A half century ago, a creative actor/director and immigrant (from South Africa via England), Maurice Podbrey, together with his equal half, Elsa Bolam (and Herb Auerbach and Peter Duffield) managed to knit together a theater company, Centaur, which was and is no easy feat. If that wasn’t nerve wracking enough for a person, Bolam then went on to start another successful one, Geordie Productions.

In an unintentional but perfect nod to the past, Eda Holmes, Centaur’s new artistic director, brings us Choir Boy set in a boys’ prep school while Podbrey’s first production, The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, took place in a girl’s school. The play is written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who comes with a pretty flashy CV: he’s the Chair of Yale’s School of Drama, where he is also the Playwright in Residence at the Repertory Theatre. and he was also Playwright in Residence for Stratford-Upon-Avon’s Royal Shakespeare Company – and happens to be a member of the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble. And let’s just throw in here that he wrote the story of Moonlight which won Oscars for best picture and for the writing.

The story is mostly about Pharus (played by Steven Charles), a gay student making his way through a very traditional private school. Charles commands the stage throughout, and we can’t wait to see where his star takes him (to the Broadway production?). His fellow students talk, yell, fight and sing a cappella as they share intimacies and rivalries when the old school values conflict with our modern world in rules, nepotism, faith, sexuality and school board traditions.  Tight direction by Mike Payette keeps you riveted throughout, while Lighting Designer Andrea Lundy’s magic creatively moves you around the set (loved the purple).

Floydd Ricketts, the musical director and arranger, was the right man in the right place to be able to create new arrangements of spirituals, gospel and jazz songs for a cappella harmonies.  Ricketts notes, “Even though this music comes from pain, there is also joy in it”. Dayane Ntibarikure, assistant director and choir movement facilitator, did a brilliant job of  having the actors move “slave slowly” around the scenes, adding foot stomping  to song and subtly evoking a chain gang in the shower scene.

Holmes has tweaked the play runs slightly this year by adding (less expensive) preview shows to get the performance just that more perfect for opening night. You know how much I like a deal, and Centaur offers much for FREE with behind-the-scenes info to enrich your  theater experience: Talk Back after the shows , Sunday Chat Up, Thursday Pre-Show Convo and the Saturday Salon.

How perfect that this golden Centaur season started by lifting our spirits with the power of music blended with this timely story. See Choir Boy in Montreal before you can’t get tickets on Broadway (Dec 2018)!

Location 453 St-Francois-Xavier
corner: Notre-Dame
Tel: 514-288-3161
Dates: til Oct 28
www.centaurtheatre.com
Metro: Place d’Armes

Odysseo, the horse centric show, is awesome family entertainment which will WOW every member. If you can imagine taking Cirque du Soleil up a notch by marrying it with a team of gifted equestrians, this would be their offspring.

The show has acrobats, blade-running acrobats and horse acrobats – each team outdoing the other in their antics. There are raucous horses racing through jumps and quiet ballet-like riderless horses dancing to the whims of their female horse whisperer, Sylvia Zerbini.

Then why not throw in some African drumming, singing and dancing – for peace. When you combine 70 horses with 50 performers and all the high technology, multimedia and special effects, you create magic on stage.

The carousel pole acrobatics is  a charming setting for the melange of horse and rider/acrobats, but the white fabric/rope acrobatic act is the perfect “10” for each of the costume designer, set designer, lighting, artistic director and the acrobats themselves.

It’s hard to imagine it fitting into a tent setting, but horses appear on mountaintops, in an ice-scape, the woods, walking down hills, in rain storms, galloping as fast as the wind and even and splashing in a waterfront finale.

This time we attended with a youngster who had enjoyed horse camp this summer. She loved figuring out the equine trivia questions before the show started. In her child-like mind she imagined “horses dancing like people at a party”. We glanced occasionally at her face as she sat in awe, riveted to the stage watching instead a seamless ballet of people and horses.  And she was really hoping to get splashed by the playful horses.

Don’t wait – book tickets now as the run has been extended to Oct 21 and the price reduced to $60.  If you can afford it, the Rendez-vous VIP package, including dinner (roast beef and shrimp options) with an open bar, popcorn and drinks to take in to the show, a dessert buffet at intermission

(so Quebec-like with cheese there too), a stable visit, and a souvenir, really makes the evening special. This is a great idea for a do-ahead holiday gift for anyone – take the family, join co-workers or have fun with friends.

Location: Odysseo White Big Top at the corner of the boul. Rene-Levesque and De Lorimier
Tel: 866-999-8111
Dates: til Oct 21
www.cavalia.com
www.facebook.com/cavalia

The Automobile Protection Association has given the thumbs up sign to The Car Inspector –  a gentleman who does mobile car inspections.

