Unlikely Topic Makes For A Winning Musical

By Kate Skye
Trail Times
August, 1999

It's hard to imagine that a musical on menopause could be one of the biggest hits of the Trail performing arts season.

But with the Charles Bailey Theatre bursting at the scenes on Tuesday, the popular Firehall Arts Centre production from Vancouver heat flashed it's way into Trail and singed just bout everyone in the audience.

Four actors playing menopausal 53-year-old characters took their audience on a journey of discovery that delved into the abundance of issues facing women in midlife. Relationships, body image, life expectations, sexuality, childhood traumas and dreams, husbands and lovers, societal roles, culture and passion were all explored by these extremely talented and likeable women.

For two solid-gold hours the audience was given the opportunity to look at their own reflections played out on the stage. Theatre goers laughed at the honest way in which this provocative, refreshing musical allowed them to take stock of their own lives at the mid-life junction.

Menopositive is getting rave reviews, where it goes. After a 13-week run in Vancouver in the spring of '98 the demand for a return engagement was so great the show ran again for three more weeks and has now hit the road on a two-week tour.

The show focuses around a high school reunion where Kate, Marnie and Cynthia come together for the first time in 35 years. Thrown into the mix is Zsu Zsu, a voluptuous charwoman/actress dripping with sensuality and charisma.

The four women plan a musical revue for the reunion and the audience is privy to the back stage drama that leads up to the final event. The music packs a punch, flirting with a variety of emotions. A wide spectrum of music is used and songs range from deeply moving, to delightfully funny, to hopelessly naughty.

Scenes that tug on childhood traumas are played out tastefully with an emphasis on soothing emotional wounds that might be opened up for the audience.

The musical is a celebration of the beauty, resourcefulness and powerful place middle-age women have in our world. Playwright J.J. McColl has certainly created a winner in taking a topic as uninviting as a menopause and turning it inside out, producing a fresh, funny and flirtatiously delightful product. It's exactly the way it should be-menopositive.