“Laughter is the best medicine, it does all of our  centres good,” observed Nord Bridge Senior’s association vice -president Jim Hahn, of a great new fundraising concert for the Nord Bridge  Seniors centre and the Lethbridge Senior’s Centre, Feb. 20 at the Yates Theatre.
 “Old West” Favourites is neither western flavoured nor old, nor is the event related to New West Theatre either, though several New West Theatre veterans are involved with this music and comedy revue.
“It’s called ‘old’ west’ because we’re getting older and we’ve been involved with groups with west in the name, ” laughed the 43-year-old Jeff Carlson, who organized a cast of old friends including Erica Hunt, Scott Carpenter, Arlene Bedster, Kelly Roberts, Jordana Kohn, Andre Royer and Carlson who designed a family friendly show of their favourite songs and comedy sketches from the past 25 years.
“But then we’ve all been doing this since we were 18. A group of us started acting in Fort Macleod in Great West then moved on to New West Theatre,” he said, adding they got back together to put together a show for the 55 Plus games last winter. Some members of the Nord-Bridge Seniors Centre were in attendance and enjoyed the show.
 “This will be the first time both organizations have worked together on an event  like this. It’s going to be quite exciting,” enthused Marcie Stork, volunteer co-ordinator of Fund Development for the Lethbridge Senior Citizen’s Organization.
“As the needs of the community changes, we’ll change with them. We’re all going to be seniors eventually,” Stork said adding senior’s organizations will be getting an even greater influx of seniors as the baby boomers begin turning 55, so programs must evolve to accommodate these younger ‘seniors.’

Though the ’60s  finished a few years before I was born, the University of Lethbridge’s production of the 1968 rock musical Hair, which runs Feb. 9-13, captures the essence of a turbulent decade almost perfectly. It almost makes me wish I was born 20 years earlier to have experienced that first hand. At least I’d like to think.

I took in opening night, Feb. 9, which was close to sold out. While the Who’s epic ’60s anthem ‘My Generation’ played softly, several audience members could be seen dressed in their hippie best, even the pit band visible beneath  the stage sported love beads, fringes and long hair.

While the crowd was getting settled through a long, opening instrumental featuring atonal sitar music, the show’s main character, Manchester transplant Claude,  played expertly by Jerrim Rushka wandered onto the stage and sat on a tree stump, dwarfed by a massive dreamcatcher, where a couple hippie girls fondled his hair.

 He remained seated through the opening number “Age of Aquarius,” but he’d  steal the spotlight, though his Manchester accent kept  coming and going, as much as  ‘tribe’ leader  Georger Berger, played  by Ian McFarlane did. His innate charisma showed why the tribe look to him as a leader. The first act of the production introduced the audience to the tribe, explored their friendship and bonding over the common love of free love, drugs, peace and harmony.

 Though Hair takes place in 1968, there was a definite connection between the young people back then and the young people today, as they try to find their place in a tumultuous world fraught with parental and societal expectations, surrounded by the dark cloud of war, racial disharmony and the draft. It’s not a production for the politically correct. It has swearing, nudity,  sex, drugs, rock and roll and some intense exploration of controversial issues. But it is mostly about peace, love, friendship and understanding. And what’s wrong with that?

As the cast bond, they become as much friends of the audience as they do of each other.

Several of the cast were highlights including Ife Abiola who displayed his magnificent  set of pipes, and tribe member Lindsay Meli, who got to sing a few numbers, took part in the haunting, dimly lit, tastefully done nude scene ending  Act 1  while Claude  sings “What Am I To Do?” She also added some excellent comedic bits, especially during a scene exploring  the relationships between the parents and their offspring, during which she played  one of the mothers and also a scene in the trippy second act where she played a shoeshine girl for a black and female Abraham Lincoln. All the girls sing really well especially a trio doing a take off of the Supremes.

There is a saying if you can remember the ’60s, you weren’t really there. If so , the University of Lethbridge’s presentation of the  1967 rock musical ‘Hair’ which runs at the University Theatre, Feb. 9-13, will help you remember. So get ready for a bit of sex drugs, rock and roll, and yes, a little bit of nudity.
  Choreographer Lisa Doolittle proposed this project.
“I thought it would be interesting to gather a diversity of people. And Hair is the perfect production for that,” Doolittle said. Hair is a 1967 rock musical about  a group of young people in New York City’s East Village who come together and form “the Tribe” a group of flower children inspired by  the hippies of the Haight Ashbury District in San Francisco, who seek a new path, turn in drop out, take drugs, embrace their bodies and protest Vietnam and the establishment.

One of the main characters, Claude, who is having difficulty  completely embracing the new counter-culture refuses to burn his draft card, and ends up dying in Vietnam which has an effect on the rest of the Tribe.
“People who were young in the ’60s are the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates’ of today. It’s a very powerful production. It makes you wonder what is the point of war. But there’s lots of sex, drugs rock and roll too,” she said.

The massive cast and crew includes  community members and students from all areas of the university.
“The young people here are the same age as the young people in Hair. This is not a pastiche of the 60s.We asked these young people talk to  people who were young in the ’60s. These kids have really, really become these characters,” she said adding choreographing the dance moves was more of a matter of teaching the actors to feel and experience the music and let their bodies move to it.

“So much of the ’60s  was a celebration of the body and rejecting consumerism and rejecting the machine of war,” she said.

“It’s not  so much about  choreographing it , ... I’m not telling them 1,2,3,4, they’ve got to do it, feel it, experience it. I’ve just been organizing it so the audience can actually see what’s going on,” she continued praising director Gail Hanrahan for shaping the cast into a unique vision of the production.
Actor Ian McFarlane, who plays Tribe leader Berger is enjoying his role.