Wherever the car is that you are thinking of buying, in a driveway or on a lot, he comes to you and does a complete inspection, including an ultrasound of the body.

You might want to use this service to verify a car before warranty expiration, after a repair job (to make sure it was done properly), before purchasing a used car, before selling (either to reassure potential buyers or to see if it’s worthwhile changing cars), as a pre-trip checkup or just to reassure yourself that it’s free of safety or mechanical problems.

This mobile vehicle inspection is quite complete and here are some of the things that are verified:

– An electronic body verification, to determine if the vehicle has been repainted, involved in an accident or rebuilt covering the the body panels, windows, floor, frame and structure.
– The motor and transmission, steering, brake, air conditioning, and electrical systems
– The brake wear, tire wear, drive-shafts and differentials, as well as suspension and steering components
– Everything inside including all electrical and manual controls, switches, gauges and indicators as well as the odometer, to see if the indicated mileage corresponds with the condition and wear
– Finally a road test is done to check the handling, braking, transmission and instrument operation
– The inspection is done on site in about an hour, Monday to Friday and costs $120 (base price plus traveling)

Tel: 514-890-5000

Whoa, the stars were aligned at the Press opening of Hosanna. Not only was the the former artistic and executive director here, Roy Surette, who planned this production for Centaur, but the new artistic director, Eda Holmes, who was thrilled to be presenting it – but also – Maurice Podbrey (and wife Elsa), the founding artistic and executive director – AND – the author, Michel Tremblay. All were delighted with the show, as well they should be.

Writing this in 1971, Michel Tremblay was far ahead of the general population’s knowledge of the LGBTQ+ community. In the play he speaks to the gender roles imposed by society at that time, and hope for eventual self-acceptance. Holmes refers to  this in her Director’s notes: “the narrow structures of gender and identity that were available at the time”. We have to applaud his bravery.

Eloi Archambeaudoin revisits his Table D’Hote Theatre role as Hosanna, hairdresser during the day to drag queen at night. The grander Centaur stage was a tabla rosa for lighting designer Audrey-Anne Bouchard to transform Claude Lemieux-rural boy into Hosanna-drag queen, using the uncomfortable giant flashing neon sign “BEAUBIEN” (tip of the hat to Montreal), to the David statue spotlight and the overall red light district red room.

The play reveals the painful sparring between the diva and her boyfriend, Cuirette playing hardass-leather- dude style by Davide Chiazzese. He fights back at her by putting the uncomfortable problems in her face, “You go to bed with makeup on because you don’t want to see who’s underneath”.  He knows Hosanna is stuck “between a woman’s face and a man’s body”. She knows how to spit back, referring to his job as washer woman by day and cowboy by night.

Who in this world doesn’t sometimes wish they could dress up and be someone else? Hosanna hits on this when she proclaims, “I know everyone who is gay in Montreal – even when they don’t know it themselves”.

Tremblay shows us how we all work on our outsides but really need to be working on our insides. Director Mike Payette notes what a timeless story this really is, because all couples have to face “their notions of love, and how they can exist together”.

Location 453 St-Francois-Xavier
corner: Notre-Dame
Tel: 514-288-3161
Dates: til June 10
Prices: $38.50 – $51.75 (includes deals for students and seniors)
www.centaurtheatre.com
Metro: Place d’Armes

photos by  Andrée Lanthier

Premium Retail Group is having a warehouse sale featuring PUMA, one of the leading athletic footwear, apparel and accessories companies in the world. PUMA offers performance and sport-inspired lifestyle products and for 5 days only you can save up to 80%  on trendy and versatile footwear, apparel and accessories.

Hurry in and get great discounts on this popular global sporting lifestyle brand. Puma has a style to fit your style.

Location: 4344 Garand, VSL H4R 2A3
corner: Pomba
Dates: May 9 – May 13
Hours: Wed 11-7, Thurs & Fri 11-9, Sat & Sun 11-5
www.premiumretailgroup.com

Our Prime Minister took the feminist lead when he packed his cabinet with 51% women. Now the Centaur Theatre with this production, Successions, has stacked the female deck with: a female playwright – Michaela Di Cesare, a female director – Tamara Brown, a female set and costume designer – Dianai Uribe, a female lighting designer – Audrey-Anne Bouchard, and even a female “fight co-ordinator”  Anita Nittoly. This team of girls is a real anomaly,  since  this play is very much about brotherhood.

