New West Theatre is taking audiences back to the ’50s, today until July 23
Their new production, “Twist and Shout” is a pretty solid overview of the 1950s’ and early ’60s pop landscape.
So there is plenty of ’50s pop, poodle skirts, preppies, guys in poodle skirts and beehives, a greaser, the band dressed as soda jerks behind a massive ’50s diner set, and like all of New West’s musical revues, lots of singing and dancing.
There is also plenty of comedy, from the deliberately terrible groaners to some truly inspirational moments.
The set is a thing of beauty with vinyl records hanging from the ceiling, a ’50s style jukebox (with CDs), and that beautifully rendered diner set complete with a “Diner” sign flashing different colours.
The show features familiar faces like the always hilarious Erica Hunt and Scott Carpenter, Joceyn Haub and some talented newcomers like Mwansa Mwansa (who has a beautiful voice but needs to have more power) and Andrew Legg (who channels the spirit of Chris Farley). Devon Brayne shows himself to be a man of many talents as does Keiffer Davies. Vocal director Alison Lynch also shines.
The show starts with the group performing “Let’s Go To the Hop,” which made me smile as I can’t get Dash Rip Rock’s parody of that song called “Let’s Go Smoke Some Pot” out of my head. They showed off beautiful vocal harmonies throughout. With all of the new faces, they creatively introduced everyone to the tune of “The Nicest Kids in town,” which gave the show a ’50s/ ’60s variety show feel, mixed with “Up With People.”
No less impressive was their Monkees medley, including the whole cast, who entered the stage in pairs with ukuleles and guitars and each sang a Monkees hit ( ‘Theme From The Monkees,’ ‘I’m A Believer,’ ‘Last Train To Clarksville,’ ‘Daydream Believer,’).
As always the comedy was the highlight for me. I enjoyed the “Two second Cardston interpretive dance troupe” bits a
nd an interesting “Then and Now” bit comparing things like coffee, love letters, remote controls from the ’50s and today.
Erica Hunt and Andrew Legg had an inspirational bit poking fun at 50s housewives.
The show-stopper was their first set ending Elvis Presley medley, which covered each era of Elvis from rockabilly Elvis, army Elvis, ’69 leather Elvis and flamboyant, white caped Las Vegas Elvis. It is worth the price of admission alone to see Erica Hunt do her Elvis impersonation.
Another inspirational moment was a Scott Carpenter powered choral version of ’50s nonsense songs in which the cast performed choral style versions of songs like “Do-Wa-Diddy,’ “Be-Bop-a-Lula,” “Tutti Frutti,” “Wooly Bully,” “Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong,” Papa -Oom-Mow-Mow,” and “Tequila,” which almost brought down the close to capacity house.
I also enjoyed “Leader of the Pack” featuring greaser Keiffer Davies and backup singers Scott Carpenter and Andrew Legg done up in poodle skirts and beehives. That segued into a brain busting bit (after the motorcycle crash ending of Leader of the Pack) where Carpenter and Legg go to Heaven and have to answer two skill testing questions to get in — “How many days begin with the letter T and how many seconds are in a year” — which had me trying to do the math for the latter.
The guys wound down the show by doing a medley of ’50s guy group songs like the Temptations.
The whole cast ended the show with a medley of “Dancing In the Street,” “The Twist,” “Shout” and “Twist and Shout.”
The band was tight as always though I couldn’t hear much of Scott Mezei’s guitar.
But it was a good show, a nice trip back to the ’50s.
Twist and Shout runs at the Yates Theatre until July 23. Showtime is 8 p.m. each night Tuesday through Saturday. Tickets cost $15 for children 12 and under, $21 for seniors and students and $25 for adults at the door or $12 for children under 12, $15 for seniors and students and $18 for adults in advance. More information is available at www.newwesttheatre.com.
