Leicester Square Christmas Market - FREE - ★★ - November - January, 2020


If you can't get to Winter Wonderland or one of the larger winter festivals, this site will give you some idea of how London tries to make the best of winter. A quick wander through and then visits to the lights of Seven Dials, Covent Garden, or maybe Regent Street will help get you in the spirit.

 Reviewed by J.C.

  Our Score:  ☆☆ 

 WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE:
November - January, 2020

Leicester Square
Nearest tube: Leicester Square
http://www.christmasinleicestersquare.com
Map & Location: Leicester Square, London, UK

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Forever Plaid ★★★★★ Upstairs at the Gatehouse | June 1 - 27, 2021

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Forever Plaid , now playing at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate, began life Off-Broadway in 1989 and whisks us through almost thirty songs from the 1950s performed by four clean-cut young men who dream of being a group like The Four Aces or The Four Freshmen . They are Plaid and crash on stage at full speed with their superb close harmony singing. These guys, Cameron Burt, Christopher Short, George Crawford and Alexander Zane, create delightful individual characters and never put a foot wrong; every hand movement, every shoulder shrug, every step is synchronised to perfection. Each fella has his own featured moment and the pace, whilst fast, isn't relentless with one or two slower numbers to balance the programme. Their story is told with charm and wit as well as an endless stream of great songs from the period. The small stage is superbly used and looks terrific with one or two surprises to delight the audience, even the curtain call brings a new twist. Would we recommend t
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Royal Academy Schools Show 2021 ★★★★ Royal Academy of Arts | Until July 4, 2021 - FREE

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In 1920 Charles Sims declared the Royal Academy Schools should be a centre for research and experimentation. We wonder how he would have viewed this new graduation show. Even to today's world weary viewer some of the exhibits are puzzling; what would Sims have made of Clara Hastrup's Fishdriver (run free) featuring a tiny live blue fish swimming in an equally tiny glass tank? This room also contains an elaborate miniaturised Big Dipper. Elsewhere, video and photographic exhibits stand side by side with rooms filled with Rothko-esque paintings. We found the large room by Irini Bachlitzanaki perhaps the most beguiling with its representations of summer holidays and relaxation so rare in recent times. A room dedicated to a campaign to abolish the British monarchy reminds us that art has been used as a political tool since ancient times. Displaying enormous diversity as well as ambition, there is a willingness to delve into the complexity of the latest artistic directions. The exh
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London Design Biennale 2021 ★★★★★ Somerset House | June 1 - 27, 2021

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London Design Biennale 2021 at Somerset House has as its focus Forest for Change . The woodland of twenty-three species of trees is placed in the centre of the glorious courtyard which is based on the Palladian Enlightenment principles of the triumph of human design over nature. Es Devlin, the Artistic Director, has provided an astounding feat of creativity and as we walk through the trees we hear a mesmerising sound installation of birdsong created by Brian Eno. Throughout almost thirty rooms the Biennale succeeds in showing how, for good or ill, design has, created the world we live in while the exhibition asks us to contemplate possible ways forward to achieve developmental goals. Many of the exhibits are strikingly beautiful: a tableau of Argentinian basket weaving, a simple brass pendulum and Marco Perry's sound installation, all compete for our attention together with a room dedicated to the loss of the Antarctic icecap. The German exhibit is an unusual tongue-in-cheek displa
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She Stoops To Conquer ★★★★ Guildford Shakespeare Company | June 17 - July 3, 2021

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Outdoor productions are fraught with danger and a cold damp wind isn't conducive to the frothy fun of Oliver Goldsmith's 1773 comedy of manners. Nevertheless, with true British spirit, the show went on, and with enough summer sunshine radiating from the compact stage to almost overwhelm the weather. This play, which apparently had its basis in a real occurrence, isn't easy to bring off. However, by the excellent conceit of setting it in the 1930s, it worked remarkably well, thanks in part to Neil Irish's stylish designs. Amongst an excellent cast, James Sheldon and Tom Richardson shone as the Wodehouse-ian twits, Marlow and Hastings, garnering plenty of well-timed laughs. Sheldon was outstandingly good at differentiating between the boorish rake and the stammering lover. Tony Lumpkin is an especially complex character to make work but here the beautifully spoken Corey Montague-Sholay gave us particular enjoyment with his manipulative but totally naturalistic portrayal.
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Express G&S ★★★★ The Pleasance Theatre | June 23 - July 2, 2021

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Express G&S will delight all but the most curmudgeonly of Savoy Opera buffs. Containing excerpts from the entire Gilbert and Sullivan canon either musically or as dozens of quotations wittily interwoven into the script, it is extremely well constructed and performed with appropriate aplomb. Resembling other short Gilbertian parlour pieces such as The Zoo , this seventy-five minute bonne bouche fits very well into The Pleasance Theatre's beautifully reconfigured auditorium. The show has as its basic premise an Agatha Christie-style mystery set in a train's restaurant car and concerns the mysterious destruction of the "D'oyly Carte" – aka a tea trolley. (Further elaboration would not really make things any clearer!) Three exceedingly adept performers keep things bubbling along. Most of the songs have clever new lyrics while occasional numbers are played more or less straight. Catrine Kirkman and Philip Lee have exactly the right style for this material, while M
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Rubens: Reuniting the Great Landscapes ★★★★★ The Wallace Collection - FREE | Jun 3 - Aug 15, 2021

