Things to do in London this week

What to do in London this week: from Glasto to Centre Court via the phone-hacking scandal, this week in London is a busy one.

While one lot of Londoners pour out of the capital and head for Glastonbury’s field of dreams, the city welcomes another demographic into the heart of the capital to celebrate Pride parade London 2014, walking tall from Baker Street at 1pm on Saturday 28th June. These days the atmosphere is more carnival than political protest – but then, the LGBT community have a lot to celebrate this year.

Down in the south-west, the thock of tennis balls and gentle curse of thwarted players can be heard as Wimbledon gets fully underway. For a little mood music, see our feature on tennis in fiction – and watch out for next week’s feature on the best places to watch the men’s and women’s finals (Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th July).

Having said all that, the forecast for this weekend is actually on the damp side, so at Culture Whisper we’re not setting our hearts on al fresco.

History made and in the making

Instead, why not book tickets (don’t delay) for Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle at the Whitechapel Gallery on Saturday 28th June. This all-day event will show Barney’s extraordinary, mythology-infused avant-garde film series in its entirety (with a picnic lunch in the middle). 

There's plenty going on in London for kids this week. Try Kensington Palace’s Glorious Georges Family Festival (Saturday 28th to Sunday 29th June), part of a whole series of events organised by Historic Royal Palaces to mark the 300th anniversary of King Georges I, II, III and IV. Events take place in Kensington Gardens but there’s plenty to see inside the palace too.

A short stroll away is this year’s Serpentine Pavilion; Smiljan Radić is the Chilean architect behind 2014's design. A light-filled pupae or a radiant, toppled standing stone, Radić’s structure is a symbol of hope inspired by Oscar Wilde’s story The Selfish Giant. Oh, and there’s a café inside too.

Theatre: plays London can't wait for

We don’t need to tell you that London theatre offers a seemingly unstoppable stream of stellar performances and essential openings. Here are our picks for the next seven days.

Most explosively, given this week’s conviction of Andy Coulson in the phone-hacking trial, is the National Theatre’s Great Britain , a play on the very same subject kept brilliantly under wraps until the trial’s conclusion. Written by Richard Bean, it stars Billie Piper as a young red top reporter caught up in tabloid shenanigans.

On Tuesday 24th June, a new production of The Crucible opened at the Old Vic under the direction of Yaёl Farber, best known for Nirbhaya, the verbatim drama about a young woman’s rape in Delhi. Expect Miller’s oft-revived play to be brought bang up to date.

Starring everyone's favourite hobbit, Martin Freeman, Richard III opens at the Trafalgar Studios (Tuesday 1st July). It might be counterintuitive casting, but Freeman's credits suggest he's more than capable of taking on Shakespeare’s Machiavellian majesty. 

Most tickets are sold out, but don’t despair: on the first of every month the theatre releases a batch of £15 seats, which are bookable via the website starting on 1st July.

Shakespearean escapism of a very superior sort is available at the Noel Coward Theatre, where a stage production of the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love opens on Wednesday 2nd July. With Declan Donellan and Nick Ormerod’s CheekbyJowl running the show, audiences can relax in the expectation of a top-notch evening.

Drama doesn’t have to be spectacular to be powerful and poignant, of course. From Wednesday 25th until Saturday 28th June, the Barbican will be showing a miniature mash-up of art forms: Kiss and Cry combines dancing hands (courtesy of dance troupe Charleroi Danses) with film (thanks to Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael) and the results are touching and memorable (Culture Whisper members, click on the preview here to claim your 50% discount).

Finally, set to take London by storm after receiving its UK premiere in Bath is Intimate Apparel . Written by American playwright Lynn Nottage, it is based on the life of her great-grandmother, a seamstress in turn-of-the-century New York, and stars gifted British stage actress Tanya Moodie. Our advice? Book right away. 

Great names: London highlights

It won’t have escaped your notice that Monty Python are playing the O2 Arena from Tuesday 1st July to Sunday 20th July (CW members who were quick off the mark took advantage of our early preview, published in November last year), but with extra nights added tickets are now once again available. Read our feature on the top ten best sketches before you go.

If the O2 is hosting the progenitors of countercultural comedy, the Royal Opera House is doing the same for an alternative opera of sorts – Richard Strauss’s satirical comedy Ariadne auf Naxos . High and low culture collide in this opera within an opera, starring the Finnish soprano Karita Mattila as Ariadne.

After all that excitement, a little quiet reflection would not go amiss, and it’s to be found at one of our favourite bookshops, Lutyens & Rubinstein in Notting Hill. Here, the always brilliant and occasionally baffling analyst and writer Adam Phillips will be discussing his latest book Becoming Freud: the Making of a Psychoanalyst on Tuesday 1st July. Freud’s stature as a theorist of the mind and inventor of the frequently life-saving ‘talking cure’ only increases with the years, and Phillips’ provocative, poetic and allusive style will be sure to send you home with plenty to think about.

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