Musical Spoof Generates Laughs

By Louis B. Hobson
Calgary Sun
Saturday, March 15, 2003

Attention, gentlemen.

Menopositive! The Musical currently playing at Alberta Theatre Projects is not a tuneful attempt to be upbeat about men.

It's a feisty ditty about the trials and tribulations of female aging which puts a comic spin on the symptoms and effects of menopause.

Three women meet for their high school's 30th reunion celebration and enlist a fourth as friend and collaborator.

Kate (Susinn McFarlen) has agreed to write a musical spoof.

Her personal obsession with menopause finds its way into her songs and skits.

These sections of the show benefit from being campy and a bit outrageous as is the case with the musical numbers Hormones and Whirligig Glands.

For J.J. McColl who created Menopositive! the reunion show the women are rehearsing and all the broad jokes about menopause are just a hook.

Her real purpose is to look into the lives, loves and losses of the four women.

This is where originality gives way to cliche.

It's only a matter of time before the women reveal they've been abused, betrayed, belittled and beleaguered and, most astonishingly, primarily by the same man.

At least they open their hearts in song so it's not quite as maudlin as it could be.

Menopositive! is an enormous crowd-pleaser with its target female audience because the performances are so slick and so much fun.

From the moment she comes barging on stage pushing a vacuum cleaner, Ann Warn Pegg commands the stage. She makes the Hungarian widow a lusty, comic tornado as if she's channelling the late Ethel Merman.

McFarlen makes her ballad Coattails soar with heartfelt emotion and Candace O'Connor finds a sweet sadness for Blithe She Is.

Patricia Dahlquist has a knack for lacing her dialogue and her song Fool Fer Love with sarcasm.

Menopositive! The Musical more than hit a chord with its predominantly female opening night audience who filled the theatre with the warm laughter and applause of recognition.