About the Arts
No pause in "Menopause, the Musical" at the Ogunquit Playhouse
By Rose Safran
OGUNQUIT - "I'm having a hot flash/A tropical hot flash/My personal summer/Is really a bummer./I'm having a hot flash/Comes on like a car crash/No warning just hot flash./Outside it is nippy/But I'm hot and drippy./I'm having a hot flash." (To the tune of Irving Berlin's "We're Having a Heat Wave" of 1933.)Since 2001, producer-author Jeanie Linders' "Menopause, The Musical" has traveled to theaters in the American countryside as well as abroad to such far-flung places as Australia, entertaining hordes at the same time it sends a serious message.
Neither a full-fledged musical nor truly a musical revue, it's a high-energy, musical satire, about a "certain age" period of inevitable "change" in the life of every woman - a change about which women need no longer remain silent.
Snappy, with new lyrics applied to old tunes principally from the 60s, 70s and a few from the 80s - with some earlier - and with an ensemble of four experienced actress-singers, it moves with lightening speed through 90 nonstop minutes as a transformation of attitude takes place.
Choruses of four middle-aged women initially deny the existence of "the change," then describe and bewail the peculiar symptoms of this special "condition," ultimately arriving at acceptance of it. Such acceptance empowers them.
At the finale of the first night production at the Ogunquit Playhouse, the four ensemble players moved into the audience and invited women to come up on stage.
Join in and be empowered, the actresses encouraged. And, believe me, considerable participation happened! The sisterhood message got across.
The show is set in Bloomingdale's (affectionately "Bloomies") - here represented by a series of well-designed art deco doors as background. Four amply-endowed women meet at a sales counter, where they fight over some bargain-priced skimpy lingerie that barely covers their excess flesh. Subsequently, these strangers run into each other on various floors in Bloomies ladies' room, hair salon, linen department, evening apparel, designer clothing, etc.
As they move about these different departments, trying on clothing that is often unsuitable, looking at faces that need repair, at bodies with skin like cottage cheese, transforming themselves with wigs, negligees, etc., the saga of their complaints about "the change" emerges through songs, dialogue, facial expressions, slapstick and considerable body language.
Sleepless nights, sexless lives, hot flashes, memory lapses, sagging body parts, pill-popping, binge eating, far-sighted vision, even madness - the women recognize such common ground symptoms (wildly, comically exaggerated, to be sure) that spark mutual empathy.
Driving the satire is the disparity among the women. The characters are stereotypes, yes, but interestingly so.
There is the conservatively attired, pants-clad careerist (Sherri Brown-Webster as Power Woman) whose "I'm Flashing" brought the house down, as did her donning a lioness-style wig and mimicking of Aretha Franklin. Then, we have a blonde Marilyn Monroe-style actress, the trimmest of the group (Yvette McGregor as Soap Star) whose face needs a tuck here and there. Contrasting is an overflowing aging "flower child" (Stephanie
Pascaris as Earth Mother), who never got around to marrying her lover and can powerfully belt out a song, seemingly from the depths of her bulging belly. Mixed in is the conventional mid-westerner (Liz Hyde as Iowa Housewife) who relishes a lesson about a vibrator (yes, at times, things do get raunchy).
Whether in ensemble singing and performing - they're not dancers, but they manage considerable wiggling that reaches hilarious heights at times - or in solo pieces, all four performers are well cast, solidly experienced members of Actors' Equity, three from previous "Menopause" productions.
Enhancing the show was the live music provided by Alan Plado on piano, Steve Giunta on drums and Kevin Grudecki on bass.
Among the reconstituted songs were "Chain of Fools" (which becomes Change, Change, Change), "The Great Pretender," "I Got You Babe" (parodied as I'm Still Your Babe), "Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places," "What's Love Got to Do With It," "Don't Make Me Over" and "Beauty is Only Skin Deep."
The wig master was Byron J. Batista, who concocted amusing styles.
The set by Bud Clark worked well, with doors easily affording costume changes.
The 90-minute show is performed without an intermission.
Due to popular demand and early sell-out, "Menopause, The Musical" has been extended to Sept. 23. For reservations, call the Ogunquit Playhouse at 646-5511.
This is the final production of the Ogunquit Playhouse's 2006 season.
