Cultural highlights to book now: London things to do, spring/summer 2021

Cinderella, Gillian Lynne Theatre

Fairytales will be reinvented this summer as a drastically different version of Cinderella comes to the West End. And there are some especially talented fairy godmothers (and fathers) bringing this new production to life.

The show is based on an original idea by Emerald Fennell, the Emmy-nominated writer behind Killing Eve season two and film A Promising Young Woman starring Carey Mulligan. Musical Theatre maestro Andrew Lloyd Webber (Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Evita) is is writing a new score. And lyrics are from David Zippel, who was part of the Oscar-nominated song-writing team in Disney's Hercules and Mulan, and also conquered Broadway with City of Angels and The Woman in White. Carrie Hope Fletcher stars as Cinderella.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2021, Royal Hospital Chelsea

The Chelsea Flower Show has seen many firsts, from a Plasticine garden in 2009 to gnomes in 2013 and, of course, the gardening design trends and new plants revealed every year, but this year the pandemic has caused the Show to be moved from May to September.

David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, exhibition Royal Academy

In March last year, as lockdown forced us all to stop and take notice of the world around us, David Hockney was in his home in Normandy, watching the spring arrive, documenting the buds on the fruit trees and the greening hedgerows. In May, the Royal Academy will open an exhibition of these works – 116 in total – all created using his trusty iPad.

Opera Holland Park 2021

Opera Holland Park 2021 will open on 1 June with new productions of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz. There will also be a revival of the company’s hugely successful 2018 staging of Verdi’s La Traviata. The season is being performed to smaller audiences in a newly designed, Covidly-safe auditorium.

Anything Goes, Barbican Theatre

Last seen in London some 16 years ago, the multi-award-winning, joy-filled musical Anything Goes is shimmying onto the Barbican Theatre stage this July.

Taste of London, Regent's Park

Taste of London returns to Regent's Park this July, bringing with it a tantalising mix of London's most esteemed restaurants in pop-up form. Chefs from over 30 of London's best restaurants each cook three dishes for guests to try, with each restaurant boasting one star dish that's made exclusively for the festival, as well as signature dishes from the restaurant. Pockets of live entertainment will once again lend the event a festival feel, while bars serving craft drinks will keep spirits merry.

Back to the Future: the Musical, Adelphi Theatre

You remember the 1985 cult movie Back to the Future, where a fresh-faced Michael J Fox plays the teenager Marty McFly, who accidentally travels back in time to 1955, meets his future parents and becomes his mother's love interest… until the eccentric scientist and inventor Doc Brown helps him return to his own time. And you're sure to remember the splendid time-travelling De Lorean automobile, which transports McFly in his time travels.

Well, all that (minus Michael J Fox, obviously) is now travelling 35 years into the future to become Back to the Future: the Musical, which is coming to the West End in summer 2021.

London Design Biennale 2021, Somerset House

Postponed in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, the third edition of the London Design Biennale is returning to Somerset House in June 2021 with award-winning designer and artist Es Devlin as its artistic director. The centrepiece of the event is Forest for Change, an installation of 400 trees featuring a clearing in which visitors can learn about different elements of the UN’s sustainability plan.

Under Milk Wood, National Theatre

A new production of Dylan Thomas’s 1954 radio drama Under Milk Wood is set to reopen the National’s Olivier theatre on Wednesday 16 June. Directed by Lyndsey Turner (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Saint George and the Dragon), with additional material by Siân Owen, Under Milk Wood will unite on stage Welsh actors Michael Sheen (The Deal, The Queen), Karl Johnson (Wittgenstein) and Siân Phillips (Hedda Gabler, Saint Joan).

Booking opens on 30 April.

Tosca, English National Opera live, Crystal Palace

An exciting breakthrough for live music-making comes with news of an open-air Tosca in the Bowl at Crystal Palace. Star soprano Natalya Romaniw takes the title role in Puccini's powerful and action-packed tragedy. London's music scene has been hoping and waiting to hear this phenomenal singer in a role that she has already taken in her native Wales.

Alexander Whitley, Overflow, Sadler's Wells

Choreographer Alexander Whitley's Overflow has its much anticipated world premiere at Sadler's Wells this spring. Whitley is one of the most cerebral and meticulous choreographers working in the UK today. His latest piece, Overflow, considers how our desires, fantasies and vulnerabilities are powerfully influenced by social platforms and explores what lurks beneath our compulsions to check, share and like.

Booking opens on 8 April.

Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict exhibition, Royal Academy

An exhibition of riotous paintings is coming to the Royal Academy this May. Brightly coloured and crowded with figures, the works of Kenyan-born artist Michael Armitage are largescale and dripping with political and social commentary – think Goya meets Gauguin. This exhibition will showcase 15 of Armitage’s works alongside 35 works by East African artists who have influenced his development, including paintings by Kenyan painter Meek Gichugu

After Life, National Theatre

A brand-new stage adaptation of Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s tender, philosophical 1998 movie After Life reopens the National's Dorfman theatre this June. Reimagined for the stage by three of the industry’s brightest stars – writer Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, A Christmas Carol), director Jeremy Herrin (People, Places and Things) and designer Bunny Christie (The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night-time, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) – the production has been co-produced with award-winning theatre company Headlong, whose impactful productions (among them Junkyard and People, Places and Things) have seen Thorne, Herrin and Christie collaborate to critical acclaim in the past.

Booking opens 30 April.