A Deptford arts centre throws a free Saturday fete
with a Guinness World Record hula-hoop troupe and a soul headliner —
the kind of afternoon that never makes a listings page. Three
well-known kitchens lay one 300-person table in Shoreditch for charity
the same day, the British Museum quietly opens 110 drawings unseen
together since the 1930s, and a New Cross pub runs gigs seven nights
running. Saturday closes a Grimeborn double bill and the Donmar’s
THE GUILTY; Wes Anderson’s retrospective follows it out the door on
Sunday.
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This is a week that goes looking in the wrong postcodes on purpose. On
Saturday 15 August, The Albany throws its garden gates open for the free
SE8 Summer Fete — a Guinness World Record hula-hoop troupe, a soul
set from Laville, drag bingo — the kind of afternoon that never
makes a listings page because it isn’t trying to. The same
Saturday, Gloria, Kricket and Blacklock lay one 300-person table in
Shoreditch for charity, Grimeborn closes its Purcell-and-Tırpan double
bill at the Arcola, and the Donmar’s THE GUILTY plays its last
night. Quietly, and with none of the Bayeux Tapestry’s queues, the
British Museum has 110 Netherlandish drawings on show that
haven’t been shown together since the 1930s — free, in
Room 90, all week. And in New Cross, a
scrappy DIY pub runs a different band every single night this week,
gate money going straight to the musicians.
Two service notes. Café OTO, Vortex, Kings Place and Soho
Theatre all rest again — nothing wrong with any of their
programmes, just space made for newer rooms. And the talks-and-ideas
circuit is genuinely quiet this fortnight: Gresham College and the
London Review Bookshop both have nothing on inside this window, and
Kings Place, How To Academy and Intelligence Squared wouldn’t
confirm anything either — a real August lull, not an
oversight.
The Albany · Deptford · Sat 15 Aug, 1–6pm · Free (pre-booked tickets sold out; walk-ups admitted on the day)
Deptford’s community arts centre turns its garden
over to a local fete: The Majorettes, a Guinness World Record-holding
hula-hoop troupe, run demonstrations and workshops; soul artist
Laville headlines; and Just May hosts drag bingo alongside DJs, craft
stalls and a jukebox musical. No ticket beyond a free walk-up on the
day — hula hoops, drag bingo and a soul set are the whole
pitch.
Free, unhurried, and entirely uninterested in being on anyone’s top-ten list.
British Museum, Room 90 · Bloomsbury · daily · Free
The product of a five-year research project into the
Museum’s own collection: 110 drawings by Bruegel the Elder,
Rogier van der Weyden, Lucas van Leyden and Hendrick Goltzius, many not
catalogued or shown together since 1932. Free, in a single room, all
week.
Museum of the Home gardens, Kingsland Lawns · Shoreditch · Sat 15 Aug, 12.30–5.30pm · £75
Gloria, Kricket and Blacklock — three kitchens that
rarely share a bill — each cook a course for one 300-person
communal table, an Italian village-festival format built around
Ferragosto, with wine from Luca and Passione Vino, live music and a
tombola. Every profit goes to The Felix Project and Shoreditch
Trust’s Community Table, not the restaurants.
Aulis · Soho · Sat 15 Aug, 1pm till late · £55 set menu, dishes from £4.50 · walk-in only
Aulis is normally a twelve-seat tasting-menu counter you
book months out. For one Saturday only it drops the formality: small
plates and cocktails, no reservations, a two-hour seating limit, and
the same kitchen minus the months-long wait for a table.
The Castle Cinema · Homerton · Sun 16 Aug, 2.15pm, Screen 1 · price via thecastlecinema.com
Hitchcock’s 1954 voyeurism thriller, marking its
70th anniversary with an introduction and post-screening discussion
from local historian and Hitchcock expert Gary Lewis — a
repertory booking, not just a revival slot, in a neighbourhood cinema
that treats the distinction seriously.
New Cross Inn · New Cross · nightly, 6pm doors · Mishikui/PROM/[wimp]/Funeral (Thu), Kodiak Bears (Fri), Never A Phase (Sat), Meiotempo (Sun), Temple King (Mon), Zu (Tue), Killtaker (Wed) · tickets via pit.live
New Cross Inn runs punk, metal and everything adjacent
seven nights running, never troubling a major listings site — a
different small touring or local act each night, the kind of
grassroots booking that defines a neighbourhood’s music scene,
not decorates it.
Design Museum · Kensington · to Sun 16 Aug · £20.69 (concessions £15.52, under-6s free)
700-plus objects from unprecedented access to
Anderson’s own archive — storyboards, puppets, costumes
and miniature sets across his whole filmography. The first
retrospective drawn from his own archive; last weekend to catch
it.
Donmar Warehouse · Covent Garden · to Sat 15 Aug · from £30 (£20 for under-35s)
Russell Tovey’s run at the Donmar — a show
we featured here when it opened — plays its final performance
Saturday. Last chance before the transfer talk starts and the
tickets get harder to find.
Arcola Theatre · Dalston · to Sat 15 Aug · £15–£39
Two chamber operas sharing a closing date in adjacent
studios: Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Studio 2,
Tuluğ Tırpan’s Lowest of the Low next door in Studio
1. Grimeborn’s stagings are intimate and unglamorous, real
opera stripped to two studios — both gone after Saturday.