Must-see: Our Mighty Groove
Sadler’s Wells East — until February 9
The new Sadler’s Wells East opens this week, a behemoth of a theatre dedicated to dance. The inaugural performance, Our Mighty Groove, turns the auditorium into an immersive dancefloor, blurring the lines between audience and performers. Vicki Igbokwe-Ozoagu’s blend of club styles is “fused with African and contemporary dance” for the main show; when it ends, stick around and let your hair down at the after-party.
White Cube Bermondsey — until April 6
Who is Theaster Gates? A professor, an artist, a sculptor, a curator, a translator, an archivist? Yes: all of that and more. His latest work — 1965: Malcolm in Winter: A Translation Exercise — honours the archives of Ei Nagata, a Japanese journalist who was a few feet away from Malcolm X when he was assassinated in New York. Nagata committed the rest of his life to preserving the activist’s legacy. Gates’s large-scale installations and films continue this archival work, exploring blackness in Japan and Japanese culture.
One for those who are sick of every east London spot being £100 a head for some natty wine and a single lamb chop. Slurp Noodles is simple: good, true-to-form Thai dishes, focused on authentic nam tok noodle soup. Try kuaijab, a peppery pork soup spiked with duck blood, or lad na, thick noodles topped with an even thicker gravy. Delicious, and a bargain here. Downstairs is Dang’s, serving spicy fried chicken and some expertly made cocktails.
Bargain Thai dishes at Slurp Noodles
Slurp Noodles
BBC One — available now
Fans still missing Motherland can fill the void with this follow-up. Lucy Punch returns as Amanda, navigating the trials and tribulations of parenthood. Only this time, she’s also navigating divorced life, and has moved from lovely Queen’s Park to slightly less lovely South Harlesden (“Darling, let me in before I get mugged,” deadpans her mother, a joyful Joanna Lumley). As sharp and cringe-inducing as ever.
Lucy Punch returns in Amandaland
BBC/Merman/Natalie Seery
This potential Oscar-winner — it has been nominated for best original screenplay — charts the events of the 1972 Munich Olympics, when Israeli athletes were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists. Viewers are thrust inside the ABC Sports studio as the journalists there, wholly unequipped to deal with the gravity of unfolding events, attempt to navigate the news while becoming unwitting players in the very negotiations they are broadcasting. Gripping hardly cuts it; modern parallels are left to the audience.
Peter Sarsgaard stars in September 5
Paramount Pictures
The Big Read: Waste Land by Robert D Kaplan
As the world churns with Donald Trump at the reins in America — not to mention the crises in Ukraine, Sudan and the Middle East — this book is rather timely. In the cheery words of the blurb we “are entering a new era of global cataclysm”. You can’t always unplug from reality — and heavyweight intellectual Robert D Kaplan is an ideal guide to the madness and (ray of light) the solutions.
Listen: Waiting Room by Kathryn Mohr
Missed this atmospheric debut album from last week? Get up to speed with Kathryn Mohr’s critically acclaimed release. It’s discordant and occasionally melancholic — perhaps partly because the project was written at a creative residency in an abandoned fish factory in Iceland. Bizarre, eh? Still, there’s a richness of texture to the record, the Oakland-born artist piling raw lyrics and ambient grunge into each song. Alt-rock at its modern best. Mohr is one to tell people you knew about before she was cool.
Don’t miss: Jemma Harrison
Giacco’s Bar — February 9
Up-and-coming London chef Jemma Harrison is hosting a pop-up at Giacco’s Bar in Highbury. The first serving was a bona fide hit last weekend and the second date is this Sunday, for lunch and dinner. Harrison, who has Camille and Westerns Laundry on her CV, will be serving latkes with sweet radicchio and sheep’s cheese, duck schnitzel in mushroom sauce and a special fried chicken challah roll (only 15 of these each day). Remember the name.
Jemma Harrison is hosting a pop-up at Giacco’s Bar in Highbury
Ronnie Scott’s — March 20
Joe Webb is a softly spoken, self-effacing young Welshman who just happens to be a monster on the piano. Over the past couple of years, he has proved to be the most fiercely talented jazz pianist of his generation, able to play with dizzying dexterity and at a speed that by rights should be illegal. He is Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson and Franz Liszt rolled into one, except he looks like the lost member of Oasis. His debut album, Hamstrings & Hurricanes, was a critical hit and this show promises to be a blinder.