Be there first: After all the brouhaha over the From Russia paintings, this is surely the show to see in its opening week. Stunning, inspirational works by the likes of Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Kandinsky, Tatlin and Malevich come to the Royal Academy from Saturday. This is jaw-dropping art you'd normally only get to see with a deep, heavy, carbon-footprint inducing flight to Russia, we're lucky enough to have it on our doorsteps until......

Last year, Icelandic theatre company Vesturport, in collaboration with the Lyric Hammersmith, staged a performance based on Franz Kafka’s novella Metamorphosis to great acclaim, and the theatre reported a 100% sell-out run. Now the Icelanders and the Lyric’s Artistic Director David Farr bring the play back for a brief three weeks, before touring it internationally. The cast has changed, but the story remains the same, as does the haunting music by Nick Cave and......

Next Friday the Royal Festival Hall will open its doors after two years of hefty refurbishments. We're a bit excited about the return of this jewel of the South Bank, and more specifically the launch weekend itself, which features water and candles.Will the £100m price-tag attached to the work make the modernist building the world's best concert venue? Almost every single surface has been ripped out and then either adapted, restored or replaced. Splendid......

Quartet is a 'digital dance' performance and the culmination of several years’ worth of complex collaborative research. The show features a human dancer, a computer generated avatar dancer, a robotic camera, a live musician, film bits, some hardcore science and a hurdy-gurdy. This is the work of the Quartet Project and you can read about all the technical scientific spoddery behind it here, but it’s probably sufficient for us to say that these performances......

Two bits of theatre news before we slink away for a distinctly thespian-free weekend: New Season, New Building for Young Vic The Young Vic theatre has been on walkabout for the last two years while its original home has been demolished and rebuilt to a fabulous new design. Having toured shows to 41 theatres in 31 cities since the redesign started, the company is no doubt looking forward to settling back into its home......

Last week, as The Sultan's Elephant brought theatre and spectacle onto the streets and straight to the people, an apt debate titled West End Theatre Should Be Sunk In The Atlantic. took place at the Menier Chocolate Factory in Southwark. Time Out’s Deputy Theatre Editor, Rachel Halliburton. David Rosenberg, Director of the Shunt Collective and Phil Willmott, Artistic Director of The Steam Industry represented the non-West End theatre side and argued for the swift......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Among the treats available to lit lovers this week are a reading in a cemetery, a reading in Shakespeare's Globe, and if you're willing to travel to Oxford, a whole slew of famous faces over the next couple of days... Events Around London (and Beyond): The Oxford Literary Festival continues through tomorrow (the 29th),......

A new season of ENO-Enders is about to start, with an all-new cast, new characters and dazzling new storylines and plots to keep audiences glued to what's going on at the Coliseum, the home of English National Opera. After the explosive cliffhanger ending of season one just before Christmas, Artistic Director Sean Doran has gone and is replaced by John Berry, previously seen as Director of Opera Programming. Loretta Tomasi who formerly starred in......

The latest defection from LA to join the gangs of Hollywood ex-patratriates gobbling up the primest of London prime real estate is Neve Campbell. The film actress is currently in London rehearsing the Robert Altman directed, Arthur Miller scripted play Resurrection Blues at the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo. The Old Vic is no stranger to asylum seekers from Hollywood: no less than Kevin Spacey runs the place as Artistic Director and keeps up......

Opera has become soap opera with the latest episode of uproar, dissent and... umm... angry letters to the board of directors of the English National Opera about the conduct of Martin Smith, the Chairman . Here's a quick recap before tonight's latest episode of ENO-Enders... Two weeks ago on ENO-Enders: Chairman Smith: Oi you, beat it. Artistic Director of ENO Sean Doran: Who, me? Can't I finish doing whatever Artistic Directors do at the......

The London Film Festival has just announced its opening and closing movies. The Opening Night Gala will celebrate the UK Premiere of Fernando Meirelles' THE CONSTANT GARDENER starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. Based on the best-selling novel by John le Carré, THE CONSTANT GARDENER tells the story of one man's journey to uncover the truth behind a personal loss and a global conspiracy. The strong supporting cast includes Danny Huston and Bill Nighy.......