A member of Fab Four entertains the audience at the Medicine Hat Lodge on Friday evening. -- News Photo Bruce Penton

LEE ANNE CHARBONNEAU
Special to the News
The banquet room was packed with Beatles fans Friday at the Medicine Hat Lodge and not one came away disappointed.
The musicians who played the Fab Four bore incredible resemblance to the Liverpool youths who caused a music craze around the world in 1964 — even down to Paul McCartney's left-and-right head-bobbing to the beat. Wearing black suits and skinny ties in their first set, the troupe raised the level of excitement in the room to harken viewers back to their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Their voices blended perfectly to pull off the harmonies the Beatles engraved in our memories decades ago with songs like "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
In the next set, the players appeared in the psychedelic colours and decorated fringed jackets of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. During songs like "A Little Help From My Friends" and "Penny Lane," the now-mustachioed Beatles grooved on the stage while a light show of geometric patterns swirled throughout the room.
Singing solo, they did equally well. Playing an acoustic guitar and accompanied by the John Lennon character on synth, "Paul" crooned the lovely ballad "Yesterday" exactly the way it was recorded in 1965. But it was "John's" sudden appearance out of the dark on stage right, dressed in a white suit over a black shirt with his long hair parted in the middle, seated a the keys, that made viewers gasp with emotion and feel that an apparition of the late, great star was in the room. His solo rendition of "Imagine" was deeply touching.
The evening's close saw the entertainers dressed not in uniforms but in more individualized costumes. With Ringo in a black shirt and bright coloured tie, Paul in a Henley under a khaki vest, George in denim shirt and jeans and John in the white suit, the Beatles tribute band wrapped up their performance with music from The White Album. With terrific distortion from the electric guitars, tunes like "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Get Back in the USSR" wowed the crowd with their similarity to the Beatles recording.
Returning to the stage to deliver "Hey, Jude" for an encore, the Fab Forever Musical History Tour players gratified their Medicine Hat fans. Another StageWest dinner theatre success story.