Menopause, The Musical

DIRECTOR: Patty Bender

CAST: Delia Sainsbury, Ntambo Rapatla, Kate Normington and Shelly Adriaazen

VENUE: Theatre On The Bay, Camps Bay

UNTIL: February 25

RATING: ***

The silent passage is heard loud and clear in Menopause, The Musical.

Borrowing songs from the baby boomer era and changing the lyrics to suit the various effects of menopause, this is one funny, toe-tapping show.

More so for women who have already experienced the change than for those women who want to put a pause on menopause or skip it altogether.

The musical is written by Jeanie Linders of the US, which is why all the actresses spoke with American accents.

An elderly small-town woman (Sainsbury) visits the big city and meets a tough businesswoman (Rapatla), a vain actress (Normington), and a woman who is an alternative lifestyle enthusiast (Adriaazen), in a large department store.

The set (floor-to-ceiling Roman art-like doors) is similar to those in the Christmas episode location shoots of the TV soap Days Of Our Lives.

The women look at lingerie, take turns in the loo, and bond over hot flushes, night sweats and, particu-larly for the older woman, sexual liberation.

The songwriting is clever.

There is a scene where the actress learns, through a gossip rag, that a younger, more beautiful version of herself may be taking her job.

Normington, who is terrified of getting older, and Rapatla sing a version of Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through the Grapevine, which includes Rapatla singing lines such as “Between the two of us, your age is more”.

Even the speaking parts have some chuckle-worthy moments, such as the cringe-worthy descriptions of wet spots in the bedroom taking on a new meaning and Sainsbury nonchalantly saying menopause has made her feel like “the captain of the Titanic – what a sinking feeling”.

When it comes to the singing, the women play a hit-and-miss game.

Rapatla is consistently a scene-stealing singing sensation, whether packing punches in her serious businesswoman character or bringing the chutzpah while portraying Tina Turner, complete with leather bustier and a shimmy.

There are other great moments, such as when the four women get together to turn the Bee Gees’ Staying Alive into Staying Awake, as insomnia is one of the effects of menopause. Initially the harmonies were shaky, but they got it together.

However, it was the experiences of the women, who met through fighting over a black bra, that were really interesting.

Menopause, The Musical is funny in a depressing kind of way.

For someone who isn’t experiencing the change, I never got the assurance that when I do, things will get better at some point.

Even after there was a sound glitch that forced an impromptu interval, there still wasn’t any hope of there being anything you can do to deal with the situation without going crazy.

It seems menopause is going to be a difficult phase and there’s not much one can do about it.

For those in the audience who could relate to what the women on stage were talking about, this show was rip- roaring fun. For others it was a revelation.

The woman seated next to me said: “That was really quite lovely.”

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