Things to do in London this week

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the godmother of rock and roll. Raised by her mother, a travelling Arkansas evangelist, she played guitar and sang on the road from the age of six and grew up to be a huge recording star. Her story and her music are extraordinary. So it’s a privilege and a treat to see British soul goddess Beverly Knight play Rosetta in this intimate two-hander that’s all about the music. Knight is a singer who raises the hackles on the back of your neck, but she does more here, channelling Rosetta Tharpe in a stomping, dramatic performance that conveys the passion, resilience, and sheer physical hard work of her life on the road. During the finger-tapping, off-beat clapping, and irrepressible grinning, there is a higher power being channelled, and it’s pure joy to witness it.

Everybody loves David Hockney. So it’s good news that the old geezer can’t seem to stop making art despite pushing 90. More colourful works from the octogenarian are on display at the Serpentine North – the gallery’s first ever Hockney exhibition. It focuses on recent works, including the celebrated Moon Room, reflecting the painter’s lifelong interest in the lunar cycle, plus several digital paintings created as part of his Sunrise series. 

This giddy, wonderfully optimistic intergalactic epic teams Ryan Gosling up with a friendly extraterrestrial rock creature to save the galaxy from a catastrophic solar event. With a near-irresistible combination of Steve McQueen charisma and Droopy Dog reluctance, Gosling brings charm and physical comedy chops as scientist-turned-teacher-turned-reluctant astronaut Ryland Grace, who wakes from hypersleep to find that his crew mates are dead and he’s several lightyears into a one-way mission to save the dying sun. It’s the science-fiction blockbuster we need in these fractious times: an anthem to resilience and co-operation that seeks solutions and rejects exceptionalism – American, or even human – to celebrate the simple possibilities of, well, just getting along a bit better.

Terry’s has changed much since it was founded in 1982. As London’s only caff with its own brand of tea (yes, it’s as good as Yorkshire Gold), this traditional joint is an absolute goldmine for good old British nostalgia. And the food is very good too. Founded by, you guessed it, a former Smithfield butcher called Terry, the caff is now helmed by Terry’s son Austin and still gets its ingredients from London’s finest food suppliers. The food is proper English affair, with an all-day breakfast of mega fry-ups, bacon sarnies, ham, egg and chips and Billingsgate rolls – whopping St John buns stuffed with a generous portion of meaty scallops, thick, smoky bacon, earthy black pudding and topped off with an indulgent spread of Café de Paris butter. 

Tim Foley is a playwright who has also written several Doctor Who audio adventures, two strands to his career that come together very nicely in It Walks Around the House at Night, a rip-roaring horror adventure that packs in laughs and chills in equal measure without actively crossing the line into full-on comedy. It’s about a misfit out-of-work actor who gets caught up in ominous supernatural goings on in a spooky mansion. It’s a hugely enjoyable – and yes, scary – piece of theatre horror entertainment that feels like a breath of fresh air. 

Sverrir Guðnason (Borg/McEnroe’s Bjorn Borg) plays middle-aged dad and trawlerman Magnús in Hlynur Pálmason’s Icelandic family drama. He is lonely and struggling in the aftermath of his recent separation from long-time partner Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir). For artist Anna, played with steel and soul by Garðarsdóttir, the break-up means rediscovering her own inner life. The intention is to show emotionally connected people dealing with transition with as much strength and grace as they can muster. It has witty interludes and surrealistic touches, all underpinned with humanism and compassion.

Maimuna Memon’s Manic Street Creature did the rounds at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years back. Now it’s back in a slightly expanded form: a gig-theatre show that mixes Memon’s original songs with her spoken-word storytelling, she’s joined on stage by a three-strong backing band. The story concerns a young musician named Ria, who moves to London and falls for Daniel, a sensitive soul who struggles with his mental health – he is the titular Manic Street Creature. The engine of the show is its form, being built around a cycle of Memon’s folky, jazzy songs, with her earnest, ethereal singing voice and emotive lyrics wilfully juxtaposed with her blunt, sweary Lancastrian vowels when speaking.

There’s a double bill going on at the Hayward Gallery, and the theme is fabrics: whether it’s what we wear or the fabric of life itself. The companion exhibitions are designed to be experienced one after the other. First is Chinese sculpture artist Yin Xiuzhen’s Heart to Heart, which is an ode to used clothes. She uses pieces of clothing stitched together and stretched over metal frames to make her huge immersive installations. Next, Yin Xiuzhen’s work is a perplexingly dense tangle of crimson thread. Both installations encourage you to engage with how they’ve been constructed and exhibited. But more universally, both shows tap into something invisible yet ever-present; whether it’s the interconnectedness of all things, or how history moves forward one wardrobe change at a time. 

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is as American as apple pie, so on paper it seems like a strange first choice of play for Michael Sheen’s new Welsh National Theatre. But the whole thing manages to be so exuberantly Welsh that you’ll soon forget the town of Grover’s Corners is supposed to be somewhere in New Hampshire. Francesca Goodridge’s production does Welshify a few details, but it softens (and maybe sentimentalises) a strange play that’s often intentionally served up cold and dry. It’s impressive and undeniable that the Welsh National Theatre has stamped itself on a classic with its very first production. Wales is lucky to have Michael Sheen, who has turned his back on Hollywood to launch his new theatre company. And if the WNT productions keep transferring this way, then we’re lucky to have him too.

Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass is a really weird play. It concerns a Jewish Brooklyn housewife who is inexplicably paralysed in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Germany’s 1938 anti-Jewish pogrom. But that doesn’t touch the fact that Miller’s last big hit is a seething Freudian stew, spiced with Jewish guilt, a heady, occasionally surreal blend of desire and regret. This is a fascinating and fitfully brilliant production of a fascinating and fitfully brilliant play. 

Known to many in her home country of Colombia as ‘La Maestra’, Beatriz González is considered to be one of the most influential artists to come out of Latin America, and this vast collection of over 150 works spanning her six-decade-long career leaves you with no questions as to how she garnered such a reputation. There’s a Warholian quality to much of her work, which uses images of figures from mainstream media and pop culture as subjects, ranging from Queen Elizabeth II to Jackie Onassis to Botticelli’s Venus, all in bright, vibrant block colours. González passed away at the age of 93 in January of this year, making this reflection on her once-in-a-generation career feel all the more poignant. Paying a visit to this splendid survey of her most consequential work feels like the perfect way to pay tribute to an artist who, right up until her death, used her talent to challenge mainstream opinion and shine a light on those who needed it most.

Tracey Emin: A Second Life is an evocative experience. Positioned as a 40-year retrospective through the pioneering artist’s vast and varied repertoire, the show lays bare Emin’s life through her distinct and often unsettling art, from career highs – such as the iconic, Turner Prize-nominated ‘My Bed’, which is every bit as shocking and moving today as it was in 1998 – to stark personal lows in work depicting her experiences with sexual violence, abortion and recent life-threatening illness. As you can imagine, with such subject matter, it is not always a comfortable experience for the artist and the viewer alike. However, Emin’s flair for dark comedy adds moments of levity throughout. ‘Mad Tracey from Margate’ is truly a force to be reckoned with, and a master of reflecting society back at itself, warts and all.

Get a glimpse of the hidden lives of queer people in midcentury New York at this intimate exhibition. Before homosexuality was legalised, Donna Gottschalk photographed the people she described as ‘brave and defiant warriors’ for daring to live openly as themselves, and take part in the emerging lesbian, trans and gay rights movements. This Photographers Gallery exhibition of her work puts her images in conversation with texts by writer Hélène Giannecchini, who is decades her junior, creating an intergenerational dialogue charting changing times. 

The Young V&A’s Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends is nominally aimed at kids aged eight to 14, but there’s plenty for adults too. It’s a nice mix of nostalgic paraphernalia that will appeal to adults, and hands-on, how-to-make-your-own stop-motion film stuff that youngsters will get a kick out of. The original models are fascinating, charming and surprisingly impressive. From the gargantuan pirate ship from Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! to a series of versions of Wallace & Gromit’s Were-Rabbit that gradually strip it down to its robot skeleton. It’s just really cool – and maybe a little moving. 

The National Portrait Gallery is an education in our collective understanding of British life, culture and history. But who isn’t here? Who doesn’t get to shape the version of the nation’s identity on display? That question is central to the work of American photographer Catherine Opie’s exhibition To Be Seen. Visitors are met with the piercing gaze of actor Daniela (now Daniel) Sea, best known for playing trans man Max in The L Word, another room is filled with vivid portraits shot on black backdrops, redolent of Baroque masters. A nude portrait of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad evokes Caravaggio. It’s the kind of representation that has an impact. And that’s something worth celebrating. 

Celebrate the Year of the Horse in Chinatown with a feast that keeps the good fortune flowing. Tucked in the heart of Chinatown, Leongs Legend is a long-running Taiwanese favourite offering 45 percent off its bottomless dim sum and prosecco brunch, with 90 minutes of unlimited handmade dumplings and a glass of fizz from a very enticing £24.95. Expect plent of baskets (over 40 dishes) of xiao long bao, and a lively, teahouse-style setting that makes it an obvious pick for ringing in the lunar celebrations with friends.

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Newsflash! The Idler has given Victoria a bit of a glow-up. The Mediterranean restaurant sits inside The July hotel and feels stylish without trying too hard, just the place to slide into a booth for a date or grab a solo seat at the bar and still feel right at home. The dishes lean on seasonal British produce with a bright Mediterranean lift. Until March 31 you can enjoy two or three courses with our exclusive Time Out offer.

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Following his Self Portraits show at the Royal Academy in 2019 and then New Perspectives at the National Gallery in 2022, the most recent fix comes from the National Portrait Gallery. Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting focuses on an often-overlooked aspect of the celebrated painter’s oeuvre; his works on paper. Compared to the grand monuments of Freud’s paintings, his drawings are delicate and vulnerable, which is why he largely made them as preparatory sketches or to keep a visual diary. Where the show really succeeds is in its curation, fostering a dialogue between Freud’s drawings and paintings. When they’re hung side by side you really appreciate his keen observation of the body reflected in every determined line. If you’re crazy for Lucian Freud, then this show will give you a peek into his practice. 

The Picture Comes First, Rose Wylie’s marvellous retrospective at the Royal Academy, is hugely varied in its subject matter – ranging from the Blitz to Nicole Kidman – Wylie’s paintings are unified by a joyful and vibrant energy which beams out from all of them. The RA’s high ceilings and grand interiors act as a brilliant canvas for the artist’s large-scale, often child-like works. The 91-year-old Wylie is the first female painter to have a full retrospective in the space and it only adds to Wylie’s credentials as a trailblazing feminist artist. This show is a fantastic testament to an artist who has proven tenfold that age is no barrier to reaching one’s full potential. Equal parts puzzling, entertaining and thoughtful, this show is guaranteed to leave you in a better mood than when you arrived.