Things to do in London this week

‘Guys and Dolls’ is a musical with such a towering reputation and Nicolas Hytner’s Bridge production is a staggering achievement, a more or less flawless take that’s turned into something transcendent by the staging. This version of Frank Loesser’s 1950 classic uses a stunningly choreographed and incredibly fun series of rising and falling platforms to stage the show right in the middle of a standing audience. It’s pure joy. 

Sure, impressionism is great and all, but right after it came the serious world changers. We’re talking cubism, expressionism and abstraction, the birth of modern art as we know it, and that’s what this show is all about, the big hitters of early modern art history: Paul Cezanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt and Henri Mattise.

This Sundaycrews from Oxford and Cambridge will go head-to-head in eight-oared rowing boats across the Thames for the annual Boat Race. The women’s race is up first at 4pm, followed an hour later by the men’s race. Around 250,000 spectators are dur to flock to along the four-and-a-quarter mile course in south-west London to watch the proceedings. Check out our suggestions of the best spots along the route to get a load of the action. 

The Finnish Church in Rotherhithe is known for two things; its public sauna facilities and the two festive fairs it hosts at Christmas and Easter. Head down to the three-day affair this spring to sample traditional Finnish sweets and seasonal treats including mämmi and pasha and browse stalls laden with Moomin paraphernalia, chocolates and handmade arts and crafts products. A Finnish style BBQ will be held in the garden and the cafe will be serving up its popular cinnamon buns too. Kippis!

Writer-director Ryan Calais Cameron’s play ‘For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy’ has been playing to sold-out, ovating houses from the word go and now it’s coming to the West End. Six young Black men – whose listed names are varying synonyms for black, eg Jet, Sable – are having a freeform conversation about life, its challenges and their attitudes towards them. It’s a show about performative masculinity, specifically – if not exclusively – Black masculinity with wickedly funny jokes to undercut the seriousness. 

The Museum of London’s 'Executions’ exhibition contains artworks, objects and first-hand accounts relating to the unhappy victims of the scaffold and the hoards who turned up to witness them breathe their last between the 12th and 19th centuries. At this candle-lit after-hours event you can hear execution ballads sung live, join curator-led tours and guest talks to hear more of the lesser-told stories in the exhibits, watch film screenings and sample some rather intriguing-sounding drinks inspired by the show. 

The members of Breach Theatre weren’t alive when Section 28 –a law that banned ‘the promotion of homosexuality in schools and local authorities’ – was passed in 1988 but the 15 years it was in force had a wounding legacy on the generations that grew up under its influence. Through verbatim testimony, Parliamentary transcripts, news reports and other materials from the time, these four performers tell the story of one of the most regressive, destructive and cruel pieces of legislation in this country’s recent history. Oh, and it’s a musical.

Despite selling two-and-a-half million copies, Hanya Yanagihara’s novel ‘A Little Life’ has proven unadaptable into a television series. No such problem for Belgian super director Ivo van Hove, whose Dutch stage version of ‘A Little Life’ has been kicking around for a few years. Now it debuts in English language form, for a West End run starring James Norton as the story’s deeply troubled central character, Jude. (It’s been trimmed down from the four-hour Dutch version, fyi). 

Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini’s new play feels rough, juddery and full of life. The Jade Lewis-directed coming-of-age drama about four Black female friends in the months around their GCSEs has a joyously all-over-the-shop energy, its imperfections and overexcitement perfectly matching the manic pace of the adolescence it’s depicting. I know a good time when I see one, and ‘Sleepova’ surely is that.

You can almost hear Denzil Forrester’s paintings. The Grenada-born British artist has been filling his canvases with images of London’s sweat-drenched reggae and dub dancehalls for decades, and now in his 60s, his work is still pulsating with the rhythm and movement of the clubs. Forrester lets his totally unique aesthetic just go wherever it wants. This is an angry, sad, heartbroken painting. Forrester paints Black life in London: it’s full of joy and music, but sadly, it can still be full of pain too.

You know what your March might need? Endless baskets of dim sum. Preferably at a very popular Chinatown stalwart that wants to feed you to the gills with things like Taiwanese pork buns, pork and prawn soup dumplings, and ‘supreme’ crab meat xiao long bao. Sounds good right? Well, we can go one further by giving you all that – plus a glass of prosecco – for just £23.

Bottomless dim sum and a glass of prosecco for £23.95, only through Time Out Offers.

BFI Flare returns to the BFI Southbank (and to the BFI Player online) over ten days this March to showcase the best new LGBTQ+ cinema from around the world. This year’s Opening Gala selection is ‘The Stroll’, a groundbreaking documentary following transgender sex workers in New York City while the festival closes with ‘Drifter’, a portrait of a young gay man’s sexual exploits in contemporary Berlin.

For seven years in the 1980s, Chinese-American New York photographer Baldwin Lee lugged an ancient wooden large-format camera around the Southern states of the USA and took pictures. Pictures of families, of kids playing in the stifling summer heat, of young men posing with their cars, of girls in their best dresses. Of clapped-out wrecks, sagging shacks and ominous intimations of poverty, slavery and racism. This show is a fragment of the 10,000 plates Baldwin Lee yielded during this period. You won’t see a better show of photography this year. Maybe ever.

Simon McBurney’s legendary theatre company Complicite returns with its first major theatre show since its mind-blowing ‘The Encounter’. ‘Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead’ is a brand new stage version of Nobel Prize-winning Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk’s singular novel, a powerful and compelling mix of noir thriller and righteous eco-manifesto. It’s in no way an easy proposition to bring to the stage – which is kind of the exact point of Complicite. 

The works in this show are salvaged from the Jamaican sound pioneer’s famous Black Ark studio in Jamaica – which he apocryphally burned to the ground in 1979 – and his later Blue Ark in Switzerland. The exhibition is exactly what you’d expect: a hectic tornado of found imagery, scrawled text and painted pictograms, all coalescing into a vibrant portrayal of how Perry’s brain worked.

Inspired by Langston Hughes' book of the same name, ‘Rivers Run Deep...’ explores the Black artists from the American South who have been creating their own, unique visual culture since the middle of the last century. Artists include Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, Hawkins Bolden, Bessie Harvey and Charles Williams, all creatives operating outside of the mainstream, using local materials to create art about oppression, marginalisation and ancestral memory. 

One for the true carnivores out there. Promising “whole joints, big flames and good times”, chophouse and seafood restaurant Block Soho takes expertly-sourced meat, fish and veg and makes them smoulder to perfection on its huge charcoal grill. It ages its meat in a dedicated Himalayan salt chamber and serves them in a buzzy dining room just off Dean Street. Make your next night out special by tucking into a three-course feast and signature cocktail worth £47 for just £20.

Three-courses and signature cocktail for £20 only through Time Out Offers.