Menopause the Musical

Menopause. “The very word is a room-emptier,” as the magazine editor Tina Brown once put it. Until recently, a woman's journey towards post-fertility was a subject as inappropriate for the dinner table as diarrhoea or public execution. In her ice-breaking book The Silent Passage (1992), Gail Sheehy dubbed menopause “the last taboo,” while in an 1997 article for the New York Times entitled “As Conversation Stopper, It Has Few Equals,” Anna Quindlen discussed the wide-spread reluctance among women to talk about the natural process that affects almost every female over the age of 40. “I should know as much about menopause, from talking and listening, as I do about pregnancy,” wrote Quindlen. “But I don't.”

Figure 1.

Rather than empowering women, the show underscores many clichés

In a (hot) flash, things have changed. Thanks to a wealth of medical studies focusing on menopausal symptoms and a crusade to bring the subject out into the open by the Baby Boomer generation, menopause is no longer a dirty word. A quick search on Amazon.com reveals dozens of titles from Marianne Legato's Healthy Transitions to Menopause for Dummies by Martha Jones. Menopause related websites, support organisations, and discussion groups abound. And if all of this weren't enough, “The Change” has become the subject of a musical theatre franchise phenomenon that is fanning out across the United States faster than middle-age spread.

Menopause the Musical began life in a tiny Florida theatre in 2001. Clones of the original production can now be seen in 14 US cities such as Boston, Cleveland, and Los Angeles, as well as internationally, in Seoul and Sydney. Like Eve Ensler's hit show The Vagina Monologues, which acted as the catalyst for a global anti-violence movement, Menopause the Musical has spawned its own non-profit organisation, the Women for Women Foundation—a body aimed at empowering older women.

The popularity of the show stems from its ability to present openly what many members of its target audience would still consider to be a racy subject, while at the same time fostering a sense of lively community. Menopause accomplishes this, in part, by drawing on easily identifiable stereotypes. Set in Bloomingdale's department store, New York, the musical unites four contrasting female characters—a business executive, Iowa housewife, television soap star, and hippy earth mother—through the forces of cut-price lingerie and hormone replacement therapy. From insomnia and mood swings to hot flushes and sexual problems, the ladies share their menopausal hang-ups as they try on clothes, rifle through sales racks, and run in and out of the store's many strategically placed powder rooms. It is like watching one giant Tupper-ware party, only the plastic under discussion here is surgical rather than culinary.

The funny, friendly characterisations might forge a bond with the audience, but most of the show's merriment comes from unexpected twists to familiar tunes. Writer/producer Jeanie Linders gives 25 jukebox oldies a facelift, making the words resonate for her target audience. Thus the lyric “in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight” becomes “in the guestroom, or on the sofa, my husband sleeps at night.” Likewise, “I wish they all could be Californian girls” finds new meaning when transformed into “I wish we all could be sane and normal girls.”

Menopause is certainly not everyone's cup of herbal tea. For one thing, it's unabashedly tacky. A scene in which the business exec (Anise Ritchie in the San Francisco performance I attended) does a Tina Turner impression in a black leather mini-skirt, corset, and fright wig leaves much to be desired. And an ode to the delights of masturbation, sung into a pink microphone to a doctored version of the Beach Boys' “Good Vibrations,” makes one think that all that is missing from this (very) belated bachelorette party is a male stripper.

Although Menopause is entertaining and no doubt does make people feel more comfortable about the ageing process, it doesn't go far enough. For one thing, the word “menopause” is hardly ever mentioned in the show. Instead, the process is euphemistically referred to as “The Change,” which just seems to reinforce the taboo. And with its obsession with shopping, sex, and cellulite, Menopause feels a lot like a geriatric issue of Cosmopolitan. Rather than empowering women, the musical ends up underscoring many trite clichés.