Things to do in London this week

All Points East is taking over Victoria Park for two tinnitus-inducing weekends. The line-up is as eclectic as ever, featuring some seriously hot acts. This weekend sees Gorillaz, Idles, Turnstile, Pusha T and Self Esteem headline. It’s going to be hard to get any better than this.  

Whether or not it’s literally accurate to say that director Simon Godwin and designer Anna Fleischle have come up with a production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ themed around Wes Anderson’s 2014 opus ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, then that’s effectively what they’ve done. Here the goings-on in Shakespeare’s archetypal romcom are relocated to an Art Deco hotel in 1930s Italy. It’s a luxuriant meander though ‘Much Ado’ and a wrench to leave.

Edinburgh isn’t the only place with a bursting, brilliant fringe, and as the Scottish capital’s iconic event becomes ever more expensive, once-scrappy outsider Camden Fringe looks more like a serious contender than ever. It’s a lot smaller than Edinburgh, but still boasts hundreds of events all over Camden, taking in everything from the expected stand-up sets and experimental theatre to kids’ shows, dance and even magic. Runs tend to be for a night or two rather than the entire month, and prices are bargain basement by London standards, usually less than a tenner.

Dialled In Festival, organised by a group of London-based South Asian creatives, made a name for itself last year by putting on a line-up exclusively dedicated to South Asian artists. Before the fest heads to London for a second time, it’ll be whetting our appetites with an evening dedicated to Pakistani band Jaubi. They made their name by mixing hip hop artists like J Dilla, MF Doom and Nas with traditional classical Pakistani. Head along for ragas mixed with jazz and funk. 

The National Gallery is whacking up a purpose-built art studio in Trafalgar Square for its immersive festival ‘Summer on the Square’. Pop in, whatever your age or artistic finesse, to learn everything from self-portraiture and sculpture to zine-making and collage all led by pro-tutors. And, as it seems to be a prerequisite that all art events must include an immersive spin, some of the gallery’s famous works will be reimagined as large-scale feasts for the senses, including Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’, Monet’s ‘Water-Lilies, Setting Sun’ and, in what sounds like a more haunting proposition, Hogarth’s ‘The Graham Children’.

Walter Sickert is disintegrating. He’s melting into nothing, disappearing right in front of you in a staggeringly good, muddy, sombre early self-portrait from 1896. This neatly encapsulates what makes the English painter (1860-1942) so interesting: it’s not his handling of paint or how he captures light or anything, it’s the bubbling undercurrent of darkness that courses through his work.

London is home to some brilliant alfresco movie spots, which are popping up all over the city at the moment, everywhere from docks and parks to rooftops and manicured gardens. There’s something for everyone, from Rooftop Film Club’s 360-degree views at Peckham’s Bussey Building to screens by big historic houses. Basically, if there’s space for a screen, someone is putting one up – and we’re here for it. Welcome to the summer of the big-screen extravaganza.

One of London’s hippest music festivals returns to Victoria Park – its original home – for the first time since 2017. This year’s event is a bumper one-dayer with a dance-centric line-up led by The Chemical Brothers, Kraftwerk 3D and Peggy Gou. With the likes of Heléna Star, Kareem Ali, Logic100, Tourist, Eliza Rose, Floating Points and Daniel Avery also on the bill, Field Day will turn Vicky Park into a non-stop rave from noon until the 11pm curfew.

Directed by Jonathan Church, Julian Ovenden and Gina Beck star as on-off lovers Emile de Becque and Ensign Nellie Forbush in this tale of romance and racial prejudice on a Polynesian island at the height of World War II. There’s a cast of 30, a full orchestra and all the classic songs you could wish for, notably ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and ‘I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair’.

The Proms is the most famous classical music concert series on the planet. This year it’s celebrating its 150th anniversary with 84 gigs over 57 days with more than 3,000 musicians. International ensembles will be performing throughout the epic festival and this week’s highlights include Handel’s lavish 1749 oratorio ‘Solomon’ performed by The English Concert and the BBC Singers (Friday) and Ethel Smyth’s majestic Mass in D major performed by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Saturday). 

This amusing, visually inventive, above all fun, take on Shakespeare’s final play begins with Rachel Hannah Clarke’s Ariel archly hosing down the front rows of the audience – that’s your tempest for the night – and keeps up the pace from there. Prospero’s enchanted island is a sort of gone-to-seed holiday resort, presided over by Ferdy Roberts’s sorcerer. A lighthearted ‘Tempest’ with darker undercurrents and a lovely intimacy provided by the moments performed on a small thrust stage, this production is inventive, compassionate and really just a pure joy.

If you think videogames are just for sweaty nerds, this show exploring their artistic potential might just smash your preconceptions into a million pixels. From Cory Arcangel’s minimalist video works – where he’s removed everything but the clouds from the original ‘Super Mario Bros’ and left nothing but the road from ‘F1 Race’ – to Danielle Udogaranya’s Sims avatars with underrepresented skin tones and Cibelle Cavalli Bastos’s AR filters that constantly reshape their own face, the gallery isn’t saying that videogames are art, but explores how artists exploit the mechanics of gaming. It’s funny, incredibly meta and very good. And just like videogames themselves, this show is addictive, absorbing and probably very bad for your eyes.

Award-winning Australian play ‘You Know We Belong Together is a docu-drama from writer and performer Julia Hales, that shares her – and others’ – experiences of living with Down’s Syndrome, combined with a strand about her obsession with beloved Aussie soap opera ‘Home and Away’ (we’re promised a cameo from Ray Meagher (Alf Stewart). It comes to the Southbank Centre for a clutch of performances this summer. 

The corpse of the fashion industry is on display at Camden Art Centre. It’s bloated and vile and pungent, left here to rot, part-embalmed, by Tenant of Culture (Hendrickje Schimmel to her mum and dad). ToC’s work involves collecting discarded clothes and repurposing them into sculpture. In all this dyeing and reshaping and recycling, Tenant of Culture is loudly condemning not just fast fashion, but the more general scourge of waste in society, and the greed that elicits it.

Carnaby Street’s fortnight-long summer festival kicks off this week with a host of creative workshops, giveaways, live musical performances and loads of great retail and dining offers. A pop-up on Foubert’s Place will host free workshops where you can learn new skills ranging from life-drawing and pottery-painting to candle-making and kokedama workshops (booking required), while visitors can also get their hands on loads of freebies, including a water bottle in Just Hype, Korean ice-cream cups in Korean Dinner Party and even a free piercing in Metal Morphosis. Head down to the central London shopping hotspot on Thursday evenings to catch live bands, then finish up by checking out special menus and great deals at 14 different bars and restaurants on the street, including Dishoom, Shoryu, Mamma Pastrama and Kanada-Ya.