Gresham College Lectures ★★★★★ FREE


Gresham College is a fascinating institution that has been providing free lectures for over 400 years. Currently the College offers over 130 annual lectures and events. The range of subjects covered by their eminent lecturers is vast: law, literature, music, medicine, economics, astronomy, computer science.... The variety is amazing and the Gresham professors are leading scholars in their fields. The College is located in Barnard's Inn, but lectures are in various venues including the London Museum. The College has been recording its lectures since the 1980s and live streams all lectures. There are now over 2,000 lectures available on its website and on YouTube.

Reviewed by J.C.
 Our Score:  ☆☆☆☆☆ 

 WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE:
Times and Dates vary
Barnard's Inn, High Holborn
Nearest tube: Chancery Lane
Map & Location: 30 Holborn, London EC1N 2HH, UK

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Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans ★★★★ The British Museum | Jan 15 - May 25, 2026

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This small yet thoughtful exhibition explores the long-standing connections between two island nations. The relationship between Britain and Hawaiʻi dates back to Captain James Cook’s third voyage in 1778. He became the first European to document contact with the Pacific archipelago and that connection still resonates today, most visibly in the Hawaiian state flag (Ka Hae Hawaiʻi), which continues to display the Union Jack in its top-left corner. This display at the British Museum draws primarily on the museum’s own extensive collections, complemented by judicious loans from other institutions, including the Bishop Museum in Hawaiʻi. It is organised into three main sections: Laying a foundation, Allying kingdoms , and Reshaping relationships . The first section introduces visitors to Hawaiʻi's distinctive art, history, and cultural traditions. The second focuses on the 1824 visit of King Kamehameha II (also known as Liholiho) and Queen Kamāmalu to London, and on their tragic deaths...
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ABBA Voyage ★★★★★ ABBA Arena, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park | Extended Run

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When great music from the past meets mind boggling technology from the future, the result is ABBA Voyage . This is a concert like no other. In a purpose built arena designed specifically for the show, massive high resolution LED screens, advanced lighting, and surround sound are used to create a fully immersive ABBA concert experience. Although the group’s last appearance in London was at Wembley Arena in 1979, they return technologically in this extraordinary production. These are not holograms or AI generated performances. This is a meticulously animated concert based on real performances by the band themselves. To achieve this effect, the group came together and re-performed their music using motion capture technology. They partnered with top visual effects experts to digitally recreate their younger selves. While the show includes a live band and backup singers, the Agnetha, Björn, Benny, and Anni-Frid seen on stage appear every bit as real as their original counterparts. One quick...
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St. Martin in-the-fields: Lunchtime Concerts ★★★★ FREE

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Maybe the best musical value in London. The lunchtime concerts at St. Martin's are always a wonderful way to escape the hustle and bustle that is London and the sensory overload that is Trafalgar Square. This is a beautiful setting with great acoustics, and a church pew hard enough to make sure you don't nod off. Reviewed by J.C.  Our score:    ☆☆☆☆  WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE: Mon & Fri: 1 pm - 1:45 pm ( occasionally Tues & Thurs)  St. Martin in-the-fields, Trafalgar Square Nearest tube: Charing Cross https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/whats-on
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Gerry & Sewell ★★ Aldwych Theatre | January 13 - 24, 2026

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Gerry & Sewell presents itself as a theatrical pot o’ scouse. The traditional Tyneside dish, made from whatever meat, bones, or leftovers can be found in the cupboards, is a hearty working-class meal that reflects both Geordie ingenuity and endurance. The play clearly intends to offer a similar tribute to its roots. However, in the production, the disparate elements fail to cohere. The main storyline of the two eponymous protagonists and their shared dream of securing season tickets to their beloved football club is obscured rather than enriched by histories of Gerry’s two sisters, his abusive father, and his suicidal mother. While this material provides background about inheritance, damage, and class survival, it feels simultaneously excessive and underdeveloped. Tonally, the show is also jarring. It shifts rapidly between social realism and broad comedy, with these alternations feeling less like deliberate contrasts and more like unresolved collisions. Dance routines, rapping, a...
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Arcadia ★★★★★ The Old Vic | Jan 24 - Mar 21, 2026

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This splendid revival of Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece is definitely one of this year’s must-see productions. Intellectually demanding yet fizzing with wit, the play is brought vividly to life by a uniformly outstanding ensemble. Seamus Dillane is superb as the rakish tutor Septimus Hodge, delivering a performance of effortless charm and sly intelligence, while Matthew Steer is irresistibly funny as the mock poet/scientist and hapless cuckold Ezra Chater. Isis Hainsworth is luminous as the prodigy Thomasina, blending youthful grace with startling intellectual authority, and Fiona Button is deliciously bold as her mother, the gloriously predatory Lady Croom. Set in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Arcadia explores how we confront death and search for meaning in our lives. Its title suggests Poussin's pastoral painting with the tombstone in its foreground, et in Arcadia ego . Faced with this existential problem, the play suggests two possible routes to understanding: scienc...
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BIGRE / “Fish Bowl” ★★★★ Sadler's Wells Peacock Theatre | Jan 28 - 31, 2026

