the various couples in the band were in the process of splittling from each other with degrees of prejudice. Hugely acclaimed Stateside, it’ll go straight into the West End for its London transfer.

This feels modestly momentous: while Arthur Miller’s classic is revived relatively frequently, Ola Ince’s take on the alem witch trials drama-slash-McCarthyism allegory will be the first time a playwright other than Shakespeare has been revived on the Globe’s famed outdoor stage. There is, one suspects, a subtext: new writing was intended to make the Globe more than a museum to the Bard, and to give living playwrights a chance to write for its idiosyncratic space, but it can be a hard sell to a tourist-centric crowd. Ticking the ‘non-Shakespeare’ box while likely offering a decent box office return, The Crucible feels like a tremendous fit for the Globe: set in a superstitious New England just a few decades after Shakespeare’s death, its sprawling cast and epic structure demand a huge space, and by heck the Globe is going to give it one. 

Ever wanted to play on the pitch at Stamford Bridge like a true Blue? Well, now's your chance to do just that, and for less. Chelsea FC's Bring Your Boots Tour is back, and for a limited time only, fans can score 20% off this once-in-a-lifetime stadium experience.

Set beneath the soaring dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, the Echoes and Innovations recital series kicks off this month, bringing five awe-inspiring performances from some of the world’s top organists. From James Orford’s tribute to WWII’s 80th anniversary to Franz Danksagmüller’s brainwave-powered electronic fusion, each evening offers something truly unique. Highlights include rising star Sarah Kim, global virtuoso Isabelle Demers, and David Briggs’ live organ score to the silent film King of Kings.

Running through until this September, snag your ticket for just £6 (down from £12), only through Time Out Offers.

Celebrated Korean-born, London-based artist Do Ho Suh will be the subject of a new Tate Modern exhibition in 2025. The display will feature large-scale installations, sculptures, videos and drawings, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in his world and explore ideas of belonging, collectivity and individuality, and connection and disconnection. At the same time, the exhibition will transport you from Seoul to New York via London, with life-sized replicas of Suh’s past and present homes in each city.

A world-first is on its way to the British Museum in ‘Ancient India: Living Traditions’. The new exhibition is the first ever to consider early Indian sacred art through a global, pluralistic lens. It takes visitors on a journey to the roots of three major world religions – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – through the emergence of the country’s sacred art, and looks at how ancient religious practice has shaped living traditions today, plus the daily lives of around 2 billion people across the globe. In the exhibition, you’ll find over 180 objects, including 2,000-year-old sculptures, paintings, drawings and manuscripts. The whole thing was pulled together in close collaboration with an advisory panel of practising Buddhists, Hindus and Jains, who helped shape the exhibition into what promises to be an intriguing triumph.

Step into a real-life video game. Four hours. Ten trails. Endless adventure. Phantom Peak is a living, breathing town in the heart of London. Go on quests with live actors, uncover secrets, and shape your own story. Grab a drink by the waterfall, explore at your pace, and dive into a world that evolves every 3-4 months with each season.

Enjoy four hours of exploration, wild-west vibes at the Thirsty Frontier Saloon, and delicious food and drinks. With new stories and surprises each season, there’s always more to discover.

Buy adult tickets from £29.75 only with Time Out Offers.

Following its acclaimed summer 2024 run at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Jordan Fein’s take on Fiddler on the Roof transfers to the Barbican as part of a UK tour. It’s a joyous, then suddenly very sad production that’s all about uprooting traditions. So for the famous opening image, where the fiddler would normally fiddle on a shtetl rooftop, instead he stands among wheat sheafs on a strip of land uprooted and peeled back like skin to hang threateningly above the stage. It’s a remarkable image in a production full of them; a production about reinventing a classic musical through small gestures and symbols, rather than radical high concepts. Famously, Fiddler was criticised when it premiered in 1964 as ‘shtetl kitsch’, but Fein, who co-directed the Young Vic’s ‘sexy Oklahoma!’ and helped strip it of any hokey old associations, eradicates the kitsch here, too. ‘Tradition!’, the cast chant in that proud opening number. In Fein’s thoughtful, hopeful take on the old classic, traditions change.

Drew McOnie’s first season in charge of the Open Air Theatre isn’t hugely distinguishable from those assembled one by his predecessor Timothy Sheader. Which is all to the good really, and nobody was seriously expecting musical theatre director and choreographer McOnie to ditch the splashy outdoor musicals. Plus, Shucked is a superb way to kick off his tenure: it’s the UK premiere for Robert Horn, Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally’s multi Tony-nominated 2022 musical comedy about a comically isolated rural farming community which must send representatives to the big city after their corn crop starts to fail. US director Jack O’Brien will restage his smash show with a new, UK cast. 

‘Wherever conflict erupts, sexual violence is present.’ So it’s surprising that until 2025, the UK has never had a major exhibition on sexual violence in conflict. This year the Imperial War Museum is hoping to shed light on the topic that remains widely under-discussed. Through first-person testimonies, objects, artwork, propoganda posters and papers, Unsilenced will investigate the different ways in which sexual violence in conflict can manifest. It will span the untold stories of child evacuees, victims of trafficking, prisoners of war, and survivors from the First World War to present-day conflicts, and highlight the ongoing efforts of those fighting for justice and working to prevent conflict-related sexual violence. It’s expected to be a sobering, ground-breaking exhibition.

