Grey Gardens and Lunar Fest: What to do in T.O. this week

Grey Gardens

A Broadway musical about an eccentric mother and daughter is based on the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens, in which the daughter muses that it is “very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.” The first act is set as a flashback to the family’s salad days in 1941, while the second act takes place in the 1970s current day at a derelict Long Island mansion. There, the reclusive relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis struggle to maintain an unusual sort of dignity as they recall more tuneful times.

To March 6. $35 to $55. Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs, 26 Berkeley St., 416-368-3110 or canadianstage.com.

Beneath the Surface: Life, Death, Gold and Ceramics in Ancient Panama

You really can’t take it with you. After a flood upset an ancient river-bank cemetery in Panama, a team of archeologists from Philadelphia’s Penn Museum in 1940 excavated the graveyard and unearthed golden plaques and pendants, precious and semi-precious stones and a fat load of intricately painted ceramics. With photographs, archeological tools, field diaries and the buried treasures themselves, a travelling exhibit does more than scratch the surface.

To May 29. $9 to $15. Gardiner Museum, 111 Queens Park, 416- 586-8080 or gardinermuseum.on.ca.

Lunar Fest

After 12 months of the dignified and surefooted Goat, the new year (according to the Chinese calendar) brings the curiosity, creative verve and possible trickery associated with the Year of the Monkey. With that in mind, it’s monkey business as unusual this weekend at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, where lion marionettes will dance, crafts will happen and Asian cuisine will rule. The highlight, however, is likely to be an interactive installation with hundreds of simian figurines over which kids will go bananas.

Feb. 20 and 21. Free. 235 Queen St. W., 416-973-4000 or harbourfrontcentre.com.

Corb Lund

“Sometimes right isn’t equal, sometimes equal’s not fair.” Included on Corb Lund’s latest album Things That Can’t Be Undone is the cowboy ballad S Lazy H, an affecting story-song about a sixth-generation rancher who’s been dealt a raw deal. A tall-walking, true-country troubadour with more than a head of hair under his hat, the charismatic Albertan faces the modern realities of musicians in these times, and, as such, knows a thing about what’s fair and what is not, and what can be undone and what cannot.

Feb. 20, 8 p.m. $29.50 to $49.50. Winter Garden Theatre, 189 Yonge St., 1-855-622-2787 or ticketmaster.ca.

Dana Gould

As you may have read somewhere, 2016 is the Year of the Monkey on the Chinese calendar. Which may or may not mean anything to the sharp and smartly edgy American Dana Gould, the podcasting maestro and former writer with The Simpsons who grasps life’s surreality deftly, works a crowd charismatically, touches on touchy matters nimbly, and does chimpanzee humour with the very best of them. Don’t miss him.

Feb. 20, 9 and 11 p.m. $25. Comedy Bar, 945 Bloor St. W., 416-551-6540 or comedybar.ca.