Do · 19 June 2026
Three jazz options, three festival-grade films at the most local screens, a self-lacerating family play and a five-star Anne Boleyn debut — plus a playable mini-golf course and a spatial-audio listening room. A proper heatwave: dry all weekend, Saturday near 36°C, so this leans indoor and air-conditioned. No comedy this week — the one critic-anchored show was too far and too late.
Music · Original jazz (local, Edition Records)
Siberia-born, Paris-based saxophonist premiering an all-original album of reflective, unhurried jazz on the excellent Edition Records label — Télérama praises "the purity of her sound on the alto saxophone, the depth of her compositions and her total indifference to vulgarity." Lyrical over loud, and the cleanest logistics of the weekend.
Music · Vocal jazz (Great American Songbook)
A New York jazz singer with an exquisite voice doing an elegant take on 1940s–50s American song in an air-conditioned supper-club room. Standards, not covers — squarely in the Krall / Stacey Kent / Peyroux lane.
Music · Vocal-jazz legend (lunchtime, flagged)
2023 Parliamentary Jazz Vocalist of the Year — once toured with Cannonball Adderley and opened for Bill Evans — interpreting Gershwin and Cole Porter at Soho's flagship jazz room. A daytime option rather than an evening out.
Cinema · Foreign-language drama (Sundance winner)
Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winner — a tender, slow-burn rural romance between a grieving city man and a local farmer in western India. Quiet, beautifully observed, exactly the intelligent foreign-language register. Pick your showtime from the listing.
Cinema · Literary adaptation (Chloé Zhao)
Zhao's adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel — the death of Shakespeare's son and the grief that becomes Hamlet. Showing at our most local screen; choose your showtime from the Phoenix listing.
Cinema · Cannes Grand Prix (runtime flagged)
Cannes Grand Prix winner from the Worst Person in the World director — two sisters, an estranged film-maker father, and the family house at the centre of it all. Just over the 130-minute preference, but the quality earns the exception.
Theatre · New writing (★★★★ The Arts Desk)
★★★★ The Arts Desk (Helen Hawkins) — "a gem of a play with a superb trio of performances." Harmon (Bad Jews, Admissions) turns the blowtorch on his own family: three generations bickering toward truth across 1988–2018, with a block of ice melting onstage as a quiet climate metaphor. Fifteen minutes from home.
Theatre · Almeida transfer (five-star wall)
A near-unanimous rave wall — ★★★★★ Telegraph (Dominic Cavendish) "some of the freshest, funniest writing around," ★★★★★ Time Out (Isobel Lewis) "a tour de force," with five stars from the Standard and WhatsOnStage and the 2026 Critics' Circle award. Three Essex women gossip about Anne Boleyn's downfall as a witch-hunt closes in on their own lives. The earned West End exception, not commercial fluff.
Experience · Indoor, heatwave-proof
A crazy-golf course where nine leading female artists each designed a hole — "engaging, gorgeously colourful and ceaselessly surprising." You play it rather than peer at it, and it's entirely indoors, which on a 36°C Saturday is the whole point.
One-off · A cinema for your ears
A brand-new deep-listening space with surround speakers — blindfolded album playbacks and sonic sessions where you sit inside the record. Just opened, fully independent, and cool and dark — ideal for the hottest afternoon of the weekend.
Outdoor · Pop-up beach (heat-flagged)
Real sand, beach huts, deckchairs, a gelateria and a spritz bar outside the country's biggest beer hall. Heat flag: the open sand would be brutal at midday — go late afternoon into the evening when the worst of the sun has eased.
Food · Named-chef pop-up
Chef Sam Finnie (ex-Cycene, ex-Da Terra) cooking with Michelin pedigree but no fuss — ratte-potato ravioli with smoked egg yolk, lamb rump with wild onion and anchovy, crêpes Suzette. Indoor and independent, with a £5-wine / £8-martini happy hour 5–6.30pm.
Food · Member half-price (Friday only)
First London outpost of Paris group La Nouvelle Garde, with a members-only half-price launch. The window closes Friday 26th, so it's a Friday-only play — but a good one.
No comedy this week: the only critic-anchored show in the window — Joe Lycett (★★★★ The Arts Desk) at Up the Creek in Greenwich — has a Sunday set running past 22:00, too far and too late for the home-by-22:00 rule. Skipped rather than padded.