Things to do in London today

The first temporary exhibition at Young V&A is a real delight, and should appeal to grown-up Nippophiles just as much as school kids. ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ is a grab bag of the more eye-catching highlights of the past few centuries of Japanese pop culture, taking in everything from Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave’ to copious Studio Ghibli appearances, to a draw-your-own manga craft corner (complete with arrows to reminds you to draw the cells from right to left). It is relatively light on information about the individual items, and in theory the eclecticism should be a bit bewildering: how exactly do a display of Transformers toys, an ornate screen covered in images of mischievous rabbits, and a truly horrifying folk model of a mermaid that looks like a trout crossed with a zombie foetus all relate to each other? Quite well actually! The mass of eye-popping artifacts is subdivided into four thoughtful zones: sky, sea, forest and city. The import of each of these areas to Japanese culture is stressed, and while there’s little editorialising beyond that, the linkages between the country’s rich folklore and head-spinning contemporary culture are made clear - we see, for instance, how Ghibli’s arboreal masterpiece ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ fits into a long tradition of stories of supernatural encounters in the deep woods, or how Sylvanian Families toys were born out of hundreds-of-years old netsuke animal sculptures. There’s no single object liable to blow your mind in and of itself, and

Life in the Roman empire was as mundane as life in 2024. ‘Legion’ tells the story of a single Roman soldier, recounting a life of hard work, ambition, disappointment and unreachable goals. Take out all the blood and swords, swap the marching for a commute from Stevenage, and it could be the life of any present day office worker.  Claudius Terentianus had hopes and ambitions. He wanted to be a great legionary in emperor Trajan’s army. But the legion wouldn't have him, so he had to settle for the lowly marines. Once in, he had to scramble for money and social connections to be promoted to the legion, where he found a life of endless marching and battles, surrounded by comrades with their own ambitions to join the cavalry or become a standard bearer. This show is full of stunning symbols of everyday life for Roman soldiers from across the empire. Red wool socks to protect against the rub of hobnailed leather sandals, purses holding a handful of silver coins, dice for gambling, letters home pleading for a new tunic. It’s just the drudgery of normal existence, same in 60AD as it is now. Battles, bloodshed and the spoils of war And amongst all that, symbols of war: gleaming bronze helmets, swords long rusted into their scabbards, a pile of near-fossilised chainmail. A curved cylinder is the only complete long shield in existence, replete with ornate linework and winged victories. It’s jaw dropping.  It wasn’t all blind, faceless obedience though. A crushed silver bust of emperor G

It’s hard to know if Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna was issuing a doom-laden warning or just a doe-eyed love letter to history. Because written into the nine sprawling canvases of his ‘Triumphs of Caesar’ (six of which are on show here while their gallery in Hampton Court Palace is being renovated) is all the glory and power of Ancient Rome, but its eventual collapse too. It starts, like any good procession, with a load of geezers with trumpets, parping to herald the arrival of victorious Caesar. As they blare, a Black soldier in gorgeous, gilded armour looks back, leading you to the next panel where statues of gods are paraded on carts. Then come the spoils of war, with mounds of seized weapons and armour piled high, then come vases and sacrificial animals, riders on elephant-back, men struggling to carry the loot that symbolises their victory. The final panel, Caesar himself bringing up the rear, remains in Hampton Court, so there is no conclusion here, just a steady, unstoppable stream of glory and rejoicing.  The paintings are faded and damaged, and have been so badly lit that you can only see them properly from a distance and at an angle. But still, they remain breathtaking in their sweeping, chaotic beauty.  Partly, this massive work is a celebration of the glories of the classical world and its brilliance, seen from the other side of some very dark ages. But along with its rise, you can’t help but also think of Rome's demise, of what would eventually come a

There was a lot of love in the last years of Michelangelo Buonarotti’s life. Already hugely successful, the Renaissance master dedicated his final decades to loving his god, his family, his friends, and serving his pope. The proof of that love is all over the walls of this intimate little visual biography of the final years of his life, filled with his drawings and letters and paintings by his followers.  The first love explored is that for his friend Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, a young nobleman he met when summoned to Rome to paint the ‘Last Judgement’ in the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo sent Tommaso drawings of gorgeous idealised male nudes, muscular bodies writhing and twisting. He wrote him letters filled with romance: ‘I am insensible to sorrow or fear of death, while my memory of you endures.’ Sure, they might have been just friends, but I’ve never said anything like that to my mate Gaz. The implication is that there was more than just friendship at play here. Art historians have long speculated on Michelangelo’s sexuality – he died having never married or had children – but the British Museum is just awkwardly nudge-nudge wink-winking at it with these adoring letters and chalk nudes, rather than giving it a big celebratory exploration, which makes it all feel a bit too dark and secret to feel like a positive thing. Jaw-dropping, atmospheric, beautiful, powerful stuff The next love explored here is less physical and infinitely more spiritual. Vittoria Colonna was a religious