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Peter Paul Rubens' huge landscape paintings, A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning and The Rainbow Landscape , both of which date from about 1636, haven't been exhibited together for almost 200 years. Having been beautifully restored and conserved, they are reunited at last in a great cooperation between the National Gallery and The Wallace Collection. It has to be said that The Rainbow Landscape outshines its companion with a breathtaking and exuberant use of light and colour. Bursts of sunshine illumine the trees, the energetic ducks, the cattle and cheerful peasants: a tremendous joie de vivre leaps from the panels Rubens paints on. The restoration enlivens the skies and also allows us to see deep into the shade of the woods. Het Steen was Rubens' lavish country home and the painting allows us to glimpse how well Rubens lived in this rural idyll which offered a peaceful vista across the lush farmland. We appear to see these landscapes from the point of view of a bir
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Alyssa, Memoirs of a Queen! ★★★ Vaudeville Theatre | June 7 - 13, 2021

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Alyssa, Memoirs of a Queen!  takes us on a whistle-stop tour through the life of drag star, Alyssa Edwards. Backed by four excellent dancers, the show certainly entertained the packed – but socially distanced – house who cheered at every opportunity. Alyssa wanted the show to reference the Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra and her second outfit, which is a riot of rhinestones and twinkling lights, is jaw-droppingly over the top! This should have been the finale costume. The Vaudeville's stage isn't large and leaves the well performed dance routines rather cramped, and like with most drag queens the songs are lip-synced. To get full enjoyment one really needs to have a more than passing acquaintance with RuPaul's Drag Race as Alyssa spends much of the second half of the show reminiscing about her time there. Alyssa maintains that she “doesn't read scripts ... she is the script,” but some editing might have given needed pace to the second act; many of the anecdotes
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Serpentine Pavilion 2021 ★★★★ Serpentine Galleries | Jun 11 - Oct 17, 2021 - FREE

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Sumayya Vally, the 31-year-old director of Counterspace which designed this year's Serpentine Pavilion , declares it to be an homage to the many lost public resting places across the city. We are told that reference is made to various locations and communities throughout London, but what we see rather resembles the re-creation of an architectural salvage yard with fragments of doorframes and portions of fluted pillars. Using reclaimed steel, cork and timber covered with micro cement, these apparently randomly placed elements, together with blocks of various shapes and sizes, seem to conjure up a stage set for a production of The Oresteia or Oedipus . The fact that this pavilion will, like a stage set, be moved elsewhere at the end of the season encourages us to ponder the transience of the seemingly permanent. This huge arrangement in grey and black has a pleasantly cool appearance helped by its great height. Seen in this week's bright sunlight, the strongly contrasting tones
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Sir John Soane's Museum: Guided Tour ★★★★★ FREE

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This is one of our favourite museums in London. The quirky and crammed home of John Soane, architect of the Bank of England. It has some wonderful treasures, including Hogarth's "The Election" and "The Rake's Progress." The sarcophagus of Seti I is in the basement along with the parlour of his imaginary friend, Brother John. Don't miss the opening of the display walls in the gallery now done on the hour and half hour. Also, try to be there for the free Private Apartments tour, limited to 8 people and requiring  sign up on site. Reviewed by J.C.  Our Score:    ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE: Wed - Sun: 10 am - 5 pm (l ast entry at 4:30 pm) Closed: Dec 24, 25, 26, 31 & Jan 1 Private Apartments Tours: 1:15 pm & 2:00 pm Sir John Soane's museum, Lincoln's Inn Fields Nearest tube: Holborn https://www.soane.org
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Here Come The Boys ★★★ The London Palladium | May 25 - Jun 9, 2021

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Here Come The Boys is a spin-off from Strictly Come Dancing and features four of its male dancers past and present. The show fills the vast London Palladium stage with testosterone stoked routines; very little here is subtle but it certainly pleases the predominantly female audience. The first half largely involves Jive, TikTok, and Salsa. After the interval, Ballroom makes a welcome, but all too brief, appearance along with an entertaining Swing section. A series of four romantic pas de deux entitled "After Hours" slowed the pace down and displayed some beautiful dancing. In general, Gareth Walker's choreography seemed to rely on familiar steps with occasional flashes of brilliance. It would have been interesting to see these obviously talented guys tested on works by the likes of Jerome Robbins. The most spectacular and exuberant dancing came from the hugely popular Graziano Di Prima whose whirling spins and lifts were breathtaking. The show is compered by an ebullien
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