Carnaby Street Eat London ★ FREE


If you are walking in the area on the day of Carnaby Street Eats, local food vendors have set up outdoor booths and it is an opportunity to buy their wares (no free samples here). Al fresco dining makes a nice change from an indoor lunch, and you can enjoy the West End’s longest picnic table. There is even more hustle and bustle than usual on the always busy Carnaby Street, and the atmosphere is enhanced by a small entertainment venue.

Reviewed by J.C.

 Our Score:  ☆ 

WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE:
Last Reviewed: August 2020
Carnaby Street
Nearest tube: Oxford Circus
http://carnaby.co.uk
Map & Location: Carnaby St, Carnaby, London, UK

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Supersonic Man ★★★★ Southwark Playhouse, Borough | Apr 9 - May 3, 2025

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Based on the true story of Peter Scott-Morgan, who with his partner, Francis, became the first gay couple to be married in England, Supersonic Man tells the story of Adam who, like Scott-Morgan, decides to fight his motor neurone disease through robotics and radical surgery. It is an inspiring tribute to someone who boldly faced life and its challenges on his own terms, and it is an interesting insight into the media mechanics that can make such a decision possible. Like the protagonist of this musical, Scott-Morgan harnessed the power of the media through the creation of a television documentary which chronicled his medical journey. The show's smart mocking of the manipulative cynicism that lies just behind our culture of celebrity, plus the resilient wit and self-deprecating humour of Adam himself largely save this piece from falling into becoming simply an exercise in suffocating sentimentality. While the show succeeds in portraying the real pain and mood swings of the sufferer...
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Midnight Cowboy - A New Musical ★★ Southwark Playhouse, Borough | Apr 4 - May 17, 2025

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James Leo Herlihy's novel of 1965, which was later made into a very successful film, tells the story of naïve young man, Joe Buck, who comes to New York City to get rich as a gigolo. He discovers that his chosen career path is not as simple to pursue as he thought, and he ends up being taken advantage of by both his clients and by his new acquaintance, Ratso. The latter is a disabled survivor who knows how to work the streets and who is as shrewd as Joe is gullible. Oddly enough, despite their initial differences, these two outsiders become friends. They start to depend on each other and come to share a dream which is to escape their current hardship and to flee to the paradise of Florida. Herlihy's book and the film neatly contrasted the shocking grittiness of life on the streets and the touching relationship of the two broken dreamers. It was a sentimental tour de force , but it is not an easy balance to achieve – and it doesn't quite work here. While Max Bowden gets it l...
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Men’s Business ★★ Finborough Theatre | Mar 18 - Apr 12, 2025

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The philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, once said that without government, life would be “nasty, brutish, and short.” The same might be said of this play, and the way the lives of its characters are presented. Charlie is a butcher who has "an affair" with Victor, a steel worker. Their abusive, sadomasochistic carry-on is no doubt symbolic (probably of the human condition) but in the end, it just becomes tedious. Neither of the characters develop, and their mean-spirited and violent interchanges are numbingly repetitive. Endless abuse and relentless couplings doesn't make for very interesting theatre, and this pair become almost cruel parodies of working class people. In fact, there is a point where one has the uncomfortable feeling that the playwrights are actually being quite condescending to these two pathetic individuals and their pathology, while the audience is being invited to become uncomfortable voyeurs at a very sad display of human dysfunction. Although a lot of time is...
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THISISPOPBABY - WAKE ★ Sadler's Wells Peacock Theatre | April 2 - 5, 2025

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This show promises to be a riff on an Irish wake. Apparently, it is intended as a celebration of life, but it unfortunately does not rise up to that billing. Although we are told at the beginning that we are in for what will literally be a life changing experience, the show proves to be considerably less than that. The production is a hodgepodge of various acts which oversells itself and really doesn't deliver. The spoken word intervals which are probably meant to tie things together thematically are just insistently pretentious and way too lengthy. And, what a man vainly attempting to windmill tassels from his naked bottom, while singing "Seduce Me," has to do with an Irish wake is far from clear. There is a smattering of breaking, some reasonably well-sung songs and a lot of mediocre choreography. Also on offer are some fairly competent step dancing moments, plus a couple of not very original gymnastics' and aerial acrobatics' routines. The low point is definite...
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St. Martin in-the-fields: Lunchtime Concerts ★★★★ FREE

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Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo ★★★★ Royal Academy of Arts | Mar 21 - Jun 29, 2025

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If previously you've only thought of Victor Hugo as a writer, this exhibition demonstrates that there is a great deal more to the celebrated creator of Les Misérables . As well as being a highly successful author, and a politician of deep conviction, Hugo was also a talented and intriguing artist, and this opportunity to see some forty of his almost two thousand drawings is a not-to-be-missed occasion. Divided into four sections (Writing & Drawing, Observation & Imagination, Fantasy & Reality, Ocean) the exhibition shows that Hugo's originality and dramatic sense were not confined to his novels and poetry. With its cunning perspective and tantalising implications, a work such as The Town of Vianden Seen Through a Spider's Web (1871) recalls a tale by Edgar Allan Poe, while The Shade of the Manchineel Tree (Notes from a Trip to the Pyrenees and Spain) (1856) with its eerie skull, has an equally wonderful Gothic feel. The enigmatic Mushroom (1850) which almost ...
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Apex Predator ★★★★ Hampstead Theatre | Mar 22 - Apr 26, 2025

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The Carracci Cartoons: Myths in the Making ★★★ The National Gallery | Apr 10 - Jul 6, 2025 (Free Entry)

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This free show features two of the cartoons, or large charcoal drawings, created by the Carracci brothers, Annibale and Agostino, for the decoration of the Roman residence of the young cardinal Odoardo Farnese (1573-1626). Both works are actually attributed to Agostino Carracci with possible input from Annibale. Made on paper, the two large drawings were conceived as working tools intended for use in preparation to paint the fresco which was to decorate the ceiling of the Palazzo Farnese. They were designed to be used for the transfer of sections of that complex composition onto fresh plaster, and they offer a unique insight into the working practices of a Renaissance artist. The cartoons, which have long been the property of The National Gallery and have not often been on display, represent two scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses : "Cephalus carried off by Aurora in her Chariot" (about 1599) and "A Woman borne off by a Sea God" (about 1599). They have been interpr...
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Wilko: Love and Death and Rock 'n' Roll ★★★ Southwark Playhouse, Borough | Mar 20 - Apr 19, 2025

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