London events in March
Our guide to the best events, festivals, workshops, exhibitions and things to do throughout March 2020 in London
A bright, blossom-filled March 2020 in London is definitely our bag. As spring arrives and the days start to get sunnier and longer, there’s plenty going on in London to embrace the new season. Why not take a stroll around London’s best parks and gardens as they start to burst with colour, check out the city’s best restaurants or sink a drink in one of London’s neon-filled bars. St Patrick’s Day and Mother’s Day. It also holds WoW: Women of the World Festival, Earth Hour, London Book and Screen Week and the big St Patrick’s Day Parade and Festival in Trafalgar Square. For more fun in the city, check out our guide to the best events, free stuff, art and music. This lot should keep you busy in London for the whole of March 2020. You’re welcome!
St Patrick’s Day in London
You don’t have to go to Ireland to enjoy the party atmosphere of St Patrick’s Day 2020, there’s plenty going on right here in London
The Irish really know how to celebrate, so when it comes to St Patrick’s Day in London, the city’s Irish community have no problem showing us how it’s done. A day to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland, the occasion is always one big welcoming bash. Expect lots of dancing, hearty traditional dishes, a huge parade and as many pints as you can handle.
The official holiday lands annually on March 17 (a Tuesday in 2020), but this year the main London celebrations take place in Trafalgar Square March 13-17.
At this year’s three-day shindig, more than 50,000 revellers are expected to descend on Trafalgar Square for a lively parade of music and ceilidh dancing, plus plenty of things to do with the kids, from an Irish folk show and film festival to Irish walking tours. Feeling peckish? Fill up on traditional grub from the Irish Street Food Market.
If you can’t face the crowds, we’ve rounded up the best St Patrick’s Day happenings below. Or if you want more cultural inspiration, check our pick of the best London events in March. Get ready for a very green weekend.
When is St Patrick’s Day?
It’s always March 17, but in true Irish fashion, St Patrick’s Day sessions usually run throughout Paddy’s weekend.
What is St Patrick’s Day?
The date supposedly marks the death of this guy called (yep, you guessed it!) St Patrick, who travelled to Ireland in the fifth century to convince Irish pagans that Christianity is where it’s at. Do you associate Ireland with shamrocks? That’s down to him too: the story goes that St Patrick used the three-leaved clover to describe the Holy Trinity to non-believers. Oh, and legend says he banished snakes from the country by chasing them into the sea. Best mull that last part over with a Guinness.
Where is the London St Patrick’s Day Parade?
London’s St Patrick’s Day parade lines the streets from Piccadilly to Trafalgar Square and cheers on a stream of leprechaun floats, traditional musicians and squads of Irish dancers. The main stage at Trafalgar Square will be surrounded by a street food market and a ‘tea tent’, with a line-up of Irish bands. Basically, it’s a big, rip-roaring one-day festival, only the pints are a shade of Gaelic green.
Rare Birds Bohemian Market
The festival-themed market at 93 Feet East has everything you want in a market and more. Head along to Brick Lane to gobble down street food, sip on cocktails, pick up wavey garms from independent designers and vintage stalls and join denim customising workshops, all to a soundtrack from banging DJs and live acts.
Details
Event website: | https://www.rarebirdsmarket.com |
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Venue name: | 93 Feet East |
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Address: | 150 Brick Lane London E1 6QL |
Transport: | Tube: Liverpool St |
Price: | Free entry |
Dates And Times
- 93 Feet East Free Entry
Rare Birds Bohemian Market
The Oxford v Cambridge Goat Race
Polish your horns and belt out those bleats, because London’s favourite farmyard fracas is back for an eleventh year in 2020. The Goat Race is fast becoming as popular as its Thames-based rival (at least around the Time Out office), and sees two goats – one representing ‘Oxford’, the other ‘Cambridge’ – take part in a dash around the farm.
The gates open at noon with lots to enjoy on the farm, including bands, booze and other fun, goat-related nonsense. The race takes place at some point between 4.30pm, although the exact time depends on the mood of the athletes. There’s an official bookie and sweepstake if you or your nanny fancy a flutter. Young bucks at heart can join the Goat-e-oke, take part in the Coat Race or the Goatry Slam. By the end of it, you might just pass out from goat-pun fatigue. Book tickets well in advance – the animals mustn’t get overcrowded and places sell out fast.
This year you can upgrade your goat race ticket to a VIP experience. For out £50 and as well as a front-row seat at the goat race, you’ll also get close up and personal with the farm’s goats. Help groom, feed and walk them and bring along up four people with you to help you do it. All proceeds go to the upkeep of Spitalfields City Farm.
Details
Event website: | https://www.thegoatrace.com/ |
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Venue name: | Spitalfields City Farm |
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Address: | Buxton Street London E1 5AR |
Transport: | Tube: Whitechapel |
Price: | £17.50, kids £5 |
Dates And Times
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- Spitalfields City Farm £17.50, kids £5 Book online
- Spitalfields City Farm £17.50, kids £5 Book online
The Mikvah Project
Achingly intimate remounting of Josh Azouz’s drama about two men drawn to each other at a Jewish bath
Two men exist awkwardly, nakedly together in a single Jewish ritual bath (the title’s ‘mikvah’). Josh Azouz’s tender story is soaked in healing water and other, harder-to-shift substances: tradition, self-doubt, hypocrisy.
‘The Mikvah Project’ was first staged at The Yard; translated to the more intimate Orange Tree, Georgia Green’s production is an example of the alchemy that happens when you get the perfect combination of play and theatre. In Cory Shipp’s set, a mosaic-tiled pool is recessed into the stage, its water reflecting Eitan and Avi’s limbs as they meet, first by accident, then more deliberately. The Orange Tree’s in-the-round set-up means that the audience becomes the walls of the mikvah. Sometimes the two performers are showmen, acknowledging us and explaining snippets of Jewish tradition from their warm, if sometimes claustrophobic, community. Sometimes they act like they’re alone.
Josh Zaré plays 17-year-old Eitan. He’s still a kid, really, and Zaré has this incredible energy that makes him visibly fizz with excitement as he mimes driving his first car, or drifts into confused monologues about the girls he’s meant to fancy. Avi doesn’t have time to help him work things out, because he’s married and trying for a kid. In theory. Alex Waldmann captures the contradictions of this man who always knows the right thing to say, the right thing to do, but can’t make himself stay within those lines he’s drawn out so neatly.
Religious tradition. Forbidden lust. We’ve seen it all before. Except we haven’t, because Azouz’s play takes what could be a familiar clash between religion and homosexuality and makes it strange. His writing dances, torturing unspoken truths into weird metaphors, like when Avi tries to use football to codedly explain why Eitan should choose a heteronormative life. It doesn’t work. But Azouz’s play doesn’t soar into queer wish fulfilment fantasies either: there’s an incredibly tense pattern of release, denial, release which makes it impossible to look away.
The mikvah is an acceptable place for men to be naked, together, and this play is an often-hilarious interrogation of all the intimacies that makes room for. This production doesn’t always find the more mystical side of the mikvah’s symbolism: Avi’s meant to be a talented singer but his voice lacks the strength to bring a spine-tingling spirituality into this small space. But it has the power to transport you from tiny room to bustling synagogue to snatched moment in the sun, with a still, cold pool of water at its heart.
Details
Venue name: | Orange Tree Theatre |
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Address: | 1 Clarence Street Richmond TW9 2SA |
Transport: | Rail/Tube: Richmond |
Price: | £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min |
Dates And Times
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
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- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min
- Orange Tree Theatre £15-£32, £15 concs. Runs 1hr 5min