While introducing Theatre Orangeville’s final show of the season, artistic director David Nairn jokingly thanked the 12 men in the audience for braving the performance.
Menopositive! The Musical is clearly geared towards women, and Nairn, though trying to make light of that, wasn’t that far off in his estimate of how many men were in the theatre for the show’s preview performance on May 10.
But he was incorrect in suggesting those men were about to learn something about women and menopause.
As the title suggests, Menopositive is a musical about a group of older women, each at different stages of “the change,” who come together for a theatrical performance at their 35th high school reunion.
The idea seems promising and the performances of Debbie Collins (Marnie), Valerie Hawkins (Zsu Zsu), Melanie Janzen (Kate) and Deborah Tennant (Cynthia) are great.
But the script from playwright J.J. McColl seems flat in many places and overall, falls short of its potential.
A cynic may suggest young men simply do not understand some of the jokes and are unable to empathize with what the characters are going through. But even middle-aged females seeking a fun story about the average woman going through menopause may be disappointed here.
Despite variations in their socio-economic status, three of the four characters are extremely damaged emotionally and a failure to fully explore the reasons for their unenviable conditions in life causes them to come off as vain, insincere or misandrist, depending on the scene.
Indeed, the only “normalcy” one finds in the musical rests with the character of Zsu Zsu, the Hungarian widow whose efforts to get the other women to stop feeling sorry for themselves and look at the positive, echoes exactly what most in the audience are likely thinking.
Hawkins steals the show. She is the best singer of the four, demonstrated during Nothing Special, a powerful ode to simple pleasures found in the seemingly mundane, everyday life of a loving marriage. It’s by far the best song in the play and the emotional anchor of the first act.
Another musical highlight is the four-player collaboration Ninety-Seven Percent, a funny (and accurate, I am told) tale about the physical changes menopause entails; it is exactly the number audiences will expect from this production.
There are other musical numbers audiences will enjoy, yet many miss the mark and some are hard to understand – at least one due to a number of accents used by the actors and others due to an ineffectual balance of musical and vocal volumes.
An obvious bright spot in the production is the live music from music director Shelley Hanson and Julie Strom, who seem to effortlessly guide the production from start to finish.
The non-musical portions of the production provide some laughs – mostly for women – but too many times the dialogue borders on inconsequential and boring. There are a few lines that have the entire audience in stitches, but the play’s best comedy sequence does not appear until two hours into the production.
The direction (Nairn) and choreography (Kiri-Lyn Muir) are fine, and the lighting (Stephen Nixon) and set design (Beckie Morris) are great.
Menopositive! The Musical is not without its flaws, but many middle aged women will undoubtedly empathize with the physical changes experienced by the characters. Men may want to take a pass, but it could make for a good “girls’ night out.”
Menopositive plays six shows a week until May 27. For tickets call 519-942-3423 or visit theatreorangeville.ca.
