This Week In London’s History Monday – 3rd March 1982: The Barbican Centre is opened by the Queen. After 15 years of construction, at a cost of £161 million, the centre would become the largest performing arts centre in Europe (as well as being voted the ugliest building in London). Tuesday – 4th March 1882: Britain’s first electric trams go into operation in Leytonstone, East London. Wednesday – 5th March 1856: The second Covent......

As we ease out of the austerity, self-denial and penny-pinching of January, so too the arts world comes even further out of its shell. This week sees a whole host of exciting openings. Take your pick; payday's passed and February's just round the corner! Be the first Gilbert and Sullivan's hilarious opera about love, corrupt local government, marriage, executions and heroics, The Mikado comes to the Gielgud Theatre from Wednesday. Alistair McGowan stars as......

If you’re a fan of musicals then you probably think the bigger the better. In which case you must pop down to the BFI Imax, where their After-Dark All-Nighter event will be screening four modern musicals on the trot on Saturday 8th December. First off the bat is 1980’s high school classic Fame at 11.15pm where the students of the New York High School for Performing Arts discover sex and show tunes. For those......

Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) is having an unusual autumn. While most performing arts venues start September with a new programme of plays, workshops and special one-off events, BAC is bolting its main doors and sending all those who dare approach through the back door and around each room in the venue for the mind-blowing Masque of the Red Death. We have had a range of experiences in this extraordinary production – and it just......

Finding venues for Friday and Saturday's fixtures was a piece of cake compared to this! But no nation should be left out - what with the world being in union and all that. Fiji v Canada Sunday 16, 13.00 UK time from the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. Canadians! Seek the Maple Leaf. Drink Molson. Forget hockey. Fijians - listen up. We have important news for you and your Polynesian rivals below. Meet us one paragraph down.........

The International Workshop Festival has been rumbling away in the city since 28 August, allowing the bold and brave to take part in workshops and experiments in performing arts with specially invited artists and practitioners. As the festival draws to a close, a curious couple of performers and experiments have cropped up on our radar. Anyone willing to take part is definitely a friend of ours, and we want to hear from you what......

El-Shaddai are very excited. Particularly Dr Ramson and his wife, Pastor Linda, founders of and pastors for this “non-denominational, Christ-centred” church. They've just spent £5m on a shiny new London home. This weekend, they'll be meeting their flock in the splendid surroundings of Golders Green Hippodrome, former home of the BBC Concert Orchestra. This is a considerable step up from borrowing bits of UEL or faceless Fairfield Halls. Yep, the Beeb wanted out of......

Site specific art and performances are all the rage at the moment. July last year saw London shaken up by the joyful prospect of irrevocable change because of the Olympics, then was rudely shaken again by the terrible prospect of irrevocable change because of homegrown terrorism. Artists have responded by grabbing hold of what we've got now to make something beautiful and memorable before it all goes away. Site specific art installations such as......

Believe it or not, this Londonista has never been to the V&A Museum in Kensington. So this was definitely on our list of London attractions to explore. In fact, we were getting ready to go there last weekend – looking up directions on their website no less, when we were distracted by a link to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden (a.k.a. the National Museum of the Performing Arts), which is apparently part of......

Budging The only fringe theatre venue in Leicester Square is to close in September. The tiny 150 seat Sound Theatre has sat shoulder to shoulder with the biggest of West End dross-peddling venues (Mama Mia is still playing at the Prince of Wales...) in the same block as the Swiss Centre since June last year, but while Sound's restaurant, bar and nightclub willmove to new Leicester Square premises, the theatre will not be joining......

We get to see a lot of high quality performing arts in London, just by going outside and hanging around. The National Theatre is hosting another Watch This Space Festival with lots of free outdoor performances to stumble across as you wander along the Thameside walk. The plucky performers who risk the unpredictability of British summertime weather range from steel pan musicians, "anarchic silent comedy from Japan", pyrotechnics, and... three women on three enormous......