The arrow has only just pierced her heart, but the blood has already drained from Ursula’s fragile body. She is pallid, ashen, aghast at the mortal wound in her chest. All around her mouths are agape in shock, men grasp to hold her up, a hand tries – too late – to stop the arrow. This miserable, chaotic, sombre depiction of feverish violence is the last painting of one of history’s most important artists, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. He painted like he lived. Caravaggio’s short existence was full of the drama of his art. When he wasn’t making a name for himself as the leading artist of his generation he was fighting in the streets, drinking in the bars, and generally being a superstar agent of chaos. In 1606, he killed a man and was sentenced to death. So he fled, and got in more trouble in Malta and Sicily, before heading to Naples where he painted this scene for a Genoese nobleman whose daughter was about to become a nun.  The legend goes that Saint Ursula was a Christian princess whose 11,000 holy virgin followers were murdered by the Huns in Cologne. The Hun prince offered to spare her life in exchange for her hand in marriage. You can see how he took her rejection: it’s him who loosed the arrow in her chest.  A maelstrom of movement and brutality and morbidity. It’s incredible. Caravaggio’s last painting (the main attraction in this tiny free exhibition) isn’t in the best state of repair; big chunks are smudged and foggy, other parts look messily overpainted. Is th

It’s all in your mind, a figment of your imagination, and that’s how Yoko Ono wants it. The pioneering nonagenarian conceptualist – whose life’s work has been unfairly eclipsed by her Beatles-adjacent fame – wants to plant a seed in your brain, and that’s it. That’s the art. At its best, her art is simple, direct, and, when she started doing it in the mid-1950s, absolutely revolutionary. Ono moved to New York from Japan, rented a loft, and let the ideas win. In the fertile experimental atmosphere of that city at that time, surrounded by like-minded creatives including John Cage, George Maciunas, David Tudor and the incredible LaMonte Young, Ono went about changing art.  She did it with performances and instructions. The opening walls here are lined with note cards, each with a simple order: ‘light a match and watch till it goes out’, ‘let a vine grow, water every day’, ‘draw line, erase line’, ‘polish an orange’. Some instructions are meant to be performed, others (like ‘go on transforming a square canvas in your head until it becomes a circle’) exist only in your mind. Conceptualism had existed in some form since Duchamp and his urinal, maybe even since Gustave Courbet if you wanted to argue that way, but this is Ono getting rid of all the stuff of art, all the colour, the form, the physical reality, and leaving behind only the idea. It’s powerful, incredible, smart, beautiful. A final video shows Yoko in a trilby screaming and making funny noises Performance was essential

Yes, the presence of soon-to-turn-85 stage and screen legend Ian McKellen tackling Shakespeare’s great character Sir John Falstaff is the big draw in ‘Player Kings’.  But Robert Icke’s three hour-40-minute modern-dress take on the two ‘Henry IV’ plays does not pander to its star, and is unwavering in its view that this is the story of two deeply damaged men, linked grimly together.  McKellen is naturally excellent as an atypically elderly Falstaff, whose continual self aggrandisement is such that even his line about being in his fifties comes across as an improbable boast. But his younger co-star Toheeb Jimoh is equally as good as a bitter, angry Prince Hal, who feels startlingly a piece with the vengeful older version of himself we meet in ‘Henry V’. The usual take is that with his dad recently installed on the English throne, heir Hal is enjoying a classic bout of youthful hedonism. He’s carousing away in Cheapside tavern the Boar’s Head,  living it up with various lowlife eccentrics, foremost among them the rotund rogue Falstaff, who serves as something of a substitute father to Richard Coyle’s cold, formal Henry IV. But in Icke’s version, the tension between the two leads is palpable. Jimoh’s Hal responds coldly to the older man’s attempts at mockery, and there is a palpable sense of danger to him. Hanging out at the Boar, he feels less a pampered princeling out of his depth, more an escaped tiger lying low at a petting zoo. Their relationship never feels truly easy: inde