Playwright Michaela Di Cesare admits that she attributes her active imagination to her Only Child Syndrome. Usually authors are told to “write what you know”, but Di Cesare chose to write this play about siblings – and male siblings at that. Enzo and Anthony are St-Leonard Italians who have just lost their mother and inherited a dilapidated junk-filled house (well-imagined by Tamara Brown, the set designer).

Instead of the usual “who did Mommy like best”, this play is more about who despised whom the most.

Di Cesare notes that “When both parents die, the family is cut off from the head”. Like a chicken without a head, these two brothers, David Chiazzese as Enzo and Carlo Mestroni as Anthony, keep circling and attacking each other both mentally and physically. It is painful to watch the enormous hostility and resentment between them. The difference between the would-be plumber and the lawyer-politico wannabe is too huge a gap to bridge. While Anthony just wants to get out of the junky house (in more ways than one) and snarkily dismisses his brother with “my time is to me my most valuable possession”, Enzo retaliates with the biting, “Am I about to be lawyered?”.

Though deaths can bring love and forgiveness between siblings, we see little of it here. Even Enzo’s heavily pregnant fiancee Nat (Gita Miller) and Anthony’s upscale wife, Cristina (Tara Nicodemo) verbally shadow box around the guys as they butt heads.

The  fun part for Montrealers are the lines that place the play here in Montreal, like the people who “get hives if you go east of Frontenac” or saying food is healthy like bagels.

All of the actors proved Di Cesare’s  point, which was that siblings have the capacity to hurt one another because they know so well how to push each other’s buttons. And she then goes on to say, “What I find so interesting about siblings is that they are the only people who bear witness to your whole life.”

Location 453 St-Francois-Xavier
corner: Notre-Dame
Tel: 514-288-3161
Dates: til May 6
Prices: $37.50 – $51.75 (deals for students and seniors)
www.centaurtheatre.com
Metro: Place d’Armes

You can find the very best that Canada has to offer within Parks Canada parks and sites. When you visit, you learn the stories of where we came from and who we are, including the history, cultures and contributions of Indigenous Peoples.

The Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, Catherine McKenna, along with Parks Canada’s Honourary Guide for Families, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, announced that admission for youth 17 and under is free for all national parks, historic sites and marine conservation areas.

By making admission free for youth under 17, Canada is celebrating families and the importance of our protected areas. They are hoping that by connecting with nature, youth will gain a better understanding of our urgent need to not only protect it, but maintain it for future generations.

While youth will enjoy free admission beginning in 2018, Parks Canada is returning to fee-based admission for adults and seniors to national parks, historic sites and marine conservation areas, including lockage at historic canals. The 2018 Parks Canada Discovery Pass is now on sale and is a great value, providing access to these national treasures all year long.

The Parks Canada Discovery Pass is the ideal way to discover nature and connect with Canada’s history. For information on purchasing the 2018 Parks Canada Discovery Pass, please visit the Parks Canada website: http://www.pc.gc.ca

What can you say about a museum when the 7-year-old you are with stops in her tracks at the entrance because she’s in awe of what she sees? Imagine you are walking thru a video screen of Canadian nature: the aurora borealis, crystals, wheat fields or fire. The museum has been completely re-done, with only two of the all-time favorite exhibits remaining – the crazy kitchen (it’s still so fun watching the video monitor of “drunken” people trying to walk through) and those majestic steam locomotives.

Visiting with a group of kids with an age range of 4-13, all of them were entranced for over 5 hours. Even though it was a busy weekend day, it rarely felt crowded, since there were so many corners to get lost in. One you may not find was a favorite – go past those hulking locomotives and around a corner to look for the soundproof Sounds of Silence room. Nearby, behind those trains, are movable touchable displays called Sound by Design.

The 13-year old liked the wearable technology and how it made the great outdoors easier to enjoy. He got to test a hockey helmets ( you get to whack one with a hammer) and perused the development of beekeepers’ gloves.

At Into the Great Outdoors, I was entranced by the land-water car owned by a family who needed it to drive/float to their chalet on an island.  Though the Zoom room was noted for ages 0-8, all of the kids had fun there – especially on the climbing wall with its secret smells and in the wind tunnel. The 4 year-old was in there for hours. We even saw couples on dates walking around in there with silly grins on.

Medical sensations was scary to one of the young girls, but they enjoyed manipulating facial features and guessing what the colorful patterns were which were captured by microscopes and telescopes.

The Exploratek room is near the cafe. Here the kids can gets creative and build buildings, create tube tracks or work with a robot.  The museum helps you keep costs down by making sure there are tables and cozy couches if you want to bring your own lunch, We’d suggest you do this, sinces the line for hot food in the cafe  moved slowly. There was a good selection of healthy foods.

