Here’s arts editor HELEN MUSA’s latest look at all things arts in her “Arts in the City” column. 

MICHELLE Law’s glitzy comedy, “Miss Peony”, will be performed in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, with surtitles in all three languages, when it comes to town. Billed as “comedy of beauty pageants”, it sees Lily’s maternal grandmother, a beauty queen back in Hong Kong, pushing 21st century Lily into entering the highly competitive Miss Peony beauty pageant. And, oh, yes, Grandma (Poh-Poh) is a ghost. At The Playhouse, August 23-26.

CANBERRA Symphony Orchestra’s third Llewellyn Series concert, “Winter Dreams”, features Korngold’s “Der Schneeman” (The Snowman), written when he was just 11 years old; Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh’s “Icy Disintegration”; Frank Martin’s “Concerto for Seven Winds, Percussion and Strings” and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1. At Llewellyn Hall, August 16. 

CANBERRA Glassworks has awarded a four-week residency at the Toyama Glass Studio in Japan to glass artist Katie-Ann Houghton. 

AUSTRALIAN Haydn Ensemble returns to Canberra to perform masterworks in chamber form. Wesley Music Centre, August 17.

MARK Cottle, from the UK, will give an illustrated talk on the weaponry, gold coins and exquisitely crafted jewellery revealed in the discovery of the “Sutton Hoo”, a seventh century burial ship found in Suffolk, England. National Library, August 22. 

APEIRON Baroque’s next concert will focus on the sounds of the viola da gamba and the intricacies of Baroque dance. Highlights include music for a mistuned violin and gamba, a dance of madness and dances from the French court opera. Wesley Uniting Church, Forrest, August 13.