Vaches The Musical, Créations In Vivo at L’UniThéâtre. Photo by Marianne Duval.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Edmonton, you have choices on stage this weekend, including a delightful and insightful comedy that sees into the complicated lives of teenage girls, and three musicals that land miles apart on the musical theatre spectrum  — a classic, a groundbreaker inspired by a painting, and a musical comedy that has fun with the musical form itself. Snow is merely a hint: get yourself to the theatre.

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•L’UniThéâtre, Edmonton’s only professional francophone theatre, launches its season, for the first time in living memory, with a musical.  Vaches The Musical, a spirited, light, and funny original by Stéphane Guertin and Olivier Nadon, music by Brian St-Pierre, arrives from Ottawa’s Créations In Vivo. In French, with English subtitles, the five-actor production is “freely inspired” by a true story, the dramatic Quebec ice storm of 1998.

Full of running gags, and light of touch, it’s set in Casselman, a village in rural Ontario “37 minutes” outside Ottawa. And the farmer protagonist Jean is up against it — his daughter (who wants to move to Toront0, the greedy mayor, the military, and then the ice storm. Jean is valiantly determined to save his cows from destruction. It’s a test of the resilience of small communities, and the spirit of collaboration. And as the title suggests, there’s fun to be had in winking at the grandiloquent conventions of musicals.

It opens tonight at La Cité francophone’s Théatre Servus Credit Union (8627 rue Marie-Anne Gaboury) and runs through Saturday. Tickets: lunitheatre.ca.

The Sound of Music (Priya Narine with guitar), Citadel Theatre/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. Photo by Nanc Price.

•At the Citadel, The Sound of Music, the final collaboration of the most successful musical theatre partnership in history, Rodgers and Hammerstein, continues through March 31. And with this encouragement to take up mountain climbing, your chance to unleash a score that’s always simmering in your brain. Priya Narine as the high-spirited postulant and Charlie Gallant as the stern naval hero, and seven wonderful young actors (including Christina Nguyen as the oldest Liesl) as the kids, star in Rachel Peake’s Citadel/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre co-production. Have a peek at the 12thnight review. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820.

Cast of Sunday In The Park With George, MacEwan University Theatre Arts. Photo by Lindsey Tran, @understudystudio_. Set design Ross Nichol, costume design Deanna Finnman, lighting design Travis Hatt, video design Matt Schuurman.

•Jim Guedo’s production of Sunday in the Park With George at MacEwan University, running tonight through Sunday, is a rare chance to see the 1984 Stephen Sondheim masterwork. There’s something magical about this musical, which brings to life a pointillist painting, Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. And it’s all about art, and artists, and making art, and the sacrifices in relationships, in life, that are built into the life of the artist. It runs on the Triffo Theatre stage at MacEwan University (11110 104 Ave.). Check out the 12thnight.ca preview with director Guedo here. Tickets: tickets.macewan.ca.

Larissah Lashley, Hayley Moorhouse, Abigail McDougall, Jayce McKenzie in Robot Girls, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

•At Shadow Theatre, the premiere production of Trevor Schmidt’s captivating Robot Girls continues through March 31. A delightful cast of four — Jayce McKenzie, Abigail McDougall, Larissah Lashley, Hayley Moorhouse — are junior high girls who join the science club to build a robot for an international competition.  Funny, touching, landing lightly on the complications of a complicated time of life. Have a look at the 12thnight review. Tickets: shadowtheatre.org.