Nutcracker, Gingerbread City and La Belle Sauvage: Five events in London to enjoy this weekend

We’re officially in December, which means the countdown to Christmas is on and London is certainly looking the part.

With the streets adorned with light displays and Christmas trees and busy shoppers bustling around trying to tick off their presents lists, the season to be jolly is in full force.

For those wanting a break from the preparations there are plenty of new events in the city this weekend.

From the Nutcracker to the Tottenham Book Festival, we’ve picked out some of the best events happening in London this weekend, December 3 to 5.

The Nutcracker

Royal Opera House, Bow Street, WC2E 9DD Til January 8 Tickets £1-£135

Not feeling festive yet? A trip to the Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker should certainly do the trick to get even the scroogiest of scrooges into the festive spirit.

Come join Clara and her Nutcracker on their journey into the Land of Sweets and meet the Sugar Plum Fairy, the Mouse King and his toy soldiers.

Tchaikovsky’s much-loved music is matched with Peter Wright’s stunning choreography which features a number of mesmerising solos. Come and be dazzled.

The Gingerbread City

6-7 Motcomb Street, Belgravia, SW1X 8JU December 4 2021 to January 9 2022 Tickets Adults £14 Under 12s £8.50

The Museum of Architecture’s Gingerbread City returns for its fifth year, with this year’s theme being “nature in the city”.

Here leading architects, engineers, landscape architects and designers have created an entire city made out of gingerbread, delish!

Trading in their concrete, beams and glass for dough, sweets and icing, participants have created a mini-city masterpiece of eco-buildings and green infrastructure, and show how greener cities make them cooler, cleaner and healthier places to be.

Expect the unconventional and mesmerising from this edible mini city.

Tottenham Literature Festival

Bernie Grant Arts Centre, Town Hall Approach Road, Tottenham Green, N15 4RX Until December 5 Tickets £5-£18

Tottenham Literature Festival returns to the Bernie Grant Arts Centre this week, focusing on the theme of Black revolutionary love.

Highlights to catch include Booker prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo reading from her new memoir Manifesto, British-Nigerian poet and playwright Yomi Sode on the books that have influenced her and Ghanaian feminist writer and activist Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah on her debut book, The Sex Lives of African Women.

La Belle Sauvage

The Bridge Theatre, 3 Potters Fields Park, SE1 2SG Until February 19 Tickets £15-£75

A fantasy Oxford, catastrophic floods and a menagerie of daemons come to the Bridge Theatre, as Nicholas Hytner brings Philip Pullman’s magic to the stage.

The Book of Dust- La Belle Sauvage is set 12 years before Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

In this story Lyra Belacqua is a tiny child, who is in the care of two young people and their demons who find themselves at the centre of a terrifying manhunt.

This production comes 18 years after Hytner’s groundbreaking His Dark Materials at the National Theatre.

Eternal Sunshine, an art exhibition by Charlotte Archer

147 Stoke Newington High Street, N16 0NY December 3&4 Tickets £5

Romford artist Charlotte Archer presents Eternal Sunshine, an exhibition showcasing her new autobiographical artworks, which depict ‘the challenges of being human’.

The collection is a blurred line between surreal, abstract, figurative & psychedelic, with each piece featuring a face.

The two day exhibition will also be accompanied by special guest DJs including Route 94 and Jess Bays and ticket holders can also enjoy a free drink.