A few times a day there are live demonstrations – we got lucky and saw one on pyrotechnics, including a rocket firing. Three-Two-One blast-off to this interactive fun learning museum.

Location: Canada Science and Technology Museum, 1867 St Laurent Blvd, Ottawa, ON K1G 5A3
Telephone: 613-991-3044 or toll-free: 1-866-442-4416
Hours: May 1 to September 1: Open daily; September 2 to April 30: Closed Mondays
https://ingeniumcanada.org

Juke Box Canada/Alilo Canada has a unique concept of gift giving, because they personalize their products. If you give “The Lullaby Plush  a hug, he will sing a child’s name in a lullaby song. Available in English, French, Italian or Spanish,  the animal choices are very soft and cuddly, .

A personalized gift is a good idea for any occasion. you can buy singing alarm clocks,  MP3 players, CDs, CD ROMs, hard cover books, DVD’s and photo balloons.

Their best-selling and hugely popular gift is the ALILO Honey Bunny, which is a 4GB MP3 player, nightlight and voice recorder all-in-one. It is already preloaded with popular nursery rhymes and stories in English and French. You can also add and revise the content as you wish. You can order and download personalized songs which sing the child`s name (available in English, French, Italian and Spanish). With Honey Bunny, you can easily carry your child’s music everywhere you go. He is a soothing friend for babies and his soft, glowing ears are totally safe to bend, pinch and chew. Older children appreciate that they can download whatever content they like and have fun with the voice recorder.

Mornings will never be the same when your child (or anyone else) can wake up to his or her name being sung on wakeup song a Singing Alarm Clock. Start every day with a smile. You can also buy just the MP3 of the wake-up song or any other song on their site so that even teenagers or adults can download the song as a wake-up on their smartphones.

Other Entertaining Personalized Gifts:

– Personalized Music CDs: Children are thrilled to hear their name sung throughout each song. The music and lyrics are contagious. and can easily become a favorite and played often. Every name is recorded live by professional recording artists.

– Personalized DVD Movies: The child is the star of his very own movie so they will see their face in the animated, colorful scenes. There are several titles to choose from with funny story lines and amusing characters.

– Personalized Stories on CD-ROM: In Kids’ Story Books the story is read to your child while using him or her as the main character and he/she becomes the hero of every scene. At the click of the mouse the child makes the objects come to life as they speak, move and talk.

A child can read along with the printed text below every scene or choose to turn the narration off so he can read on his own. This enhances the reading skills at the child’s pace, since he chooses when to turn the page. When ordering, you get to choose: name, gender, ethnicity, eye and hair colour.

– Hard cover books: Capture a child’s attention and imagination as he/she becomes the star of his/her very own story. Many popular themes are available: Mother Goose, Santa, Spiderman and Sesame Street, to name a few.

– Personalized Photo Balloons: Any photo can be printed on both sides of balloons. They are cute to use as a centerpiece for a festive occasion. Amazingly, they last for years.

Juke Box Canada offers these special personalized gifts for any occasion: holidays, birthdays, back-to- school, or just because.

jukeboxcanada.com@gmail.com
Seasonal: Place Rosemere
Phone: 514-836-3113 or 514-762-0858
www.jukeboxcanada.com
http://jukeboxcanada.com/alilo-canada/
https://www.facebook.com/JukeBoxQuebec/

The Automobile Protection Association has given the thumbs up sign to The Car Inspector –  a gentleman who does mobile car inspections.

Wherever the car is that you are thinking of buying, in a driveway or on a lot, he comes to you and does a complete inspection, including an ultrasound of the body.

You might want to use this service to verify a car before warranty expiration, after a repair job (to make sure it was done properly), before purchasing a used car, before selling (either to reassure potential buyers or to see if it’s worthwhile changing cars), as a pre-trip checkup or just to reassure yourself that it’s free of safety or mechanical problems.

This mobile vehicle inspection is quite complete and here are some of the things that are verified:

– An electronic body verification, to determine if the vehicle has been repainted, involved in an accident or rebuilt covering the the body panels, windows, floor, frame and structure.
– The motor and transmission, steering, brake, air conditioning, and electrical systems
– The brake wear, tire wear, drive-shafts and differentials, as well as suspension and steering components
– Everything inside including all electrical and manual controls, switches, gauges and indicators as well as the odometer, to see if the indicated mileage corresponds with the condition and wear
– Finally a road test is done to check the handling, braking, transmission and instrument operation
– The inspection is done on site in about an hour, Monday to Friday and costs $120 (base price plus traveling)

Tel: 514-890-5000