There’s a slew of exhibitions and shows opening this week. Get your diaries around this lot:
Exhibitions: Architecture exhibition Forgotten Spaces opens at Somerset House on Thursday. The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons is the new show at the National Portrait Gallery, opening on Thursday (alongside another show called The Actress Now). The Wildlife Photographer of the Year show opens at the Natural History Museum on Friday.
From Saturday, in time for half term, you can choose between two family-friendly museum exhibitions: War Horse: Fact and Fiction at the National Army Museum, or Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids: A Journey Through the English Ritual Year at the Horniman Museum.
Theatre: Tonight is the opening night for John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence at the Donmar Warehouse. Or you can head to Greenwich for some pre-Halloween thrills as Greenwich Theatre stage Edgar Allen Poe’s classic ghost story, The Pit and the Pendulum. From tomorrow, you can see Jumpy at the Royal Court, a frank and funny family drama; A Round-Heeled Woman at the Riverside Studios (a retired Californian teacher rediscovers sex); or Terror 2011 at the Soho Theatre, the theatre’s annual festival of horror. Watch the teenage Emperor Nero spin out of control as Britannicus opens at Wilton’s Music Hall on Friday.
On Sunday, you can see the fruits of a lot of hard work as the Old Vic's New Voices perform plays that have been conceived, written and produced in the previous 24 hours.
And on Monday, Death and the Maiden opens at the newly named Harold Pinter Theatre, with Hollywood starlet Thandie Newton.
Dance: The Birmingham Royal Ballet is at Sadler’s Wells from tonight performing a family favourite, and a triple bill of ballets. Also opening tonight is the Lucinda Childs Dance Company’s performance of DANCE at the Barbican Theatre. On Saturday, The Sleeping Beauty comes to the Royal Opera House, and runs until Christmas. Fabulous Beast and new Irish piece Rian open at Sadler’s Wells on Monday.
From tonight, opera fans can see Wagner’s dark Der Fliegende Hollander at the Royal Opera House. On Monday, brotherly love comes to the London Coliseum as the English National Opera performs Rameau’s Castor and Pollux.
Last Chance to See: London Shows Closing
Saturday is your last chance to see The Tempest in St Giles’ Cripplegate Church, and The Sound of Music at the New Wimbledon Theatre.
Glamour of the Gods closes at the National Portrait Gallery on Sunday.
We have listings for ongoing shows at London’s top museums on our Museums and Galleries page
