Canbera Theatre Centre – The Playhouse. July 9, 10 7pm; July 11, 3pm 2026
Reviewed by Frank McKone, July 9
The Cast
Queenie van de Zandt; Valerie Bader
Carita Farrer Spencer; Zuleika Khan
The Creatives
Co-Writers & Producers: Queenie van de Zandt and Tiffany Noack
Director: Priscilla Jackman
Musical Director: Robyn Womersley
Choreographer: Sally Dashwood
Set & Costume Designer: Isabel Hudson
Additional material and musical numbers: Laura Murphy
With
an all-female live band, the performance weaves together skits, poetry,
monologues, and iconic songs from artists like Missy Higgins, Sia,
P!nk, and Tim Minchin.
This is a terrifically well written, well
played and well sung highly amusing presentation, derived from a large
number of interviews with women experiencing menopause.
In
addition to being thoroughly engaging and entertaining, it is seriously
educational, not only for young women to learn what to expect, usually
in their fifties, but to encourage those in the throes of hot flushes,
emotional turmoil, and often depression to know that there is a life for
them, often of greater freedom from conventional strictures, in their
later lives: demonstrated by these very women on stage.
Grandmothers are very often essential for holding families together.
Taking
a comic approach, with claps and cheers at many of the songs and dance
routines, enhances the depth and sense of importance of the issues women
face, not only from the changes in bodily functions, but even more from
the failure of men to treat women with respect and proper recognition
of what women go through – and what they do for everybody else.
Definitely not to be missed – by women and girls, and as much by men and boys.
I
am biassed on this last point, having had to take female hormone to
reduce the chance of my prostate cancer growing back again. For women,
menopause means an imbalance of and a degree of loss of the female
hormone against the male hormone, testosterone.
In men, the
testosterone is the energy source for growing prostate cancer. Female
hormone treatment – a monthly injection – causes me to experience the
same ‘hot flushes’ that menopausal women experience; and I may need to
continue – on a three monthly injection basis – for the rest of my life.
However, as Middle Raged concludes, life goes on – so I am still writing reviews at my ripe old age of 85.
And
after tonight I understand so much more from these four women: making
me – I mean this very seriously – a more respectful man.
Middle Raged – A Musical Meltdown is creative, real-life theatre at it best.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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