Things to do in London this weekend (2-3 August)

You’ve probably heard of ‘Instagram face’. This summer, Somerset House is dedicating a whole exhibition to things like the internet’s inclination for everyone to look exactly the same. In Virtural Beauty, Somerset House will explore the impact of digital technologies on how we define beauty today. The show will display more than 20 artworks from the 'Post-Internet' era, an art movement concerned with the influence of the internet on art and culture. It will feature sculpture, photography, installation, video and performance art, with highlights including ORLAN’s Omniprésence (1993), a groundbreaking performance in which the artist live-streamed her own facial aesthetic surgery, and AI-generated portraits by Minnie Atairu, Ben Cullen Williams, and Isamaya Ffrench. 

The time is once again Nye, as Michael Sheen returns to the National Theatre to reprise firebrand politician and NHS founder, Aneurin Bevan, in Tim Price’s play, after it originally debuted last year. The state of the country’s health and that of Nye himself are intwined from the start, as we open to the bed-ridden deputy leader of the Labour Party. It’s July 1960. We’re here, it’s increasingly clear, for the end of his life. Plunging us into Nye’s unconscious, Price gives us a dream-like portrait of his life. Sheen is predictably great at combining Nye’s burning sense of belief in welfare for all and his irascibility within a single scene. This play is a rallying cry for the power of empathy and bloody-minded humanitarianism.         

For a country known for its elite cattle – the majestically marbled wagyu – there are far fewer Japanese steakhouses than sushi spots. Kanpai Classic laughs in the face of delicate nigiri and volleys back a robust barrage of meat. This place isn’t just about a serious slab of steak on your plate, but a whole wagyu experience. It has various cuts, all imported daily from Japan, displayed on a platter complete with name cards. But first, a series of wagyu-adjacent starters; a caviar-slathered hunk of beef tartate, wagyu gyoza and wagyu spring roll. Then, it’s time for the Jules Verne-worthy journey into wagyu. Each piece is cooked atop the mesh grill fitted into the table, then deftly flipped onto plates.

Emily Kam Kngwarray, an Anmatyerr artist from the Sandover region in the Northern Territory of Australia, didn’t start making art until she was 70. Her prolific and vibrant output during the ensuing decade paved the way for Aboriginal artists, women artists and Australian artists – and is the subject of this, her first major solo exhibition in Europe. Expect monumental canvases adorned with batik and acrylic patterns whose networks of dots and lines are almost immersive.

Writer-director James Gunn’s puckish and political blockbuster skips jauntily past the entire plot of Richard Donner’s 1978 classic, leaving out the basics of DC’s most righteous figure. There’s none of the scene-setting Smallville stuff, no early flirtations with girlfriend Lois Lane (the impressive Rachel Brosnahan) either, and not very much of Clark Kent. Instead, there are team-ups with Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and someone called Mister Terrific (House’s Edi Gathegi). The story cedes the floor to the villain: Lex Luthor, played by Nicholas Hoult as an alpha tech man-baby and David Corenswet, talented-spotted by Gunn playing Pearl’s creepy projectionist, makes the best Man of Steel since Christopher Reeve, a lovely balance of sweetness, strength and self-doubt bubbling beneath the surface. Gunn never shies away from the political optics of this immigrant hero and his zeitgeisty nemesis, a billionaire megalomaniac adept at manipulating talk shows and social media discourse alike.

First-time playwright Shaan Sahota does a decent job of spinning an In The Thick of It-style yarn about Angad (Adeel Akhtar), a very junior British Sikh shadow minister who suddenly finds himself in play for the leadership of what is implicitly the Tory Party. The opening scenes thrum with an energy similar to a previous National Theatre triumph, James Graham’s This House, as it plunges us into an amusingly compromised world of sweary spads, cocky whips and malleable MPs. Helena Wilson is scene-stealingly entertaining as the apparently humble Angad’s shark-like head of comms Petra. It’s fun.

