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During 90 fast, funny minutes, the show's cast of four performs dozens of popular songs with new words, rewritten by "Menopause" book writer and lyricist Jeanie Linders, that turn the tunes into an outline of the ordeal that is The Change.
Thus "Chain of Fools" is recast as "Change of Life": "For five long years I thought I was losing my mind." And a pair of "Saturday Night Fever"-era Bee Gees hits become "Stayin' Awake" and "Night Sweatin'."
Like past revues that Capital Rep has programmed during the summer ("Always ... Patsy Cline," "Forever Plaid"), "Menopause: The Musical" uses the thinnest of conceits to justify performing a bunch of familiar tunes with a live band. This time, there's no plot at all, just a setting -- Bloomingdale's department store in Manhattan -- and the characters are so generic, they're nameless onstage and identified in the program only by type: Professional Woman, Soap Star, Earth Mother, Iowa Housewife.
But the cast and the creators, including Linders, director Kathryn Conte and choreographer Patty Bender, know exactly how shallow a pool they're splashing in, and they find much joy and humor in menopause's many manifestations.
"Satin sheets are the worst" if you're suffering from night sweats, says one of the women. "Not only does it puddle, it's damn cold."
Hot flashes get abundant due, as do memory lapses, sexual desire that flares from flat to fiery in the time it takes to doff clothes, and quicksilver mood changes. After each woman reveals her pharmaceutical "friend" of choice -- Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, St. John's wort -- the quartet launches into a Beach Boys medley of "Help Me, Doctor"("Help Me, Rhonda") and "Sane and Normal Girls" (they sing, "I wish we all could be sane and normal ... girrrrlsss").
Capital Rep's energetic cast is made of up of real gals with real bodies, and so it's believable when one laments "when your hourglass shape becomes a water glass." It's also deeply satisfying to see the women celebrate the confidence and wisdom gained by having lived long enough to say they're "of a certain age." They don't shy, either, from advocating for women taking charge of their own sensual and erotic pleasure, though the song "What's Love Got to Do With It" will sound forever different once you've seen the lyric "secondhand emotion" accompanied by a below-the-waist gesture.
Satori Shakoor brings musical bravura (and a knockout Tina Turner impression) to Professional Woman; Judy Bridgewater makes Iowa Housewife more complete and comical than the name might suggest; and Nancy Slusser, as the Soap Star fighting to keep her career, adds vocal talents to the mix. Janis Roeton, as Earth Mother, is the weakest singer on solo numbers, but with her corkscrewy blond hair and life-embracing attitude, she's still fine.
