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Sarah’s Weekend List: Pretty Woman, Casteliers, The Grand Duke

Last chance to ride the Ferris wheel at Montréal en lumière outdoor site at Place des Festivals. PHOTO: Montréal en lumière
Last chance to ride the Ferris wheel at Montréal en lumière outdoor site at Place des Festivals. PHOTO: Montréal en lumière

Sarah Deshaies produces the Andrew Carter Morning Show. Every Friday at 8:20am, she tells you about the big, quirky and off-the-beaten-path events happening in Montreal. Here is this week's list, with links for more information so you can get out and enjoy the city! Submit your event to sarah.deshaies@bellmedia.ca.

It’s the final weekend for the 25th edition of Montréal en lumière, with a selection of gastronomic offerings, live performances and a rocking outdoor site at Place des Festivals. Ride the Ferris wheel, skate on the iced loop, dance to DJ sets, enjoy illuminated art and more, until Sunday. 

Part of the Montréal en lumière programming includes a musical fan fave: Revisit the whirlwind romance of Vivian and her handsome workaholic suitor Edward in Pretty Woman: The Musical. Based on the 1990 movie that shot Julia Roberts to stardom, the musical has a fresh score by Bryan Adams and longtime collaborator Jim Vallance; the book is by Garry Marshall and JF Lawton, the film’s director and screenwriter. Ellie Baker is charming and smooth as Vivian, a girl from Georgia who has to hustle to make it on the streets of Los Angeles, Adam Du Plessis is a standout narrator and hotel manager, while Sarah Wang’s operatic turn is a beautiful bonus. While there are some side plots, the real meat is reserved for Vivian and Edward’s unfolding romance. Until Sunday at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. 

The Arsenal in Griffintown has relaunched a mega-popular dance extravaganza that melds circus and electronic music over a sprawling landscape. Brigitte Poupart’s Jusqu'à ce qu'on meure (Until We Die) opens with the sound of a crash, with dancers spaced out in separate vignettes. The action is fluid, moving from corner to another, with the dancers mingling through the crowd. Daring acrobatics, lasers and spacy monologues follow, ending with a triumphant tone and dance party. Until March 24 - but don’t wait to nab your tickets, as the first few shows are already sold out. 

The Montreal Science Centre hosts a gallery of hilarious animal photos from every continent in the first Canadian appearance of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. The images, captured by professional photographers, are divided into six climates, including polar regions, tropical forests and the savannah. Pair your outing with a visit to one the Centre’s ongoing exhibitions or an IMAX fiml. Until March 24. 

There are a few tickets left for the 19th Festival International de Casteliers, with a varied program of puppet shows for kids and adults, in and around Outremont. Check out South Korea’s A Show with Strings, a playful object theatre piece for kids 4 and up, at The Illusion Puppet Theatre on Friday and Saturday, 3pm. Radio Play is an all-ages show set in Dawson City, performed by a Yukon company at Theatre Outremont, Saturday 7pm and Sunday, 3pm. Or see Ciné-Casteliers, a series of short films of puppetwork, at Paul-Gérin-Lajoie-d’Outremont High School Auditorium, Friday 4pm. And take a stroll around the neighbourhood to see the annual Marionnettes en vitrine display of puppets in store windows. A walking tour starts Sunday,1:30pm 

The Oscars are Sunday night, starting an hour earlier at 7pm - yay! If you want to really corner one category, try the short films! In addition to feature contenders Poor Things and The Zone of Interest, Cinema du parc is screening all the nominees in the live action, animation and documentary categories. Various times. The Cinema is also hosting an Oscars watch party, 6pm Sunday. Tune in to CTV at 6:30pm for Oscars Countdown, and the awards show beginning at 7pm. 

Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Grand Duke is getting its Quebec premiere this weekend, thanks to the Lakeshore Light Opera! This is the last of the duo’s 14 collaborations (and only financial failure) and is more of a deep cut for fans. A troupe of actors stages a coup against a miserly old Duke in this lampoon of the upper class, which includes a song about “sausage rolls as a secret conspiratorial sign”. Until March 16 at Vanier College’s Theatre in St Laurent. 

Looking to spruce up your pad or patio? Visit the National Home Show, at Palais des congres until Sunday. 

Old Montreal’s culinary event Happening Gourmand is back. Sup on three-course table d’hote menus set at $39, $49 and $59 t, or choose from a two-course table d’hote weekend brunch menu. Participants include Italian eatery Bevo, Kyo Bar Japonais, French brasseries Gaspar and Modavie, and Maggie Oakes. Until March 30.  

