Pieter Toerien's Montecasino Theatre
Director: Maralin Vanrenen
Cast: Brenda Radloff, Tia Architto, Lisa Melman, Kate Normington
Dates: Until July 22 (return season)
Rating: ***
It's second time around for these women with their ageing blues. Adding some sassy kick are two new cast members, which often shakes things up a little, even if it wasn't necessary.
There wasn't anything wrong first time around, but the emphasis shifts with Melman and Architto joining Normington and Radloff on their shopping spree in Bloomingdales.
It's one of those shows that's probably most fun if you get together a group of female friends of a certain age, as the four women on stage unpack all the unflattering things that beset women who battle the onslaught of menopause. Night sweats, hot flushes, figures that go, breasts that droop, the list goes on. And none of it sounds like fun.
It might even terrify women who are too young. Yet it's all done in jest, with a frothy, light touch, telling the story through well-known songs given appropriate lyrics. And whether you're a fading starlet or a housewife from Ohio, a business woman with attitude or an ageing flower child, it's all the same, except the pills, which might be St John's Wort rather than Prozac.
Normington is perfectly cast as the TV star who is age obsessed, while Radloff's hippy clings to her past as she cheerfully advocates her vegan status. Architto looks, and plays, the part of the bossy exec while Melman steals the show as the dippy housewife who is deliciously out of step with the rest of the world.
All four have great voices as they run through the repertoire with ease and it is up to them, to pull this one through - and they do that with lots of enthusiasm and energy. It's a night of escapism with little serious thought given to a tough topic.
What would have put it in a different league was to transpose the musical to South Africa. It would become instantly identifiable and the writer would have had fun finding local stereotypes and songs that could have told our own story with even more punch.
As it stands, it's huge fun, but there's no real local hook.