Here’s HELEN MUSA’s latest Arts in the City column of arts news of shows in and around Canberra. 

Fresh from its debut at the Adelaide Fringe, where it won Best Kids and Family Show, Signor Baffo has embarked on its first regional tour. It’s an interactive children’s comedy performed by comedian Joshua Burton and is filled with culinary chaos and belly laughs. Tuggeranong Arts Centre, October 9-10. 

Good news, Bell Shakespeare’s new season will bring Henry 5 to Canberra in April. But alas, its piece de resistance for 2025, Coriolanus, directed by Peter Evans and starring Hazem Shammas and Peter Carroll, will not play here. Why not?

Surfacing after a period of low-key activity, director Chris Baldock, with translator Céline Oudin, will stage the Canberra premiere of French murder mystery, 8 Women, for Mockingbird Theatre Company. Set in an isolated countryside mansion in 1950s France, a family is gathered for the holiday season. But their beloved patriarch has been murdered. Belconnen Arts Centre, October 10-19.

A piano recital by Irma Enriquez will highlight works by remarkable Latin American women composers and poets. National Gallery of Australia, James Fairfax Theatre, October 9.

Daramalan Theatre Company will present The Heart as the first production at the new Joe Woodward Theatre, October 12-19. The play features characters from past productions who awaken on stage, questioning their reality. The second act portrays modern young people grappling with creativity and life and the production concludes with a choir performance of Faure’s In Paradisum.

On October 13, Greenaway Studio, Chapman, will host Myee Clohessy, founder and artistic director of the Highlands Music Collective, on violin and John Martin on piano for an afternoon of music from the First Viennese School. As a birthday tribute they will also play two of Sally Greenaway’s compositions for violin and piano. 

Prizewinning Canberra pianist Ronan Apcar, who left town for the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne a year or so ago, returns to perform Industrial Revolutions, commissioned from local composer Lynden Bassett. At Smith’s Alternative, October 12.