The best things to do in London this winter 2022

Still riding high from his breakout turn as Connell in ‘Normal People’, Paul Mescal makes his post-fame return to the stage in the iconic role of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s peerless ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Though Mescal is undoubtedly the numero uno draw in Rebecca Frecknall’s production, there’s a terrific supporting cast, with Lydia Wilson as Blanche Dubois and Anjana Vasan as Stella. It’s now sold out, but day tickets will be available if you’re prepared to queue.  

Magdalena Abakanowicz’s ‘Abkans’ are massive woven sculptures that look like the type of bizarre, organic creation you’d expect to discover buried in the deepest reaches of a rain forest. Made in the 60s and 70s, the ‘Abkans’ cemented the artist’s reputation - as well they should’ve, because these towering, raw shapes are absolutely brilliant. And, as luck would have it, you can see a whole load of them in Tate Modern’s huge Blavatnik Building this Autumn. If that wasn’t reason enough to go, they’re also showing some of the Polish artist’s other large-scale works, including ‘War Games’, sculptures making use of felled tree trunks. 

The Museum of Architecture’s Gingerbread City is back with impressive models made of dough. Feast your eyes on an imaginary city made by architecture firms, who were invited to pick a plot on the masterplan and respond to a brief set by Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design. This year’s exhibition presents not just one edible city but five miniature cities across five different climate zones: Polar, Continental, Temperate, Dry and Tropical.

Does the world need an all-singing version of the life story of Nelson Mandela? We’re about to find out! New musical ‘Mandela’ – fully endorsed by the iconic South African leader’s family – has been in development for some time. With Broadway director Schele Williams and Broadway writer Laiona Michelle at the helm, it isn’t hard to see where this musical is intended to end up – this season at the hip Young Vic is presumably a final litmus test before the show is launched upon the Great White Way. 

Canary Wharf isn’t high on our list of London spots to hit up if you’re looking for cheeriness, but every January, a warm, glowy feeling descends on the financial district thanks to this annual spectacular. Between January 18 and 28, the area’s towering skyscrapers become the backdrop for Winter Lights, a collection of illuminating artworks, installations and interactive experiences.

Rising non-binary star Emma Corrin – aka Princess Diana in ‘The Crown’ – takes on the role of literature’s most famous gender non-conformist in Neil Bartlett’s new stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’. The classic 1928 novel follows the eponymous Orlando, an immortal being born male during the reign of Elizabeth, who goes on to live for another 300 years sporadically changing gender and, frankly, has a bloody good time doing it. Michael Grandage directs, with the rest of the casting TBC.

‘The Unfriend’ sees erstwhile ‘Doctor Who’ head writer Steven Moffat make his debut as a playwright in partnership with his ‘Sherlock’ collaborator Mark Gatiss (who makes his debut as a stage director). The social satire has already been a hit at Chichester Festival Theatre, and follows English couple Peter and Debbie who befriend an eccentric, Trump-loving old lady named Elsa while on holiday in the US. They agree to stay in touch and finally look her up online when she invites herself to stay – only to make a horrifying discovery. Reece Shearsmith, Amanda Abbington and Frances Barber reprise their roles from the original 2022 Chichester run.

Now well into his eighties, former ‘Star Trek’ actor George Takei has famously reinvented himself as a liberal LGBT Twitter icon. But he can still cut it on stage too: at an age where most of his peers have long retired, Takei comes to London for a 13-week-stint next year with the UK premiere of his musical ‘Allegiance’. Written by Jay Kuo with Marc Acito and Lorenzo Thione, the musical is inspired by Takei’s own memories of growing up in a Japanese internment camp in the US for a portion of the Second World War. 

In a maverick move that nonetheless now feels strangely like it was inevitably going to happen, Sean Holmes directs the first ever Shakespeare’s Globe production to be staged in both of its venues, that is to say the outdoor Globe Theatre and indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. With its location-jumping, time-hopping, tone-shifting story, ‘The Winter’s Tale’ makes perfect sense (well, kind of) for this sort of treatment, with the action starting off in the Wamamaker’s starchy Sicilia, and moving to the wilderness of Bohemia – that is to say the outdoor Globe Theatre, which is going to be pretty chilly at the start of the run.

Originally commissioned as a dance show, ‘Sylvia’ was reconceived as a full-blown musical and its initial 2018 run at the Old Vic (reviewed below) was declared to be a work-in-progress. Its 2023 run – with Beverley Knight returning to star – will be its official 'world premiere’. It’s a potted – albeit lengthy – history of the suffragette movement, both enthralling and, sometimes, actively exhilarating.

Sam Mendes’s recent forays onto the stage – ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, ‘King Lear’, ‘The Ferryman’ –  have all been bombastic, blockbuster-style affairs that sparkle with the traces of his Hollywood success. But he tamps it down with ‘The Lehman Trilogy’, an epic but fairly modest three-actor play that charts the story of the Lehman brothers and the institutions that would go on to bear their names. It’s basically a really, really good history lecture beautifully framed by Mendes's team.

You've got to wade throughout a lot of male names in the history of modernism before you get to any women, but they were there, and they were pivotal. This show aims to celebrate three of those women – Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin – all working in Germany in the early twentieth century, and all having a huge impact on the birth of modernism.