Things to do in London this week

The name might not be particularly tinselly, but this winsome, musical two-hander is an extremely charming tribute to – but also a subversion of – the Christmas romcom, both the Richard Curtis variety and the trashy Netflix it’s-snowing-in-New-York! breed. Leads Dougal (Sam Tutty) is a gawky, blissfully optimistic 25-year-old Brit who has turned up at JFK airport to commence a whirlwind 36-hour trip to New York and Robin (Dujonna Gift) is a stressed out 27-year-old local, grow closer, but it’s not quite the story you’re expecting. The book does a great job of gleefully embracing festive romcom tropes while deftly resisting sentimentality. It’s a perfectly balanced little show - snowflake light but with a surprising sting. 

In a 2020 interview, young Belgian painter Bendt Eyckermans said ‘my paintings are no great enigmas’. But this show of sombre images, full of symbols to decode and narratives to unravel, sure makes that seem like bs. It’s the works’ very enigmatic-ness that’s appealing. Eyckermans is inviting you into this dark, complex world of watching and making, of films and cinema and sensuality and emotional tenderness, of the gaze and where it’s aimed. These are tense portrayals of what’s seen and unseen, said and unsaid. They’re beautiful paintings; uncomfortable, disconcerting and very enigmatic.

The London International Animation Festival, the UK’s largest and longest-running animation festival, returns for its 20th year, championing the world of illustrated and stop-motion moving pictures in all their different guises. The event spans gala premieres, Q&A sessions with filmmakers, workshops, tours, screenings and more, and will feature animators from across the world. To mark its big birthday, there’ll be tribute screenings shining a light on animators who have changed the game and screening medleys of the best animations out there. 

Scandinavians take Christmas seriously, so expect plenty of festive feels at Rotherhide’s Finnish Church’s Christmas market. Browse traditional Finnish toys, design pieces, Christmas cards and plenty of Moomin memorabilia before tucking into barbequed food, cinnamon buns and salmon sandwiches, all washed down with a glass of steaming glögg. 

Christmas shopping doesn’t have to be fighting crowds in Oxford Street or chasing delivery parcels when they go missing. For gifts galore and a day out in itself, London’s oldest botanical garden is hosting 100 carefully chosen stalls selling seasonal treats and festive paraphernalia at this annual Christmas market. Pick up plants, jewellery, quirky gifts and plenty more, and keep any rumbling tummies at bay with tasty treats from the garden café.

It’s been three decades since the nefarious penguin Feathers McGraw and his rubber-glove hat entered our lives when ‘Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers’ was released in 1993. To mark the big anniversary, the Cartoon Museum and Aardman Animations have collaborated for this exhibition, shining a light on the short film’s legacy. Visitors can look at never-before-seen behind-the-screen shots, once-believed lost set pieces and models and every surviving piece of original artwork. There’ll also be original art showcasing early designs for characters and original storyboards and other artworks from the Aardman vault. Cracking exhibition, Gromit! 

Hoxton’s Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum) is hosting a very special ‘yard sale’ of designer furniture, pieces by local makers, textiles, homeware and other mid-mod and mid-mod-inspired goodies. As an added incentive to get you to pony up your hard-earned cash, a percentage of all sales will be donated to the Campaign for Change: Food Equality. Come on, that Danish(?) coffee set won’t buy itself.  

Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined through cutting-edge technology. Marble Arch’s high-tech Frameless gallery houses four unique exhibition spaces with hypnotic visuals reimaging work from the likes of Bosch, Dalí and more, all with an atmospheric score. Now get 90 minutes of eye-popping gallery time for just £19 through Time Out offers.

£19 tickets to Frameless immersive art experience only through Time Out offers 

Powell and Pressburger’s cinematic classic ‘The Red Shoes’ turns 75 this year. To mark the anniversary of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale-turned-visually stunning film, the BFI is opening a free exhibition following lead actor Moira Shearer’s personal story through the production as well as casting an eye over the iconic dance film’s legacy. Look out for two pairs of THE red shoes, personal items from Shearer’s family estate and Michael Powell’s viewfinder and 16mm camera used in ‘Peeping Tom’. 

