5 things to see in London this January

As you can see in the above photo, my calendar is looking pretty empty. Let me start by saying that it’s a LIE. This is how may calendar looked last week, but since I came home from my magical trip to The Cotswolds (heavenly heavenly heavenly), my diary has been filling up with all kinds of lovely (and more often rather mundane and boring) things.
Everyone is catching up at work, emptying inboxes, racing from meeting to meeting and trying to remember what on earth they did in December…  so this is the perfect time to plug in some culture time during the month, before all your evenings get filled up with ‘tidy living room, ‘do the washing up’ and ‘find missing sock.’
Here are five brilliant things to see in London this month.
So get that calendar out and plug them in… you know, before you’ve filled in any more available slots with ‘finish off mince pies.’
(Just me?)

The Wasp 
Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall, London, SW1A 2DY
Until 16^th January 2016
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s sharply comic thriller, The Wasp, sold out at Hampstead Theatre last year and now it’s in the West End.  MyAnna Buring, now a household name after Ripper Street and Downton Abbey, is the star alongside Laura Donnelly who you may have seen in Outlander and ITV’s Beowulf.  Once close childhood friends, Heather and Carla’s lives have taken very different paths – Carla lives a hand-to-mouth existence raising four children while Heather has a high-flying career, a husband and a beautiful home.  And yet, here they are sitting in a café twenty years later, with heavily pregnant Carla chain-smoking, as they awkwardly reminisce about the past.  Then Heather presents Carla with a bag containing a significant amount of cash and an unexpected proposition.  Laden with secrets, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s electric thriller asks how far beyond the playground we carry our childhood experiences and how far some people are willing to go in order to come to terms with them.

Botallack O’Clock
Old Red Lion Theatre, 418 St John Street, London EC1V 4NJ
Tuesday 12^th January – Saturday 6^th February 2016
Botallack O’Clock is a funny, moving and thought-provoking journey into the creative mind of Roger Hilton CBE, one of the most unique voices in post-war British art.  In 1965, after representing Britain at the Venice Biennale, Hilton moved to the Cornish coastal village of Botallack, where his working routine began to break down, mainly as a result of his increasing addiction to alcohol (which he had long used to creative effect).  For the final two years of his life, Hilton took permanently to his bed, where he continued to work, leaning over the side of his bed to paint on sheets of paper laid on the floor.  Hilton would work through the night with only his thoughts, his imaginings and a temperamental radio for company.  Botallack O’Clock depicts a suspended hour of the night where Hilton’s past and present combine with his vivid imagination and tenacious personality, giving a humorous and intriguing insight into the mind of a true artist.

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall, London, SW1A 2DY
Monday 18^th January – Saturday 13^th February 2016
2016 is the 125th anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s only novel and now The Picture of Dorian Gray has been freshly adapted by Merlin Holland, Wilde’s only grandson, and John O’Connor.  The Picture of Dorian Gray is a story that most people feel they know without ever having read.  On its first publication, a storm of protest was unleashed from British critics who described it as ‘a poisonous book’ written ‘for outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys’.  Here, Holland and O’Connor have reverted to Wilde’s original manuscript, reinstating some of the key lines that were censored.  These sections make more explicit the homoerotic themes of the story.  Through access to the original manuscript, Holland and O’Connor have produced the version of Dorian Gray that Wilde always intended us to see.  This gripping new production brings fresh insight to a work that many think they know but few understand.

Clickbait
Theatre503, The Latchmere, 503 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BW
Tuesday 19^th January – Saturday 13^th February 2016
Clickbait by Milly Thomas is a darkly comic new play about society’s attitude to porn and the women who make it for themselves. It explores the line between sexual empowerment and sexual exploitation while addressing the muddled logic of what feminism actually means.  It stars Georgia Groome who you may remember from the 2008 hit coming-of-age movieAngus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.  Georgia plays Nicola, a young woman who has been blackmailed with the threat of a leaked sex tape. It is through this dilemma that she realises a unique business opportunity and opens a network of amateur porn booths alongside her two sisters, Gina and Chloe.   This is a blistering study of how pornography is changing women’s relationship to sex in the 21^st century.

Aaron Kasmin – Lucky Strike
Sims Reed Gallery, 30 Bury Street, London SW1Y 6AU
Friday 22^nd January – Friday 5^th February 2016
Sims Reed Gallery is kicking off the new year with an exhibition of bold chalk pencil drawings by artist Aaron Kasmin.  Known for his abstract paintings and elegant colour pencil drawings, in Lucky Strike Kasmin takes inspiration from American cultural history to create striking images reminiscent of the glamourised post-prohibition era.  Inspired by Lion Match Company’s mid-twentieth century feature matchbooks, these drawings reflect the rise of America’s consumer culture.  The series of miniature drawings features close-up impressions of the branded matches and of the delicate boxes themselves. His drawings are evocative of a glitzy bygone era when attitudes and laws surrounding promoting alcohol and smoking were liberal, and selling sex was chic.
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