Jez Butterworth’s first play in seven years unfurls with the richness and depth of a well-crafted novel. Backed by West End super producer Sonia Friedman, ‘The Hills of California’ has a level of resource behind it that would probably fund whole seasons at his alma mater the Royal Court, where his previous works have premiered. But by heck the ‘Jerusalem’ playwright – and his big-name director Sam Mendes – know how to put those resources to work. Initially it’s pretty much a kitchen sink drama, following a fractious group of sisters: the Webbs. In the sweltering summer of ’76, they have reunited at their childhood home: a Blackpool guest house somewhat ambitiously called Seaview (it doesn’t have a sea view). The occasion is the imminent death of their mother Veronica, unheard and unseen upstairs, rotting away in the final stages of stomach cancer. It begins with a conversation between square, stay-at-home daughter Jill (Helena Wilson) and Penny (Natasha Magigi), a nurse who offers to put the family in touch with a doctor willing to end Veronica's pain. Jill is interested, but won’t do it until her sisters arrive, two of whom duly do: blunt, pragmatic Gloria (Leanne Best) and fiercely witty Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond). The final sister is Joan: we don’t know anything about her, except she apparently lives in America now. Her plane is delayed, and Jill is adamant they put any mercy killings on ice until her arrival. Unexpectedly, the second scene sees ‘The Hills of California’ shif

‘Little fish, big fish/swimming in the water/come back here man/gimme my daughter’ hissed a demonic 25-year-old Polly Jean Harvey in her 1995 hit ‘Down By the Water’.  That was a long time ago. But where so many middle-aged pop stars’ forays into musical theatre feel like bored attempts to crack new markets, the cycle of 13 songs Harvey has written for the National Theatre’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’s ‘Our Mutual Friend’ slot seamlessly into her body of work.  The imagery of water and drowning that flows through Ian Rickson’s production of Ben Power’s adaptation of Dickens’s final finished novel feels of a piece with ‘Down by the Water’ and its iconic video. And where Harvey’s most successful album, ‘Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea’ concerns itself with the Atlantic and with modern, gleaming New York, ‘London Tide’ is almost its negative, steeped in the mud of the Thames and the grime of old London, which is referenced again and again in the lyrics. ‘This is a story of London, death and resurrection’ howl the cast in the opening ‘London Song’. ‘London, forgive me’ they keen in the closing ‘Homecoming’.  The show is billed as a play with songs: the tune count is a bit low for actual musical status, and there’s a conspicuous lack of razzle-dazzle. Anna Morrissey’s stylised movement peps up the numbers, but there’s nothing like actual dancing here. Musically, the keyboard-led songs feel like a hybrid of the Harvey’s eerie ‘White Chalk’ album and the most vocally

This review is of the original 2021 cast.  From March 11 until June 1 2024 Cara Delevigne will play Sally and Luke Treadway the Emcee.  From June 3 until September 21 Rhea Norwood will play Sally and Layton Williams the Emcee. Come to the cabaret, old chums, and see the stage performance of the year from Jessie Buckley! Gasp at the terrific supporting cast in Rebecca Frecknall’s luxury revival of Kander & Ebb’s musical masterpiece, foremost Omari Douglas’s passionate, tender, little boy lost Clifford! Be wowed by Tom Scutt’s literally transformative design! Wonder at the free schnapps you’re offered on the way in, and nod in polite appreciation at the pre-show entertainment! Also… there’s Eddie Redmayne. Now, I have absolutely nothing against the guy. But the presence of any hugely famous, Oscar-winning star is bound to distort the role of the Emcee of the Kit Kat Club: the Weimar-era Berlin bar in which ‘Cabaret’s tragic heroine Sally Bowles plies her trade. The Emcee is a vital supporting role: his sardonic songs set the mood of the show, and map Germany’s descent into darkness. But it’s in no way the lead role – in fact, the character barely interacts with the actual story. Putting by far the most famous actor in the show in the role would be enormously distracting even if they didn’t do… this. Wearing a series of beautiful, subtly sinister outfits that kind of feel like they’re trying to process every single one of David Bowie’s sartorial choices from ’73 to ’83 (more on