Things to do in London this week

London’s getting its annual helping of rainbow flags, fun-loving crowds, and LGBTQ+ spirit with the Pride in London Parade on Saturday July 1. If previous events are anything to go by, expect hundreds of floats and walking groups from across the LGBTQ+ spectrum, which will march through the heart of London. The day usually culminates in a big party in Trafalgar Square, with a line-up of pop-tastic entertainment. And all day long, Soho Square and the surrounding streets will be filled with members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies gathering to celebrate (and continue) the battle for equal rights. Plus, it’s free to join the fun.

Writer John O’Farrell – who has worked on ‘Have I Got News For You’ and ‘Spitting Image’ – has created a surprisingly clever stage update of the ’90s Robin Williams hit film, thanks to its twenty-first-century jokes, perfectly paced book, and silly voices galore. While director Jerry Zaks thoroughly nails divorced dad Daniel’s lightning transitions from hapless Dad to fiesty Scottish nanny Mrs Doubtfire, who he dresses up as in a desperate bid to see his children. ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ melds the best of past and present, offering a dose of nostalgia that’s more complicated than Mary Poppins’s spoonful of sugar – but just as sweet.

Now onto its fifty-seventh year of hurt, the capacity of the English men’s football team to be the focal point of ruinous national self-mythologization is well documented. As such, a play about the squad’s resurrection under Gareth Southgate feels like a potentially hubristic idea. But, ‘Dear England’ written by James Graham, hits the back of the net. The play focuses on why the England men’s team is burdened with such high expectations? And what do those expectations do to the psychology of both the team and the nation? It’s a big-hearted, technically dazzling celebration of football first and a critique of it second. 

Giving you more attitude than a ‘Now That’s What I Call Punk’ compilation, Dog Day Afternoon is the ultimate celebration of all things leather jackets and Doc Martens. Taking place at Crystal Palace Park this July, this riotous punk fest will see punk pioneer Iggy Pop, post-punk legends Blondie, seminal Manchester band Buzzcocks, garage punk upstarts Lambrini Girls and supergroup Generation Sex (Billy Idol, Steve Jones, Tony James, Paul Cook) taking to the stage.

The well-loved community shop that works closely with independent producers and farmers, Nourished Communities, is putting on its first-ever food festival. The one-day event will bring together over 100 of the UK’s top independent producers, with all kinds of talks, workshops and tastings. If you’re the type of person who likes making their own kimchi, don't miss the fermentation workshop. Alternatively, learn about sustainable farming or try your hand at kefir making.

Never seen Arthur Miller’s puritans and paranoia masterpiece before? You’re in for a treat. This is a production that will be considered a high benchmark for years to come. Lyndsey Turner’s show, now transferred from the National Theatre to the West End, is foreboding and sinister, horrible and creepy. As it should be. 

At a time when photography was going gonzo – when people were hunting out action, shooting from the hip – Evelyn Hofer turned the other way. The German-American photographer had a quieter, more formal, composed approach. She took her large format camera and her long exposures onto the streets of Paris, London and New York. This is a gorgeous show of slow, considered and careful photography that can be small and intimate or big and overwhelming, but always tenderly human.

American artist Carrie Mae Weems uses a contemporary Black aesthetic that weds visual intent with political intensity. She reframes and recolours nineteenth century daguerreotypes of slaves, she dances in the Berlin Holocaust memorial, restages political assassinations, takes photos of a hammer, a sickle, a clock, a globe. Everything, in her hands, has the power to embody a political idea, to fight against oppression, racism and colonialism. The anger in Weems’s art is quiet and seething. She expresses ire with beauty, and that might just be even more powerful.

From Mariah Carey to Gemma Collins, divas have been simultaneously exalted and vilified, but never ignored. The V&A’s highly-anticipated blockbuster exhibition will celebrate the power and creativity of ‘Divas’ – iconic performers who have stood out from the crowd from the 19th century to the present day. Look out for the fringed black dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in ‘Some Like it Hot’ (1959), Janelle Monae’s ‘vulva pants’ and legendary costumes worn by Tina Turner, P!nk and Cher. 

