Theater Review—

‘Menopause,’ In All Its Hilarity, Continues To Entertain

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN — All right, let’s be honest: Menopause the Musical is not a show to go to on a date, at least not with a guy. I counted three men in the audience and they were squirming a bit (as were four nuns when the 1955 hit “Only You” was being crooned to a pink microphone looking remarkably like a dildo). But for the several hundred women who were rolling delightedly in the aisles, throughout this 90-minute, no-intermission extravaganza, the performance is a joyous and hilarious confrontation with the inevitable.

Menopause the Musical is ten years old now, and it continues traveling around the country and the world, carrying out its mission of empowering the sisterhood. A quartet of supremely talented women perform two dozen golden oldies from the fifties and sixties, with the words altered to apply to the symptoms and collateral issues associated with The Change.

Thus the Saturday Night Fever theme “Stayin’ Alive” becomes an ode to sleeplessness, as in “Stayin’ Awake”; Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” turns into a complaint about personal trainers and exercise regimens, called “Puff My Butt is Draggin’”; and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” becomes a lament about husbands being driven out by the tossing and turning of their night-sweating spouses (“In the guestroom or on the sofa, my husband sleeps tonight…”)

And then there’s the recurrent theme using the Irving Berlin staple “Heat Wave” transformed into “We’re having a hot flash…”

Of course what makes the show work, beyond the sense of collective recognition, is the immense talent displayed by the performers, who play a disparate group of strangers who meet at the lingerie counter of Bloomingdales in New York, and after lunch, hairdos, exploration of all the store’s various offerings, and numerous trips to the restroom (“Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go-  ah, made it!”), wind up as fast and supportive friends.

Fredena J. Williams, who does a startling take-off on Tina Turner with “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” is the professional woman whose memory glitches confuse her subordinates at the office when she can’t remember their names, so she hugs them (“They Call Me the Great Pretender”). She has a show-stopping voice that brings the audience to their feet.

Margot Moreland as the Earth Mother, who has been living in sin for 25 years since her hippie days, has an equally wonderful voice.

Carolynne Warren, as the Iowa housewife, is on her first trip to New York, accompanying her husband to the Funeral Directors’ Convention. Staid, proper and clearly an out-of-towner, she has wonderful comic moves, whether she is racing to the ladies room, or attempting to fit into a negligee.

Finally, Lisa Fox is the soap opera star who lies about her age and is reluctant to be associated with these women. Dropping references to her male companions, and showing off her slim figure, she finally gets the message, and as in Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty, she finally recognizes the side on which she belongs. As she forges a new bond of sisterhood, the ladies come out in snazzy black outfits reflecting their new collective sense of pride and selfhood.

At the end, when the entire audience is invited to come up on stage and join the dance to their version of “YMCA,” Girlfriends, it is clear that everyone has had a marvelous time. So if your girlfriends invite you to go to Long Wharf for a Ladies Night Out, by all means say yes. But hurry. The show is only in New Haven until August 7, and its next stop is East Lynne. (I mean Glens Falls)

(See the Enjoy Calendar, in print or online, for performance and ticket details.)