Another year, another spectacular line-up of classical music. In 2025, the orchestral extravaganza will feature 86 concerts across eight weeks, with over 3,000 artists taking to the stage, with the majority of the action taking place inside the grand surroundings of London’s Royal Albert Hall. This weekend, look out for The Traitors Prom hosted by Claudia Winkleman herself and Mozart and Bruckner performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. 

In Mansfield, the wedding of the year is about to take place. Local girl Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) is marrying Polish lad Marek (Julian Kostov). The ceremony plays out in real time at Beth Steel’s Till The Stars Come Down, now running in the West End after debuting at the National Theatre. Director Bijan Sheibani sucks you right into this world through fast-paced dialogue and artfully constructed tableaus. It is heady, hilarious and emotional; the wedding itself might be a car crash, but this imaginative production is anything but. 

London’s newest major immersive experience is, as you would imagine from the title, all about Elvis Presley, and promises to offer a whirlwind two-hour tour through his life, building up to his classic ’68 comeback special. It comes from Layered Reality, the company behind the hit shows The War of the Worlds and the Gunpowder Plot, and ‘will use cutting-edge technology and live actors and musicians to deliver intimate moments that offer an insight into the man behind the myth’. 

Love sushi, dumplings or noodles? Inamo’s got you covered. This high-tech spot in Soho or Covent Garden lets you order from interactive tabletops, play over 20 games while you wait and even doodle on your table. Then it’s all you can eat pan-Asian dishes like Sichuan chicken, red dragon rolls and Korean wings with bottomless drinks. Usually £113.35, now just £33 or £26 if you're in early at the weekend!

Get Inamo’s best ever bottomless food & drink brunch from only £26 with Time Out Offers.

Having premiered at the Old Vic in 2017 – and gone on to conquer the West End and Broadway – Girl From the North Country has lost none of its potency as it returns to the theatre where it all began — a dreamy, sepia-soaked production of character-driven vignettes and reimagined Bob Dylan songs. It’s 1934 in Duluth, Minnesota – Dylan’s actual birthplace – and the Great Depression is chewing through the soul of the town. At the centre is the Laine family, struggling to keep their guesthouse (and each other) from crumbling under debt, loss, and the weight of time. As we follow their story, we enter a world that feels like the inside of an old jukebox: full of half-remembered stories, crackling melancholy, and music that never quite stops playing.

The Arcola Theatre's alt-opera festival Grimeborn returns for its eighteenth year in 2025 and it’s as eclectic as ever, from a stripped back reworking of Wagner’s magnum opus Tristan und Isolde (Aug 13-16) to the first ever full staging of John Joubert’s final opera Jane Eyre (Aug 6-9)  and the return of last year’s bit of fun Sense & Senibility, The Musical (Aug 19-23) which is, you know, a bit more musical-y, and also last year’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which is, you know, bleak.

★★★★ 'Frameless has managed to create something genuinely exciting' - Time Out

Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined beyond belief, through cutting-edge technology. Situated in Marble Arch, Frameless plays host to four unique galleries with hypnotic visuals and a dazzling score. Enjoy 90 minutes of surreal artwork from Bosch, Dalí and more for just £24!

Get £24.80 tickets (originally £31) to Frameless, only with Time Out Offers.

The balcony scene from Jamie Lloyd’s Evita is the biggest news to come out of the theatre world in years. People have been entranced by Rachel Zegler’s fame and the sheer ballsiness of Lloyd having her sing ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ for free to the good people of Argyll Street at 9pm each night from the London Palladium balcony. Opening the second half, the balcony sequence is a study in pure artifice. Clad in flowing white dress and an elegant blonde wig, Evita – now the First Lady – sings her great song of love and yearning for the country she’s cynically worked her way to the summit of.  But the Eva the outside audience sees is a lie: wig, dress and her sense of empathy are torn off before she returns to the stage. There is so much that is good about it – from Zegler, to the choreography, to the timely antifascist sentiment, to That Scene. It’s not just the London theatre event of the summer, but the London event of the summer full stop. 

