Things to do in London this week

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.

It’s easy to take our dear mums and everything they do for granted. While you should be showing her your appreciation all-year round, Mothering Sunday is the perfect chance to give your ma a proper break and do something to make her feel extra special. Now’s the time to get organised and plan a proper celebration of the matriarchs in your life for Sunday March 15 with our comprehensive guide.  

The Southbank Centre is teaming up with Switzerland’s Montreux Jazz Festival for a second time to present a weekend of events celebrating the legacy of legendary Miles Davis. There'll be a mixture of free and ticketed events, workshops, panel discussions and jam sessions inspired by the trumpeter's work, in the centenary year of his birth. Highlights include a gig from Theo Croker with a line-up of special guests, and Mercury Music Prize-nominated corto.alto playing a set that takes in broken-beat bounce and bass-heavy dub, signposting jazz's future sounds.  

The Fat Badger is allegedly a pub, but one that goes against the very concept of the pub by hiding behind a velvet rope. A woman with a guestlist will send you through the backdoor and up to the top of the stairs to the restaurant. Freed from the tyranny of the menu, you pay £105 for whatever George and the team decide they want to serve that week. Thankfully, George – who honed his craft at The River Cafe – is a chef you can trust. Despite their insistence, the Fat Badger is not a pub. It’s not even a gastropub. It is simply a very good restaurant, and there’s no shame in that, and it has some seriously great food.  

Frankenstein’s monster gets a companion, and thanks to writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal, the Bride is given a voice – in fact, it’s more of a roar. Played fearlessly by Jessie Buckley, this Bride is very much alive. Gyllenhaal stitches together many genres: from B-movies and crime thrillers to musicals. An eerie black and white opening sees Buckley play Mary Shelley, suspended in an afterlife but somehow able to connect her consciousness to that of a young living human. She is Ida (also Buckley), a smart but stifled working girl in 1930s Chicago who becomes apparently possessed by the spirit of Shelley. Buckley is brilliantly unhinged as the white-haired, ink-stained Bride, whose dialogue switches from Ida’s Chicago drawl to Shelley’s cut-glass literate wit. Gyllenhaal brings thought-provoking feminist concepts into a big-budget, accessible, genre-blending movie.

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. 

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. 

Have you ever swum with a sea snake? If not, you may soon get your chance. Apparently, UK waters are about half a century off becoming habitable to these potently venomous creatures, but if you’re impatient, Somerset House has you covered. Artist Diana-Fiona Armour has scaled up a 3D scan of this endangered sea snake (more professionally known as Aipysurus fuscus), sliced it into three parts, illuminated it with mesh-LED, and set it among the courtyard’s dancing fountains. By night, it makes for impactful viewing, the snake gleaming with the cold shine of a vodka luge: slick, slippery, disco-lit. 

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.

Pixar loves a furry body-swap adventure, but the animation house has really gone full David Attenborough with its latest, in which a young woman turns into a beaver to save her verdant corner of the American burbs. The results are like Avatar meets Life on Earth with bits of Mission: Impossible, The Birds, Sharknado and John Carpenter thrown in. Somehow from that eccentric array of ingredients, the studio has cooked up its funniest and most exciting effort since 2017’s Coco. Smart storytelling and snappy editing elevate the jokes and enrich the emotions. The animation, bursting with autumnal colours, is a delight too. 

Anna Ziegler’s 90-minute two-hander, Evening all Afternoon, is a tremendous vehicle for two actors. It enables an absolutely storming stage debut for Erin Kellyman. She plays Delilah, the surly university-age American daughter to an unseen British father. He’s taken her back home to England, where she marinates in the grief at her mother’s death and the isolation of the Covid lockdown. And also resentment of her dad’s new wife Jennifer (Anastasia Hille). The play is built on a fascinating variation on the old Brit/Yank culture clash. Over the course of 90 minutes, Ziegler smartly deconstructs their facades.

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. 

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.

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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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.

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.