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The art of mime has deep theatrical roots in France, evolving from commedia dell’arte and 19th-century pantomime into a modern form centred on gesture, silence, and physical storytelling. In the 20th century, Marcel Marceau elevated mime to international prominence through his character Bip and his poetic, wordless exploration of human emotion. At the same time, filmmaker Jacques Tati brought mimetic comedy to cinema, using precise physicality and keen observation to satirise modern life through his iconic Monsieur Hulot. This tradition is closely linked to silent film comedy, where meaning is carried through movement rather than speech. Like Marceau and Tati, silent-era figures such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton relied on gesture, timing, and physical invention to convey character and emotion, revealing a shared visual language of humour and poetry beyond words. The Compagnie Le Fils du Grand Réseau continues this lineage by translating French mime and visual comedy into a con...
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Beautiful Little Fool ★★ Southwark Playhouse, Borough | January 15 - Feb 28, 2026

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The story of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald is a love affair and a tragedy seemingly made for the stage. He was a brilliant writer who descended into alcoholism and was largely forgotten by the time of his death. She was his muse, and possibly his collaborator, who died in a fire at the asylum where she had finally found some measure of peace. Together, they came to symbolise the Jazz Age, that feverish period of reckless hedonism between the world wars, driven by aimlessness and quiet despair. In Beautiful Little Fool , their story is narrated by their only daughter, Scottie, as she wanders through an archive filled with the remnants of her parents’ lives. One of the challenges of dramatising real people is shaping a narrative that serves a clear purpose while leaving out biographical details that, though intriguing, do not fit thematically. The musical never fully overcomes this challenge. Unnecessary anecdotes, such as the story of Gertrude Stein coining the term “Lost Generation,” appe...
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Cable Street ★★★ Marylebone Theatre | Jan 16 - Feb 28, 2026

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In 1936, Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists planned to march through a working-class, multicultural area of East London that was home to many Jewish and immigrant families. When they entered the area they were met with unexpected resistance. The musical Cable Street recounts this historic event from the perspectives of three families: the Scheinbergs, the Kennys and the Williams. Aspiring Jewish boxer Sammy Scheinberg and Irish communist Mairead Kenny lead the opposition to the BUF march, while the unemployed and disaffected Ron Williams becomes involved on the other side of the conflict. The story is framed by a present-day tourist tour of Cable Street, led by Sammy’s nephew and followed by Mairead’s daughter. The characters in Cable Street are fairly one-dimensional, reflecting the polemical nature of the piece, and the cast assumes multiple roles with minimal costume changes and some gender-blind casting, which can occasionally cause confusion. Despite these limitati...
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Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals ★★★★★ Tate Britain | Until April 12, 2026

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Broken into twelve sections, this comprehensive exhibition traces the parallel careers of two of England’s most important landscape artists with insight and illumination. Emerging from very different backgrounds and approaching their subjects in markedly different ways, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable each occupy a singular place in the British imagination. The exhibition follows the development of their careers, presents outstanding examples of their work, and considers their lasting influence on contemporary artists. While Constable was born into relative privilege and remained deeply rooted in the Stour Valley, Turner was the son of a barber and wig-maker whose restless curiosity led him to travel widely. Both artists were recognised early by the Royal Academy and enjoyed considerable success during their lifetimes. Constable’s devotion to working outdoors is emphasised and set against Turner’s famously chaotic studio practice. Visitors can sense Constable’s pleasure in local fie...
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Orphans ★★★★ Jermyn Street Theatre | January 5 - 24, 2026

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Phillip is an emotionally immature, developmentally challenged recluse, protected and controlled by his impulsive and potentially violent older brother Treat who supports them both by stealing. Together they inhabit a sealed world of rituals, games, and shared fantasy. However, when Treat kidnaps Harold, an apparently wealthy criminal on the run, this act proves far from the solution he expects. Instead, the power dynamic shifts as Harold, himself an orphan, assumes an almost parental role, exposing the brothers to an alternative way of living beyond their self-made confinement. In just two weeks, he becomes a conduit to the outside world and offers the boys a new vision of themselves. Harold’s repeated rendition of “The Prisoner’s Song” underscores the play’s central metaphor of entrapment. Phillip is paralysed by his fear of leaving the apartment, Treat by his reliance on violence and control, and Harold by his desperate attempt to outrun the past. While Lyle Kessler’s dark vision e...
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