Friday’s music picks: Los Angeleno singer-songwriter Em Beihold at Theatre Fairmount, 8pm. Double rock header with Toronto’s BRKN Love & Alberta’s Royal Tusk, Bar Le Ritz PDB, 7:30pm. Indie rockers The Rural Alberta Advantage at Le Studio TD, 8pm. 

Saturday’s music picks: Colombian rocker Juanes is at MTelus, 8pm. American heavy metal icons GWAR at Beanfield, 7:30pm. French rapper Bekar at Le Studio TD, 8pm. Spiritual electronic DJ Kaivon at Fairmount Theatre, 10pm. DJ duo Bedouin at L’Olympia, 9pm. 

Sunday’s music picks: Rafael Payare and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven’s Symphony No 1 and Shostakovic’s Symphony No 8. Sunday, 2:30pm at Maison symphonique. 

Hot off his latest album, The Blackest Panther, stellar comic Arthur Simeon at The Comedy Nest, with support from Isabelle Gaumont, Walter Lyng, Matt Shury and more! Friday and Saturday, 8 and 10:30pm.  

Several shows on tap at Montreal Improv in St Henri, including Sproink & Oink go to Hollywood, a sketch comedy send up of ‘90s comedy duos. Saturday at 9pm. 

With the tagline “It’s dumb, just come have fun”, the Shrek Rave returns to Club Soda, Friday 10pm. 

At burlesque headquarters The Wiggle Room: owner Frenchy Jones hosts Welcome to the Circus: Sideshow Burlesque Friday, 9pm , with BonBon Bombay, Quinn, Yikes Macaroni, Mina Minou and Enshantay hitting the stage. Saturday, 9pm is Femme Fatales, with Isa Strawberry, The Lady Josephine, Joy Rider and Miami Minx. Standup soirée The Lucy Show spotlights female, femme and queer comics and dancers, Sunday 7:30pm. 

ONGOING EVENTS

Explore the beauty and diversity of our natural world in Root for Nature. This new, 90-minute show is a “nature hike” indoors, conceived as a powerful piece of edutainment inspired by the COP15 biodiversity talks hosted by Montreal in late 2022. This collaboration between National Geographic and OASIS Immersive Studios will take place in the same location as the UN conference, at the Palais des congrès. Also at the venue: Dreaming of Asia is a stunning exploration of Chinese and Japanese culture, making its North American premiere at OASIS Immersions. French digital art studio Danny Rose has crafted four different experiences, including a look at shadow puppet theatre. 

The Horizon of Khufu: A Journey in Ancient Egypt is a virtual reality experience that brings you into the giant pyramid in Giza, a 146-metre high pyramid built nearly 3,000 years before the Common era. Noted Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian will be your guide. Studio PHI has brought in this for a North American first. Until May 31, in the Old Port at 2 rue de la Commune. 

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts explores how nature inspired two great artists of the 20th cnetury. Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art is an exhibit curated by the San Diego Museum of Art; it recreates both artists’ studios down to minute detail. Admire O’Keefe bodacious flowers and landscapes, contrasted with Moore’s sculptures inspired by stones and bones, and his Helmet heads. Until June 2. 

The Arsenal hosts Immersive Disney Animation, which spotlights House of Mouse characters and music, including movies like Frozen, The Lion King and The Little Mermaid. At Arsenal Contemporary Gallery until May 4. 

Visit the ongoing 14th edition of Luminothérapie, a display of outdoor light installations in and around Place des Festivals, including the larger-than-life flower installation Astera. Bring your skates (or rent a pair) for a turn around the refrigerated rink at Place Tranquille. The rink has an interactive projection nightly at 6:30pm: Au Bord du Lac Tranquille captures the flora and fauna of the St Lawrence, playfully moving along with your feet. 

Still time to visit the city’s newest museum: Centre des Mémoires Montréalaises promises to capture the metropois’ history and citizens. Check out the vintage neon signs at the entrance, and look for the colourful balls that once decorated Ste-Catherine in the Gay Village. There are two exhibition up now: a lookback at the 90 years of Le Chaînon, the women’s shelter and resource centre, and Détours, which focuses on hidden corners of the city. Located at 1201 St Laurent. 

The McCord Stewart Museum’s excellent and informative Indigenous Voices of Today: Knowledge, Trauma, Resilience. The show profiles the 11 nations living within the borders of Quebec, with testimonies and carefully curated objects. Two of the McCord’s current shows include Becoming Montreal is about the depictions of the city in the 1800s, and Wampum: Beads of diplomacy, which displays over 40 wampum belts from different collections, underscoring their symbolism and history.