‘Ode to Joy’ a Christmas comeback for New West Theatre

By Al Beeber on November 5, 2021.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

New West Theatre is ready to give theatre fans another reason to celebrate the Christmas season with a new holiday show at the Yates Centre in December.
The Lethbridge theatrical troupe will be staging its first Christmas show at the Yates in two years when the curtain rises on “Ode to Joy!” Dec. 15.
The show will run until Dec. 31 with tickets available at the Ticket Centre locations, 403-329-7328.
A musical/comedy revue, “Ode to Joy!” will run nightly at 7:30 p.m. with matinee performances at 1 p.m. scheduled for Dec. 18 and Dec. 31.
Artistic director Kelly Reay said Thursday the cast will feature New West regulars with a few new faces.
“It will be a nice mix of old faces and new faces.”
The show will also have some new musical numbers and comedy bits New West has never performed as well as some old favourites.
New West’s last show at the renovated Yates ended prematurely in March 2020 when COVID-19 restrictions were implemented.
New West has maintained a presence in the city with outdoor performances and “I think we were successful in that,” said Reay.
“An outdoor theatre and outdoor performance is wonderful but I think it doesn’t quite contain the same magic or shared communal experience as indoor theatre,” he said.
The Christmas show is traditionally New West’s biggest seller of the year, but more importantly Reay said, “it gets to become a real hallmark of a lot of people’s holiday season”  with kids being home from school and people looking for something to do during Christmas.
“Of course, it will be a comedy music revue show. We’re not reinventing the mould, that’s for sure. We’re giving people what they’ve come to expect but it will be a mixture of new tunes that we’ve never performed before and new comedy bits that are newly created for this show along with some old favourites as well as some sort of re-imagination of some songs we’ve done before,” said Reay.
“It was really important that we did have a good degree of new tunes in there because a lot of our outdoor shows we did over the pandemic were kind of greatest hits shows. So we really wanted to give the audience new as well,” Reay added.
Rehearsals for the production will start at the end of the month but pre-production is well underway. Costumes are being designed and the set is mostly finished.
“All the conceptual stuff is happening right now.”
New West will be requiring patrons to show proof of vaccination or a 48-hour rapid test to be admitted into the theatre. And all guests will be required to wear masks inside the Yates, he said.

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