Originally a plague pit in 1348, The Charterhouse was built in 1371 to be a Carthusian monastery before becoming a mansion, a boys’ school and an almshouse and then opening as a museum in 2017. Its magnificent ornate corridors and impressive stone-walled rooms are the perfect setting for a wholesome Christmas market. Shop pretty stocking-fillers and gorgeous homeware from over 40 stalls while taking 650 years of London history and heritage while you’re at it. 

Hans Holbein was special. And he had to be to make it in the Tudor Court. Arriving from Basel with nothing but a letter of recommendation from humanist philosopher Erasmus, Holbein worked his way to the very top of English society, painting aristocrats, lawyers, politicians, soldiers and, eventually, the king himself. This deeply atmospheric show brings together sketches and drawings by Holbein into a single vivid portrait of sixteenth-century life. The real gold is in watching a master figure things out, in finding out how he made images that have survived the centuries, and still somehow look modern today. 

Everyone’s favourite riverside culture hotspot Southbank Centre is aglow again with festive illuminations. Winter Light is a free, open-air exhibition featuring an electric smorgasbord of lightworks (which is what we’re calling these now) from super-talented artists from around the world. All of them make mind-bending use of light, colour and even boundary-pushing film to deal with issues and topics surrounding nature, technology, urban life and spirituality.

When you can’t fly to Italy to taste authentic pasta dishes, King’s Cross-based restaurant Spagnoletti might just be the next best thing. Not only will you get to taste deliciously classic pasta dishes, you’ll also be able to see them being made fresh every day in the live pasta lab. Enjoy everything from pasta e fagioli and agnolotti to rigatoni, pici cacio e pepe and more, with an accompaniment of not one but two glasses of wine. Salute!

£25 for three courses and two glasses of wine only through Time Out offers

Marcelo Dos Santos’s ‘Backstairs Billy’ is that rare thing: a new play that’s debuted straight into the West End. Set in the late 1970s, it puts the Queen Mother centre stage – following her relegation to bit-part player in ‘The Crown’ – and then focuses on how sidelined she is in Clarence House. The Billy of the title is William ‘Billy’ Tallon (Luke Evans), who joined the Royal Household aged 15, then moved to Clarence House with the Queen Mother (Penelope Wilton) after the death of her husband, King George VI. It’s an archly funny play, which is something deeper than just a straightforwardly heartwarming story. 

If anger is an energy, there’s enough here to power the Tate for decades. The gallery is buzzing with the violent ire and shrieking fury of second-wave feminism because after all the freedom and liberation promised by the Swinging Sixties, British women in the 1970s had to deal with the reality: that not much had changed. And they were furious. This is an exhibition of 100 feminist artists and collectives kicking violently against the system. This is art made on the margins, in an attempt to kick back at an unjust society. It’s not meant to look good on a millionaire's wall, it’s meant to change the world. And it did. 

Lie back and think of the English countryside: do you picture rolling hills, endless green, bucolic perfection, Gainsborough, Constable, Turner? Of course you do, but this little exhibition at the William Morris Gallery proves English landscape art is about much more than undulating hills and gambolling lambs. From ultra-dramatic Gainsboroughs and Constable prints to stunning photos of the industrial north west by Chris Killip and staged images by Jo Spence of her face down and naked in a field as a murdered trespasser or a rebellious land rights protester. This is the messy truth of the English landscape and its somehow even more beautiful.

American artist Max Hooper Schneider got a place on a scientific expedition to deep sea hydrothermal vents, where fungi and bacteria are spewed out, giving life to the seas. But he’s also been to the reefs of Fukushima, where life has been obliterated by nuclear holocaust. His sculptural work here is art for the end times. He makes grisly, oily, grimy little dioramas of life after ecological collapse, after the death of the planet. Each is a dystopian, cyberpunk world unto itself and it’s as terrifying as it is brilliant.