London Palladium. Now until Sep 6. Buy tickets here. 

The Jamaican-born, London-raised photographer Dennis Morris is best known for his portraits of Bob Marley: a teenaged Morris, then a Hackney schoolkid, first photographed the reggae star in 1973. He went on to photograph the Sex Pistols and other reggae and punk icons, and there are plenty of stunning portraits of the likes of John Lydon and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry in this hugely satisfying first UK retrospective of Morris’s work. Morris’s musical portraits are thrilling, but it’s his 1970s documentary work capturing Black and Asian life in Hackney and Southall that steals the show. They’re valuable, essential moments in time, capturing the capital at a point when Black British and British Indian communities were becoming well-established in some neighbourhoods but were anything but integrated or widely accepted. 

‘Intimate Apparel’ is a period drama, following a selection of characters in New York City, 1905. The story centres on Esther (Samira Wiley), a hard-working but shy and emotionally repressed Black seamstress who specialises in ‘intimate apparel’ – that is to say underwear, which in 1905 includes a lot of fancy corsets. Each of Lynn Nottage’s characters exists on some sort of margin, they’re all transgressing in each others’ spaces: they have intimate relationships more complicated than simple friendship. It’s a beautifully acted and exquisitely written drama about what happens when raw human longing is filtered through the strangeness of class, race and rulebound human society.

Us humans can be pretty selfish, and that’s especially true when it comes to design. It’s probably not something you’ve really thought about much before now (see, selfish!) but the world of design has historically neglected the needs of the animals, plants and other living organisms with whom we share our planet, in favour of catering to the whims and demands of us homosapiens. But not anymore. Created in collaboration with Future Observatory – the Design Museum’s national research programme championing new design innovations around environmental issues – this groundbreaking exhibition brings together art, design, architecture and technology to explore the concept of ‘more-than-human’ design, which embraces the notion that human activities can only flourish alongside those of other species and eco-systems. 

It’s a trap, almost, to think of Eugene O’Neill’s final play A Moon for the Misbegotten as a sequel to his miserable masterpiece Long Day’s Journey Into Night. But you go in expecting despair and instead find something that’s more like an episode of Steptoe and Son. Maybe that’s down to director Rebecca Frecknall, who creates not the faded grandeur of a seaside home here, but a wooden yard full of splintered timbers. Peter Corboy and Ruth Wilson as siblings Mike and Josie burst onto the stage and whack each other with dialogue, fed up with dad Phil’s drunkenness and slave-driving on their rock-infested farm. Frecknall turns the tilth on a half-buried play, and digs up something extraordinary.

Imagine indulging in all the dumplings, rolls, and buns you can handle, crafted by a Chinatown favourite with over a decade of culinary excellence. Savour Taiwanese pork buns, savoury pork and prawn soup dumplings, and luxurious crab meat xiao long bao. To top it off, enjoy a chilled glass of prosecco to elevate your feast. Cheers to a truly delightful dining experience at Leong’s Legend!

Popping up each summer on the steps where the Regent’s Canal passes Granary Square, Everyman’s Screen on the Canal is one of the city’s best-loved outdoor cinemas. This year’s pop-up will be looking more Instagrammable than ever before, thanks to designer and architect Yinka Ilori, who has created an eye-popping screen design. Head down on a sunny afternoon to catch live coverage from Wimbledon every day of the tournament, plus the usual mix of live sports, classic movies, family-friendly flicks and recent hits. 

The 99-year-old living legend that is Sir David Attenborough is still going strong: fresh off the back of his new documentary Ocean, he now drops a new film at the Natural History Museum in the form of Our Story. The 50-minute ‘immersive’ documentary will be projected across the walls of the Jerwood Gallery, subsuming you in what we can only describe as raw nature (it sounds like a relatively similar idea to 2023’s BBC Planet Earth Experience, albeit with more Attenborough and more of a narrative) as he takes us on the story of humanity, from origins to the present. Blending wildlife footage with animation, it’s human-centric but has plenty of room for animals too.