Love him or hate, caustic Northern Irish playwright David Ireland is certainly a thing, and a year after an ultra-starry revival of his Ulster English at the Riverside Studios, here’s his West End debut proper. Having debuted on a brief tour of Scotland last summer, The Fifth Step sees Jack Lowden of Slow Horses fame reprise the role of Luka, a recovering alcoholic searching for a sponsor. Amping up the star power for 2025, Martin Freeman will play James, the deeply flawed individual who Luka ends up falling in with. Both of them are forced to confront their uncomfortable pasts. Finn den Hertog again directs. 

From screeching tube carriages and blaring rickshaws to the lulling podcast we listen to on our commute and the music that soundtracks our walks, noise is constantly shaping our lives, and in bigger, deeper ways than we might at first realise. The Baribican’s Feel the Sound exhibition promises to be a multi-sensory journey into our personal relationship with sound and an exploration of how the world of listening goes way beyond pure audio. Eleven commissions and installations will take over the Barbican Centre from the entrance on Silk Street to the Lakeside Terrace, all exploding visitors to frequencies, sound, rhythmic patterns and vibrations that define everything around us. Even the Centre’s underground car parks will be part action as it’s transformed into a club space. There’ll also be the chance to sing with a digital quantum choir and experience music without sound. Plus, look out for collabs with Boiler Room celebrating underground club culture, Joyride which will mix ‘boy racer’ subculture with DIY music communities and Nexus Studios which will fuse neuroscience and design to capture visitors’ emotional responses to music. This is ‘an invitation to awaken the senses, embrace our sonic world and discover the sound in each of us’, says the Barbican. Sounds like a hit. 

Nicholas Hytner's glorious OTT version of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ returns to the Bridge Theatre in May with a cast that includes JJ Feild as Oberon/Theseus, Susannah Fielding as Titania/Hippolyta, Emmanuel Akwafo as Bottom and David Moorst returning to the role of Puck/Philostrate. Typically, Nicholas Hytner’s modern-dress takes on the Bard are precise and revelatory, and he certainly applies some of his usual rigour to Shakespeare’s beloved comedy. But there’s also the feeling that he just got stumped by what is effectively a story about some fairies banging in a wood and decided that – screw it – he might gobble a couple of pills for inspiration (NB I am sure that Sir Nicholas did not actually do this). The result is a messy, sprawling, riotously gender-fluid and gloriously immersive production.

Fancy going to an immersive experience that will take you through the history of British music? Live Odyssey will open in the capital of British rock, Camden ofc, in May this year. The musical experience will take visitors through the ages, from the Beatles’ ’60s, to ’90s Britpop and beyond. Don’t forget to wear your Fred Perry polo, because the highlight of the exhibition promises to be a never-before-seen live hologram performance from The Libertines, using ‘state-of-the-art’ tech. 

In the 19th century, Utagawa Hiroshige produced thousands of prints capturing the landscape, nature and daily life in Japan during the Edo period. He became one of Japan’s most famous and prolific artists, and continues to influence art today. Now there’s a rare chance to see many of his never-before-seen works on display at the British Museum, with several pieces believed to be the only surviving examples of their kind in the world. Hiroshige: artist of the open road will be the first exhibition of his work in London for a quarter of a century, giving an insight into Japan during a time of rapid change presaging the end of samurai rule. It will span Hiroshige’s 40-year career through prints, paintings, books and sketches.

Lindsay Posner’s Tamsin Greig-starring revival of Terence Rattigan’s melancholy 1952 classic got good notices when it ran at Theatre Royal Bath earlier in 2024, and now it books a transfer to the West End. Greig returns as the suicidal Hester, whose life has disintegrated following her abandonment of her husband William in favour of a younger lover, alcoholic former RAF pilot Freddie. Finbar Lynch also reprises his role as William, with other casting TBC.

We had to wait a full four years for Imelda Staunton’s headlining turn in the musical Hello, Dolly!: announced in 2020, a combination of pandemic disruption and the beloved actor’s commitment to The Crown meant it only finally emerged last summer. But now she’s making up for lost time, hitting the stage again less than a year later in a big-budget revival for George Barnard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession. She’s brought her daughter along too: Bessie Carter (aka Staunton Jnr) will star as  Vivie Warren, an aspiring lawyer and Cambridge graduate who attempts to finally get to know her mother Mrs Kitty Warren, unaware she’s a former prostitute and current brothel madame. It might sound lurid, but Shaw was an ardent social reformer, and this 1902 classic outlines how the sex trade in Edwardian Britain was more fuelled by a lack of opportunities for women than moral degeneracy. Dominic Cooke will direct, his third show with Staunton after Hello, Dolly! and Follies at the National Theatre.

Space fans, don't despair: while the neighbouring Science Museum’s 40-year-old Exploring Space exhibition is being taken down and reworked, National History Museum is treating astronomy lovers to a fun show called Could Life Exist Beyond Earth?. The NHM is best known for dino skeletons and taxidermied beasts, but it also owns some of the world’s most important space rocks, many of which will be on display here. Go along to snap a selfie with a piece of Mars, touch a fragment of the Moon and even touch the Allende meteorite, which is, remarkably, older than Earth itself.

The British Library's exhibitions are always fascinating, digging up all kinds of books and papery ephemerea to shed a light on unexpected topics. And this topic looks especially fertile; ‘Unearthed: The Power Of Gardening’ will show how green spaces transform our lives, using a historic array of artefacts. Highlights include the first English gardening manual, Charles Darwin’s vasculum used for collecting plant specimens on the Beagle voyage, and the only surviving illustrated ‘Old English Herbal’.