After a three-year renovation, the National Portrait Gallery is finally reopening its doors on Thursday June 22 with ‘a full re-presentation of the collection, combined with a significant refurbishment of the building, the creation of public spaces, a more welcoming visitor entrance and public forecourt, and a new Learning Centre.’ The real question is, will they still have that terrifyingly awful, soul-drainingly bad Ed Sheeran portrait on display? 

You get to watch life slowly collapse in Martin Wong’s art. Across his career, the Chinese-American artist documented the free love utopianism of 1970s California and then saw everything descend into derelict decrepitude as the reality of urban New York tightened its grip on him. Crime, drugs, prison and the perseverance of immigrant and queer communities, that’s what happens here. Wong died in 1999 from an Aids-related illness. But what he left behind is a picture of America where misery meets hope on a level playing field to fight out for supremacy. Neither side, it seems, ever manages to win.

Existential angst and toe-tapping tunes blend miraculously well in ‘Groundhog Day’, composer Tim Minchin’s dazzling take on the 1993 movie. He’s taken a much-loved but deeply cynical story and breathed all the emotional weight and heartbreak into it that a musical needs to soar. It’s a surprisingly profound exploration of how to live a good life by appreciating the wonder and specialness in the everyday. It feels like a snowy American echo of another Old Vic hit, ‘A Christmas Carol’ – and one that also deserves to run, and run, and run.

A weight hangs over Bermondsey. A crushing load, heavy with history and war, placed there by German artist Anselm Kiefer. His latest show at White Cube – the third in a trilogy of similarly huge, ambitious, immersive, oppressive exhibitions – takes as its starting point James Joyce’s famously unreadable experimental final novel ‘Finnegans Wake’. Lines from the book are scratched across the walls of Kiefer’s show, almost making sense but never quite coalescing into cogent meaning. Instead, what you’re left to decode are the vast, towering, claustrophobic assemblages of rusted metal, broken vitrines, huge dead sunflowers and endless rubble he has strewn across the gallery.

The National Theatre’s River Stage returns to the South Bank for a month of outdoor live music, dance, performance, workshops and family fun. This weekend Hackney Empire’s Young Producers will be taking over the programming. Hosted by Scully (No Signal Radio), expect a weekend of dance crews, rap battles, big vocals, steel pans, grime, 90s bangers, plus some of the latest crazes tearing up TikTok.

You know what your life might need? Endless baskets of dim sum. Preferably at a very popular Chinatown stalwart that wants to feed you to the gills with things like Taiwanese pork buns, pork and prawn soup dumplings, and ‘supreme’ crab meat xiao long bao. Sounds good right? Well, we can go one further by giving you all that – plus a glass of prosecco – for just £23.95.

Bottomless dim sum and a glass of prosecco for £23.95, only through Time Out Offers.

Imagine a cross between ‘Annie’, ‘Les Miserables’, and one of those elaborate gymnastic-based spectacles staged by communist countries and you’re halfway there to imaging Disney’s cult classic musical ‘Newsies’ about striking that has finally hit the UK. The Troubadour Theatre’s high-octane production captures all its vigorous spirit, sending its huge cast of plucky, rebellious paperboys tumbling and leaping across its mammoth stage as they stand up to the big bosses who are determined to grind them down.

Get tickets to Disney's Newsies from just £16.50 only through Time Out Offers. 

Dining with a conscience is easy at Edit, which has a hyper-seasonal, low-impact approach to plant-based British dining. Try three delicious courses from the menu, washed down with a glass of low-intervention, locally-sourced wine (or homemade seasonal lemonade) for the ultimate introduction to the fine ingredients sourced from small-scale farms, foragers and independent producers.

Three courses and a glass of wine at EDIT for £25 only through Time Out Offers.