07/08/2026
Stage West offers a trip down memory lane with Beehive
By Louis B. Hobson
The ensemble of Beehive: The 60's Musical. Photo by Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo.
Stage Westโs musical Beehive: The 60s Musical is pure nostalgia as it takes its audiences through the 1960s.
The final song of the evening is Cass Elliotโs Make Your Own Kind of Music, and that is pretty much the theme of the show, as the six women take the audience through the 1960s using the songs that defined each year.
The opening of the show uses the teenybopper songs that essentially told young girls even if a boy was a rotter, he was better than no boy, thus we get Lesley Goreโs Itโs My Party, the Chiffonโs Sweet Talking Guy and two Supremesโ songs Where Did Our Love Go? and Come See About Me. There are also the wishful songs like The Ronettesโ Walking in the Rain, which assures the girl that the perfect boy is somewhere out there.
Eventually girls get a little stronger with The Angelsโ My Boyfriendโs Back and The Crystalsโ Then He Kissed Me, while Lesley Gore tries to redeem herself with You Donโt Own Me. It is in this set that Diana Del Rosario takes the whiny Connie Francis song Where the Boys Are and turns it into a female anthem, rattling the roof of the dinner theatre.
The interesting thing about the approach to these early songs in particular is that musical director Konrad Pluta doesnโt try to recreate the sound but rather gives them his own take. It works.
Things get a little heavier when Sarah Horsman sings the Shirellesโ ballad Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, about a young girl having given her virginity the previous night. It, and The Chiffonโs One Fine Day, move past the bubble gum-style lyrics into some heavier themes. It is still the big hair, or beehives, with a more serious message.
The message couldnโt get more serious than the use of Dionโs song Abraham, Martin and John which the women use to recall the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the memory of the young men who lost their lives in Vietnam. Itโs an interlude that really works. The video screens are always complementing the songs, and do so with great poignancy during these numbers. The singers also wear trench coats, not the garish outfits of the 60s that Raili Boe has them dressed in for most of the first half of the show.
The women literally let their hair down to introduce Dusty Springfieldโs Son of a Preacher Man and Luluโs To Sir With Love, songs in which the women are much more in control. This emancipation leads to Tina Turner and her Proud Mary and River Deep Mountain High. This is when director Troy Goldthorp finally uses the talented Dallas Hayes-Sparks. Yet he insists on her sharing the songs, which makes no sense.
Beatrice Rene-Decarie, April Cook, Moulan Rourke, Dallas Hayes-Sparks and Sarah Horsman, as a group, give the lyrics of songwriter Carole Kingโs Aretha Franklin hit (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman real energy, signalling itโs time to showcase someone like Janis Joplin. Horseman sings Cry Baby, Try Just a Little Bit Harder, and Me and Bobby McGee. Itโs so fitting that Aretha Franklin is used to close this decade with Moulan Bourke and del Rosario singing Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You, putting her in such control.
Beehive may be a slight little musical but it is not trivial. It has a good deal to say about the changing attitudes towards women in those 10 years. For those people who grew up in that era, the show is a real sing-along blast. For those born later, just listening to the talented sextet is the thrill, as is being introduced to these songs.
Choreographer Greg Pember gives the singers all the right moves, and lighting designer David Smith knows how to feature them. Jeff Fafard, Carl Janzen and Jeremy Coates shine as the onstage band Fafard taking a step into the action for a couple of the numbers.
Beehive: The 60s Musical runs at Stage West until Aug. 30.
